The bridge over the Arga River

The bridge of Ororbia is a construction of ashlar and masonry that reaches a length of about 70 meters. It is made up of five arches of unequal span, since the two closest to the village have notably larger dimensions. The pillars are strengthened by triangular cutwaters that cut the water and diminish its thrust, the two at the ends with a capping cap.

The time of construction is unknown, although it could point to the Renaissance due to the employment of semicircular arches and the horizontal profile , as opposed to the steep slopes characteristic of medieval works. The bridge is already mentioned in the first known ordinances of 1543. According to the documentation, it was part of the communication route that linked Valdizarbe and Navarra average with Guipúzcoa, for the wine trade, and with the Andía mountain range, for transhumance. The prosperity generated in the past by the traffic of travelers and merchandise is manifested in the main devotions of the town, St. Julian and St. Christopher, whose legends are precisely about the passage of a river.

The uneven appearance of the bridge is the result of the successive ruins and reconstructions it has undergone throughout history. On the one hand, those caused by the floods of the Arga, such as that of October 7, 1787, when two arches collapsed and a third was badly damaged. This flood caused six deaths in Ororbia. On the other hand, those caused by the wars, since it was blown up during the Carlist wars. Despite the vicissitudes, the bridge remained in relatively good condition until the last decade of the 20th century, when it was decided to widen and reinforce it to speed up the intense traffic it was carrying. The harmony and beauty of the old bridge has been altered with an unfortunate intervention consisting of the superimposition of a wide platform for the roadway, all this despite the fact that a few years earlier the Inventory of Bridges of Navarre had valued the Ororbia Bridge as being of "high" heritage interest.