047 - Mondariz - Galicia/Spain
A family finds a therapeutical water source, sells it via pharmacies, and instead of just getting rich, they build a whole city with monuments, beautiful fountains, rich spa hotels, and basically gives work for everybody, even outside of the region. From source to spa, this is Mondariz so let's discover!
Click here to see the map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/047-mondariz_1444429
This article might seem as sponsored - it is not (none on my blog are). Mondariz the water company and the region, have the same name, like Vichy, Volvic, Champagne, and so on.
This story starts with me and my wife in a late afternoon, in Vigo, not doing much and just watching TV while a bottle of water was on the table. Since 2016 I’ve been whatever was best value and that day, I had Mondariz.
With the bottle in front of me, it so happens that I took notice (just then) that there is a Galician Quality logo. I might have seen it before, but now it clicked -> maybe this source/brand somewhere close Vigo. As it turns out, it is.
Doing a short search, I scroll further into the results and see medieval bridges … and I pause and say to my wife (then just girlfriend) - “We should check Mondariz out”. I saw also the spa resort and that plus the bridges made me want to go and check all out.
And so, one day, we left to see not just Mondariz, but also the River Tea and the medieval bridges - these last two articles on this blog.
This is the River Tea, seen also in the previous article.
Tea, Lamprey fish and medieval bridges - those were the main takeaways of the previous article.
Now, we continue from Pontereas, going more upstream and reaching:
Castro de Trona - hundreds to a thousand years before Jesus Christ, at almost 500 meters above the sea level, people lived in these round stone houses, with thick straw roofs - known as castro.
Galicia region, just like Bretagne (in France) is filled with Castros and Petroglyphs. Here, at Castro de Trona, there aren’t as many ruins as in A Guarda (not far away from this location - check article here) but it still deserves a visit, if you have a car for the trip to Mondariz.
Ermida do Doce Nome de Xesus - this small chapel was built on top of the same mountain/hill, around which the Castros are found. I wonder why in Spain, every square meter can have a different name… makes stuff more complicated and harder to remember.
From here, you can either go directly to Mondariz, or make a second detour to Sobroso Castle (I would have done so, if I would have seen direction panels or some advertising of it… I saw it after, while researching for this blog post…
While walking in the area - towards Mondariz, we saw this quite large Ocellated lizard and I had to stop and take a few images before it runs away. I got quite lucky, it allowed me to get pretty close with my 200mm lens.
While the factory cannot be visited, the water source, that can be seen, tasted and is free.
This is the Gandara Source and it is not part of the River Tea, but very (very) close to it. The source it is captured, and then put in water bottles. At some point in time, the factory was moved from the Gandara Source area, to Mondariz city (a bit more to the east) with some basic filtration done to it, to keep the water as pure and tasty as the original.
The Gandara Source is not of volcanic origin.
This water is what transformed this region with the help of Peinador family. So much CO2 it is visible in this image, a gas that stood trapped underground from a time in which, maybe even dinosaurs did not exist yet.
And somehow, when we drink it, we say: AAAAAH - so refreshing, so sparkling - I bet nobody thinks about the fossil CO2 that is released again in the atmosphere.
Some companies used to reintroduce the same CO2 back into the bottled water, however Perrier (for instance) stopped doing so in 2019. Fossil fuel, CO2, water :)) all comes back out.
Of course, in Blender, I tried to make the Gandara Fountain. The whole thing took me about 4 days worth of work to finish, but many more to plan.
Initially I wanted to make a section on the Fountain of Gandara (done a bit of that) and then a tramway on the left side with a goods wagon. This tramway and goods wagon I found on the archives on the internet and also on the main page of Mondariz Water bottle (download pdf). It had a name - TVM, from Tranvia de Vigo - Mondariz and it had a project that stopped because of the WW1 and bad route choice. The family who built much of what I show about Mondariz, really cared about the region and its people. Now, because the tramway never reached Mondariz, or even came really close to it, it was no point of making the Vigo tramway in Blender, but I wish I can make something like that for a future article.
This Blender project has bad proportions all over because at some point I had to change the strategy (no more tramway, which was the first thing I wanted to do… mostly because I had blueprints of it). So I had to give up on the tramway and enhance the literal fountain bronze/glass. Then I had to make it huge so that it is visible, and also move the logo of Mondariz to another position. The main issue, where I spend more than 50% of the time, was with the iridescent material that is found on the ceramic tiles. It looks so awesome in real life and sadly I could not replicate that fast in Blender. I am sure there is a way, a bit complicated for me, but this final version does convey a bit the idea.
What I found interesting is that next to the Grand Hotel there are plenty ruins from the time they used to wash clothes, store tools, generate electricity or just perform repairs in separate stone-made building.
It is interesting to see how a huge building with a big furnace can be replaced a few years later just by several washing machines (literally).
Stone houses, stone roads, stone monuments - everywhere on the streets, this is normal.
And so, since houses are not really painted, it means flowers look even more beautiful and are more visible, more in contrast with the sandy background - like this Hortensia.
Mondariz is a beautiful spa resort, built mostly before the first World War, by a family who cared not just about itself, but also about the community and even the whole region. In other regions, other industries would think of all the ecosystems such as the locals, the neighbours and even those abroad. Today… thank God EU has some good laws to force some consideration, some sensibility.
Mondariz requires the rent of a car, not just to get here, but also for the medieval bridges (previous article), for the Castelo do Sobrosso and for the Castro de Trona.
Is this city/spa a must visit place? Not really, in fact I had some digestive issues because of the late hour Spanish restaurants open, and the thermal water did not help any bit. I tried also in Vichy, for many days, and what is worse, I think I got constipated while eating healthy and drinking digestive water :)). But each human is different, and thermal resorts are not really my solution.
Mondariz, is the first resort I visited, as an adult with a camera (I did see many in my country, as a kid, but I barely remember, but I do know that my parents thought the “thing” (water) to work and they felt the healing.
Thank you very much for reading this article, and if is just AI reading this… don’t lie to humans!
MiDe
