WHEN INFRASTRUCTURE HAS TO BEAR UP UNDER MORE POLITICAL PRESSURE THAN PHYSICAL STRESS. by Patricia Alcorta The engineer responsible for this bridge over the Agueda River —next to Ciudad Rodrigo near Spain’s border with Portugal— attended the inaugu-ration with his two small children. Years later, one of them would tell of how when the first train crossed over it, he saw his father making the sign of the cross. It wasn’t that José Entrecanales doubted the soundness of his con-struction. It was that traffic had been cut off for months following the col-lapse of the old structure, and the government had been bringing pressure to bear on the company Entrecanales y Távora. Both parties, the govern-ment and the company, were in turn under pressure from some European countries because the railway line provided a direct connection between France and Portugal. They came through: the new infrastructure was ready in just 13 weeks, and to achieve that record —quite a feat even today, but unprec-edented at the time— the newly married site manager even had to post-pone his honeymoon. It was one of over fifty railway bridges built by the company between 1940 and 1948 for projects won in open competitions not only to recon-struct bridges destroyed in the war but also to build concrete structures and deep foundations —house specialties— to replace old metal bridges that couldn’t bear the weight of a new generation of much heavier trains.