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Last modified: 2015-10-18 by ivan sache
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Flag of Dúdar - Image from the Símbolos de Granada website, 26 September 2015
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The municipality of Dúdar (340 inhabitants in 2014; 837 ha; municipal website) is located 15 km east of Granada. The municipality is made of the villages of Dúdar and Aguas Blancas.
Dúdar was first documented by the Arab chronicler Al-Jatib (13th century). The village was once owned by the Dukes of Bourbon, then called Villa Mena del Río Aguas Blancas. When the old name of the place was restired in not known. The last owner of Dúdar was the Marquis of Balboa.
Ivan Sache, 26 September 2015
The flag and arms of Dúdar, adopted on 26 January 2015 by the Municipal Council and submitted on 2 February 2015 to the Directorate General of the Local Administration, are prescribed by a Decree adopted on 10 February 2015 by the Directorate General of the Local Administration and published on 18 February 2015 in the official gazette of Andalusia, No. 33, pp. 63-69 (text).
The symbols are described as follows:
Flag: Rectangular, in proportions three units in length on two units in width, or, one and a half longer than wide, horizontally divided in three parts, the first, upper, blue, the second, central, white, and the third, lower, green. All over the crowned coat of arms of Dúdar, its geometrical exis fitted to the center of the flag, in height 2/3 of the flag's width.
Coat of arms: Tierced per fess, 1. Azure and vert six pillars of the Canal de los Franceses masoned sienna, 2. Argent dexter a mulberry leaf vert sinister a pomegranate proper faceted gules slipped and leaved vert, 3. Azure five grapevines fructed or leaved vert slipped sienna on a base of the same. Inescutcheon azure and vert charged with a two-storeyed aqueduct masoned sienna the lower storey with three archs of twice the width of the upper archs the upper storey with six archs, representing the Línea bridge. The shield surmounted by a Royal Sapnish crown closed. Beneath the shield a scroll or inscribed with "Ayuntamiento de Dúdar".
The landscaped shield represents in the upper part the structures colloquially known as "the towers", which, together with the aqueduct known as the Línea bridge, are remains of the Canal of the French, erected in the late 19th century to supply water to a gold washing factory. The pomegranate represents the Kingdom of Granada.
The municipality used an enve less heraldic representation of the arms, the shield being outlined in golden yellow and surmounted by a coronet inscribed with the name of the municipality.
[Símbolos de Granada website]
Gold washing has been performed in the Granada plain since the Roman times, as reported by Strabo and Pliny. The Muslims improved the extraction technique in the area of Lancha del Genil, increasing the old canal built by the Romans to transport water from river Beas, a tributary of river Darro (named for dauro, "golden"). According to the chronicles, some 500 slaves wahsed gold during the Nasrid period. In 1492, King Ferdinand the Catholic forbid gold washing in the Lancha del Genil and river Darro downstream the Alhambra fortress, since the extracted gold was property of the crown.
Nearly abandoned, the Lancha del Genil mine was re-activated in 1875 by a French industrial, Jean Baptiste Michel Adolphe Goupil, who acquired the concessions from the Sociedad Aurífera de los Terrenos de España. Goupil invested 10 millions francs to build a brand new factory; the Roman canal, dried up for decades, was replaced by a new, 16 km long canal, which supplied the factory with water from river Aguas Blancas. The Cerro del Sol factory was short-lived, being eventually closed in 1877, mostly because of the liberlization of the gold market and competition with the town of Granada for water resources. The municipality of Granada indeed started to supply the inhabitants with freshwater from rivers Genil and Aguas Blancas and the farmers with irrigation water from river Darro. Moreover, Goupil planned to use cyanide to mprove the yield of gold extraction, threatening the aquifers of Granada. After the closure of the factory, the Canal of the French was used to supply Granada with freshwater.
[Historical record; photos]
Ivan Sache, 26 September 2015
