Usina Hidrelétrica de Angiquinho, Historic hydroelectric power station in Delmiro Gouveia, Brazil

Usina Hidrelétrica de Angiquinho is a tan, rectangular powerhouse set on the Alagoas bank of the Paulo Afonso Falls on the São Francisco River, at the foot of a rocky gorge beside dark blue water. Water reached the site through a stone channel above the cliff and dropped by penstock through a rock cleft to the machine room, 30 m above the lower water level. A steel spiral staircase along the vertical wall still leads down to it.

Italian engineer Luigi Borella designed this facility in 1913, making it the first hydroelectric station in northeastern Brazil to generate power for the textile industry. This project demonstrated that European technical expertise could bring large industrial works to remote areas of Brazil.

The site is linked to Delmiro Gouveia, the businessman who opened Brazil's first department store in Recife before building the plant. Local tradition holds that European engineers refused the rope-and-leather lift down to the machine room until Gouveia threatened them with a gun. A legend placing the bandit Lampião in the nearby Furna dos Morcegos is disputed: no trace of his band was found, and the cave has a single entrance.

The machine room sits 30 m above the lower water level, reached today by the original spiral steel staircase bolted along the vertical canyon wall. The site is a few kilometres from Paulo Afonso, on the Alagoas bank of the falls, and a restoration project by CHESF and the Delmiro Gouveia municipality is converting it into a museum of hydropower and Brazilian industrialisation, with views over the falls.

The machine room is built directly inside the canyon wall and reached by an original elevator system made with leather rope construction. This creative solution shows how engineers at the time adapted to the steep terrain in inventive ways.