Puente Grande

Puente Grande is a district in the south of Tonalá municipality, on the eastern edge of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, bounded on the north by the Santiago River. It had 6,050 people at the 2020 census. It is named after the bridge that created it: the San Antonio de Terán bridge, a stone-and-mortar structure over the lowest stretch of the river, which carried the royal road into Guadalajara from central Mexico. Over time the village has been called Congregación Puente de Tololotlán, Puente de Tololotlán and finally Puente Grande.

Before the bridge, people and mule trains crossed the river on horseback or on reed rafts floated with gourds, which was dangerous when the water was high. The project was promoted around 1700 by the president of the Audiencia of Guadalajara, Tomás Terán de los Ríos, and finished in 1717. It is more than 200 varas long and nine wide, resting on 27 piers that form 26 arches. At each end stand three-tiered stone obelisks topped by large statues, among them Saint Francis and Saint Anthony. Beside the bridge the house that served as the tollhouse still stands, with a portico of six arches on round columns and a plaque dated 1718 naming the lawyer Antonio del Real y Quesada. Tolls were collected here on much of the trade heading for Guadalajara, and the armies of Hidalgo and Calleja passed through before and after the Battle of Puente de Calderón.

The village also has an 1893 hydroelectric plant and the parish church of San Antonio de Padua, built between 1918 and 1922. The patron-saint fiesta runs from 5 to 13 June, and the Virgin of Guadalupe is also celebrated in December. For many Mexicans the name Puente Grande mainly recalls the federal prison that operated here from 1993, CEFERESO No. 2 Occidente, from which Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán escaped on 19 January 2001; the federal government closed it on 28 September 2020.