You don't need to have seen the series The Wire to admire what was once Baltimore's Key Bridge, the same one that collapsed when a gigantic container ship crashed into one of its pillars.
Bridges, after all, operate as symbols and monuments of civilization. You already know that the Roman emperors were great bridge builders: supreme pontiffs, a title inherited by the papacy.
In short, you read things and over the years you know things, even though there are many more things you don't know. And when I saw the images of the collapse of the Baltimore bridge on my television I said to myself: but how come they didn't have the pillars protected with a few Dukes of Alba?
Given the possible confusion of the reader, let me explain: a Duke of Alba is also a maritime work, which serves both to moor boats and to protect structures such as, for example, the pillars of a bridge. In their most traditional version they are a pile foundation with a slab on top. And the name comes, curiously, from the Netherlands, when they were part of the Spanish empire.
There are several theories as to why this piece of modest naval engineering is called a Duke of Alba. The kindest one argues that, since the pillars were black or tarred and the head was white, its design was reminiscent of Spanish clothing: in rigorous black but with a white ruff. Another version, less pious, claims that the sailors subject to the Duke of Alba, governor of their lands and seas, put the noose on the Spanish invention and dreamed that they were hanging the Duke of Alba himself (the aristocrat, not the maritime work).
In any case, I remember my first trip to the US and how it seemed to me that everything was better and bigger than in Spain. But nowadays Spanish infrastructures are, in general, much better than American ones, excuse me. And we have dukes of Alba!
