Inventor, construction innovator and adventurer Equally Engineer of Roads, Canals and Harbors Fernando Gallego Herrera He came from a family originally from the vanished Zamorano town of Anta de Tera.
This town was flooded by the Valparaíso reservoir in the late 80s, and ironically he worked elsewhere throughout his life. major hydraulic infrastructures around the world Like the Panama Canal or the Aswan Dam. But his professional work in these symbolic works is only a small part of a life full of adventures that Zamora Higher Polytechnic School professor Evelio Teijón examines; This Friday, he gave details of some of the structures that this progress left to history. It’s time for the Zamora III History Congress.
Fernando Gallego Herrera (Villoria, Salamanca 1901-Pamplona, 1973), a descendant of the Zamora family of cloth merchants who settled in Salamanca, studied in Madrid and faced his first major professional challenge almost before finishing: save the construction underground metro barcelona today it is in the place corresponding to the sixth line.
Works were damaged decline for everything was under water; This was something similar to what happens today in the AVE tunnels between León and Asturias, and he devised a solution. innovative drainage system of the time This allowed the metropolis to progress.
But no matter how crazy it seemed, his most striking project was to make an invention in 1928. A system of “floating tunnels” – giant semi-buried pipes – that will connect Spain to Spain Morocco via the Strait of Gibraltar. Documentation of this revolutionary infrastructure, which was never built, has been preserved at the Zamora Higher Polytechnic School since this year; professor Evelio Teijón recalls Gallego Herrera being described as: The “Jules Verne or Indiana Jones” of engineering.
This unique tunnel project, which would connect two continents, initially forgot the support of King Alfonso. Now, when A similar system will be used in Finland to communicate across fjordswhen this strange invention was rescued from the almanacs of history.
But that wasn’t the only thing. Evelio Teijón recalls that he too achieved this three prototypes ‘Aerogenio’ is a “very special” plane powered by a compressed air engine, He points out this researcher who emphasized that he managed to fly these planes but the tests were sabotaged to discredit him, thus putting an end to the idea of floating tunnels secured and connected by steel cables like those used at the Golden Gate. Fernando Gallego also collaborated in the construction of the Martín Gil viaduct in Zamora on the railway line to Galicia. patented the funicular archA new system used to build bridges.
His life story, which is “very unique and extraordinary” according to Evelio Teijón, also includes international adventures. First Spaniard to circumnavigate the world by plane and stopsModernizing the Panama Canal or working on the gates of the Aswan Dam, among other blockbuster adventures of George Lucas.