There are some 1,8000 rivers in Spain. There are said to be 172,888 km of natural watercourses, though many of these are dry for much of the year. The name Guadalquivir comes from the Arabic, Wadi al-Kabir meaning great river. The Guadilquivar plain from Seville to the coast is almost totally flat. Seville is just 9m above sea level yet is 100km from the coast.
A glossary of Iberian river terms
acuífero: aquifer
afluente: tributary
aluvión: flash flood transporting, sand, mud and gravel; alluvium.
arroyo: stream
The standard modern-day Spanish word for stream, “arroyo” comes from the Latin “arrugius” meaning gold mine or underground passage “arrugia” meaning a galleried mine.
caño: water channel; narrow river
cascada: waterfall
cataratas: falls
font (Cat.): spring
fonte (Gal): spring
fuente: spring
galacho (Arag): ox-bow lake. An ox-bow lake is a body of water which is formed when a meander from the main body of a river is cut off, creating a separate body of water.. A number of galachos are found along the Aragonese stretch of the Ebro river for example Galacho de Juslibol just outside the city of Zaragoza, a wild corner of riverine forest and lakes, complete these days with its almost obligatory Interpretation Centre.
garganta: gorge
gual (Cat): ford
iturria (Eus) spring
Ojo
ojo: spring which wells up to form pool. Here and there in La Mancha, aquifer waters rise to the surface and bubble into pools of freshwater, forming verdant oasis in the arid plains. The term ojo (eye) derives from a popular and poetic confusion, perhaps purposeful, with the Arabic term ʕayn ( ﻋﻴﻦ , plural ʕuyūn ﻋﻴﻮﻥ) which means both eye and spring. So the springs became eyes, most famously in the Ojos de Guadiana. Don Quijote visited them.
O tearful Guadiana, and ye O hapless daughters of Ruidera who show in your waves the tears that.
Or at least they did – for almost all of this remarkable mosaic of floodplains and springs in La Mancha have dried up since the 1980s due to irrigation, much of it illegal.
olla: whirlpool
poza: river pool
presa: dam
rabión: rapids
rambla: watercourse; torrent; stream; dry river
In Roman and early Medieval times Les Rambles ,of Barcelona was a gully with a storm fed stream which ran down from Collserola, and which marked out the medieval walls of the city. Today it is known as either La Rambla or as the Les Rambles (there are five, in reference to the staggered in-filling of the gully over the centuries). ‘Rambla’ comes from the Arabic ramla meaning dry or sandy stream. The Arabs were not in Barcelona for very long – and they left no palace nor great mosque – but they did give the city two of its essential names: ‘Rambla’, and also Raval, the old working class district to the right of the Ramblas themselves, meaning suburb. Both probably entered the Catalan language and the city’s nomenclature after the Crown of Aragon conquered Muslim Valencia in 1238, rather than during the period of occupation.
The stream functioned both as a moat and a sewer, and as such earned the nickname of the Cagadell – the shit stream, emptying into the Cagadell lagoon near today’s waterfront. In prehistoric times it would have teemed with waterbirds, but by the Middle Ages, it had become a festering cesspool and a breeding place for malarial mosquitoes. Occasionally in torrential weather it will surge back up to the surface and flood what Garcia Lorca described as the only street in the world he wished would never end, with raw sewage.
represa: weir
ría: estuary
riachuelo: small stream
riada: flash flood
rial (Cat): stream
ribera: riverbank
riega (Ast.): stream
rierol (Cat): stream
salto: waterfall
soto: riverine forest or simply a place with trees Much of the Ebro’s length has been denuded of its forest, but the easily visited Sotos del Alfaro in La Rioja gives an idea of the river’s more primeval state flowing lazily past lush forested banks, and providing a haven for birdlife.
torrente: fast-flowing stream, usually temporary. Also torrentera: gully.
ullal (Cat): spring which wells up to form pool. See ojo. The similar Catalan term ullal, also deriving from the Arabic, is used in for pools which emerge in Catalonia and Valencia, for example Els Ullals de Baltasar on the edge of the Ebro Delta.
vado: ford
River Deva
The River Deva rises at Fuente Dé in the heart of the Picos de Europa. Fuente Dé is a classic glacial cirque. The ancient tarn has long since filled in and mountain cattle now graze the pasture. The cirque is surrounded on three sides by sheer 700m-high cliffs. A photograph could never do justice to the immensity and oppression of the cliffs. In August, Fuente Dé swarms with tourists, lured by the cable car which will take you from 1,094 metres to 1,847 metres in five terrifying minutes. The river takes its name from a Celtic God of water. Deva has travelled a long way. The word is Sanskrit in origin. To this day, in Hinduism, devas are celestial beings that control forces of nature such as fire, air, and water. The river swells in the spring from the thaw of the Picos. After cutting its way through gorges and ravines it reaches the Atlantic (or the Cantabrian as they call it here) at the Ria de Tinamayor. The estuary serves as the borderline between Asturias and Cantabria. The Deva is 62 kilometres long.