El riu renascut

David Perpiñán has been developing wildlife and audiovisual projects in the Besòs river, near the neighborhood where he grew up, for more than twenty years. He will soon premiere his first feature-length documentary «El riu renascut» (The re-born river) on television, a co-production with Laengengrad Filmproduktion, 3CAT and ARTE/ZDF.

For decades, the Besós River was an open sewer that crossed the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona. Narcís Prat, professor emeritus of ecology, spent decades observing the pollution and the absence of life in this degraded and walled water channel. But with the construction of sewage treatment plants from the 1990s, the improvement of water quality allowed the return of aquatic invertebrates and the beginning of a community of life. The zoology professor Dolors Vinyoles has since then been monitoring the recovery of fish populations, and especially of a species seriously threatened on a global scale such as the eel. Birds, especially those that feed on fish, have also recovered, such as kingfishers, herons and cormorants. The professional life of the biologist Xavi Larruy has always been linked to the study of the Besós wildlife and the divulgation of the natural values ​​of this area. Xavi has even managed to detect the otter, but this finding cannot hide the still delicate situation of the river, with waters that are far from crystal clear and with episodes of fish mortality due to accidental discharges of substances dangerous. Paco Torres, a retired resident of the area, worked in some of the industries that polluted the river. He now devotes his time to observing and painting the birds of Besós; for him, the transformation has been enormous and decades ago he would never have imagined that he could enjoy the nature of the river every day. But the renaturation of the Besós continues and Tomàs Carrión is working on the creation of a biodiversity refuge in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. Here the objective is to allow the landscape of this reborn river to resemble a little more the natural paradise that it had been centuries ago.

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