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42º37'46.6"N, 2º5'12.15"W

No openings on three sides. Door and windows face south. No other openings except ditch from underneath, going north to point straight at Azqueta, but it only goes a short distance. Seems at one time to have had a pipe going from bottom to top. No signage.

Pipe makes me think of water, but it is on top of a hill, and it is a long way from any point higher or to any village.

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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about travel but about history/culture/architecture
    – Relaxed
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 22:26
  • I would suspect a semaphore tower, but having windows on one side only tends to suggest otherwise. See google.com/….
    – phoog
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 22:35
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    @Relaxed: There are 105 questions with the tag "identify-this." Are they all "off-topic"? Should the tag be removed?
    – WGroleau
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 22:39
  • It looks like it's made of concrete, hence not very old. How tall is it and how large are the openings?
    – Berwyn
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 4:34
  • Seems like a watchtower of some sorts, probably from world war II maybe.
    – DumbCoder
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 8:10

1 Answer 1

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I found someone who knows. One of the residents of Villamayor de Monjardín was three years old when it was built in 1948. It was a gravity water tower that has since been replaced by pumps.

There is a spring on Montejurra, a mountain some distance away. They actually ran pipes down into the valley and up this hill to a tank that is no longer in or on the tower. The base of the tower is the same altitude as Villamayor de Monjardín, so the residents no longer had to carry water in or truck it. The resident I spoke to owns a vineyard close to Azqueta, so he occasionally had to go up to the tower, which provided his irrigation as well as the running water to Igúzquiza, Azqueta, and Villamayor de Monjardín.

He was not sure what year the Mancomunidad de Montejurra built the current water system that taps into many other springs and rivers to serve a much bigger region. But that's when the tower stopped being used, and the access roads were reclaimed by local agriculture (which is why it is no longer easy to get to). The villages of Azqueta and Villamayor de Monjardín are now supplied by a pump somewhere near autovía A-10.

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  • Nice. I did search for water towers wondering if that would be a possibility, but every one I could find looked much different
    – Berwyn
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 10:27
  • @Berwyn you are probably missing the ironwork that supported the tank, with that concrete tower being the central part where pumps and other machinery were kept. Ironwork was probably removed at the same time as the tank, as its valuable scrap metal, but the concrete (probably reinforced) tower would have cost money to remove so it was left.
    – user29788
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 13:56
  • @Moo You have a keen eye
    – Berwyn
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 13:57
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    @Berwyn Im just used to these structures dotting countrysides - the ironwork may not even have been removed legally, hence why the concrete structure remains - its worthless!
    – user29788
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 14:06
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    @Moo Ok. If it comes up on ebay I won't put a bid in for it then!
    – Berwyn
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 14:07

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