[EN] Cows on the Ebro and a historic tram: the animated video that recalls the Zaragoza of 100 years ago

Imagining for a moment crossing the Stone Bridge and finding a herd of cows next to the Ebro, with the Pilar in the background, is almost impossible. Or walk along cobblestone streets while a tram advances between horse-drawn carriages. A century ago, these scenes were part of the daily life of Zaragoza and now they move again in front of the eyes thanks to a curious video published on social networks. Archive photographs are no longer static and, with the help of artificial intelligence, recover for a few moments the movement of that city.

The video, published on Instagram by the content creator @dronix_pro, travels to different corners of that Zaragoza. Around the Central Market appear men and women dressed in period costumes, women with their wicker baskets to do the shopping. You can also see a much busier Ebro, with a small boat waiting for passengers on a jetty, while in the streets carriages and trams share space.

A ZARAGOZA FROZEN IN TIME

There are scenes that are especially surprising because of the distance from the current city. One of them shows several Zaragoza residents bathing in the Ebro, while others recover old shops such as Casa Sarto and walk along the Paseo de la Independencia. They are places that continue to be part of the landscape of the Aragonese capital, although practically everything else has changed around them.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dcc7hMjs91W/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

This is not the first time that this creator has used artificial intelligence to travel to the past. Before focusing on Zaragoza, he had already made similar recreations of Dénia, Elche, Benidorm, Alicante, Altea and Murcia. In all cases, he starts from real historical photographs to reconstruct small fragments of what those cities were like.

And perhaps that is the attraction of this journey of just a few seconds: to recognize a Zaragoza that is familiar and strange at the same time. El Pilar is still there, as are the Ebro, the Central Market or Independencia, but the cows, carriages, trams and bathers remind us that 100 years ago the city had a different rhythm and another way of experiencing its same places.