Rules Dam – Vélez de Benaudalla

One of my favourite locations in Spain for photography. Within 5 minutes walk you can do nature, landscape, architectural, industrial and even street photography. It’s very easy to access – there’s a car park on the top or you can walk to the top from Vélez de Benaudalla in about an hour.

The structure of the dam itself has a really nice patina which looks fantastic in black and white.

There’s a building on the dry side of the dam that I think is used for inspection or maybe monitoring equipment that has a cool architectural look to it.

Maintenance Area

Maintenance area on the south side of Rules Dam in Vélez De Benaudalla

It really suits having photo editing effects applied like this bleach bypass effect I created in Darktable.

Bleach Bypass Effect

The bleach bypass film processing effect recreated in Darktable

The area around the dam is pretty as well. You can walk from the river valley up to the top of the reservoir fairly easily.

View from the Top of Rules Dam

Rules reservoir, the motorway to Granada and the Sierra Nevada mountains

Rules Dam

The Rules Dam photographed from the path leading to the top

… and of course Vélez de Benaudalla itself is very pretty and worth a visit to take photos. I’ll post more from village in the future.

Oranges and the Sierra Nevada

Some orange trees in Vélez De Benaudalla with the snow capped Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance

I’ve made several visits to the dam as part of different walking routes. I’ll add photos to this post over time as I edit and upload them.

Photos from a visit in March 2025:

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Photos from a visit in January 2026:

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