San Carlos (Sant Carles de Peralta), Ibiza (Spain)
Sep 2005
Map data from OpenStreetMap
Update July 2012: GSV came
through this area, and all the stuff pictured here looks entirely
unchanged 7 years on, very good news.
Update October 2017: A September 2016 GSV visit (the only one since 2012) shows that the Carandini mercs on the main road have been replaced with MH or possibly LED fixtures, the other post top stuff on this page seems intact.
Update Jul 2024: Sep 2022 GSV shows all here largely unchanged.
This is a tiny village in the northeast of the island, very
picturesque...It's 5km from Santa Eularia and consists of a crossroads,
a church, and a few fincas in the hills round it. The odd thing is that
a large part of the centre of the village has been replaced with a new
retail development of shops, offices and living accomodation above.
It's hard to say when this was done, but I would say it's not more than
a couple of years old, some of the shop units are as yet unoccupied.
Update October 2017: A September 2016 GSV visit (the only one since 2012) shows that the Carandini mercs on the main road have been replaced with MH or possibly LED fixtures, the other post top stuff on this page seems intact.
Update Jul 2024: Sep 2022 GSV shows all here largely unchanged.
SurvivingChecked on "as of" date (either in person or via latest GSV available), so can be assumed to be surviving at least as far as that date
as of Sep 2022
This is the middle of the development, Passatge de les Oliveres. The pictures above were taken at dusk, and the colour temperature of the post top fixtures is about right- they had just come on (individually switched). When I first saw this, I thought they might be incandescent, but 5 minutes later the colour was mercury. Even at the time of writing (2005), a new install self ballasted mercury installation was very unusual.
I found one of them with a broken lamp. In the closeup pic, you can see the ballast filament support next to the top of the arc tube, confirming a self ballasted mercury lamp.
All in all, I counted about 20 of these post tops around this new
development- as you can see from the pics above there are a couple of
different variations. They are all open at the bottom, some have
plastic grilles covering each lower segment, some don't. Also some have
clear side panels, some obscured- an interesting installation feature
was that the ones facing the road (right hand pic above) had one clear
panel on the street side, all the others being obscured. The
manufacturer's name was moulded into these panels- ATP.
ATP stands for ALUMBRADO TÉCNICO PÚBLICO (S.A.), based out of Navarra in Spain.
Despite the rudimentary optics, the light distribution wasn't all that bad, and the style of them suited the surroundings quite well.
SurvivingChecked on "as of" date (either in person or via latest GSV available), so can be assumed to be surviving at least as far as that date
as of Sep 2022
There was also another sort of post top fixture there, these were located around the square and church.
I just caught one as it warmed up. These are tubular MH, with the lamps mounted vertically base up like the SB mercs. The fixtures are different, they're a tapered cylinder in 4 sections, but still open bottom.
RemovedChecked on "as of" date (either in person or via latest GSV available), removal happened as late as that date or before
as of Sep 2016
On the main road just outside the village, another welcome sight- a run of mercury lights on poles with upsweep arms.
There are about 8 or 10 of them in all, and quite rare- most of the mercury I saw elsewhere on the island was either ornamental like the post tops above- not roadway lighting like this. Indeed this was the only run of mercury roadway lighting I saw. There are the odd one or two merc. roadway fixtures dotted around the island, but they are few and far between.
This stretch of road is called Carrer de la Vénda de Peralta.
I had 2 goes at photographing this scene- this 2 second 'night' exposure really shows the light on the road well.
I had 2 goes at photographing this scene- this 2 second 'night' exposure really shows the light on the road well.
They are 250W elliptical coated, and not too well sealed, as you can see from the flies in the lens in the left hand pic...I was trying to get a good shot of the maker's name of these drop lens fixtures- Sander Sloots thinks it might be Carandini- this fixture certainly looks like one on their website.
