Camino de las fuentes (Spring Road)
El Camino de Las Fuentes (Spring Road) connected Benimaclet with parts of the Vera farmland area and with the parish cemetery.
Today the road has disappeared due to the urbanization towards the end of the past century, to the development plan PAI Benimaclet Este and, later, to the construction of the through street Ronda Norte.
As its name indicates, it used to be a place with lots of springs and wells. It seems that these springs and wells were caused by the water from the irrigation canals along the left bank of the river Turia. The water in the ground under the square of Benimaclet was so abundant that it created a sort of pond, used by women to wash clothes, and at the spot where there is today a municipal social service center (Centro Muncipal de Servicios Sociales) there was a mill that used the stream of water for energy (inside the building we can see the grinding stone from that mill).
It may actually be that remnants of those streams are still there. When a sewage system and waste water pipes were put in, in 2008-2009, in the eastern part of Benimaclet, the construction had to be interrupted at the intersection of the Maestro Buenaventura Pascual and Murta streets, where a major lode of water was discovered.
The springs that existed had the following names: “La Font del Llavaero”, “La Font del Rosí”, “La Font d´Albat”, “La Font de La Murta” (Murta street got its name from that spring; murta means myrtle in Valencian).
These springs drained into the irrigation canal Las Fuentes, which is no longer used for irrigation, and which flows into the Vera irrigation canal.
In spite of being short, el Camino de Las Fuentes was used to reach a number of barracas, alquerías and other farm buildings that had their own water sources: “Casa Montañana”, “Casa Nieves”, “Alquería Guardo”, “Alquería El Vixco”, “Alquería de la viuda de Asensi”, “Alquería El Buen Ladrón”, “Alquería El Marro”, “Alquería El Borriquillo”. There is also information that in 1871, there was by the Camino de las Fuentes a small building used for selling meat.
On the other side of the “vía churra” (the railway line between Valencia and Aragón), there is a narrow path that will take us to “Alquería Serra”, “Alquería Sales” and “Alquería Mos de Burro”.
The road continues and passes in front of the entrance to the parish cemetery until joining Camino de Vera, near “Casa Chispa” and the no longer existing “Barraqueta de Andreuet, el Atandaor”, where it ended.