A workers' town in the Sierra de Cádiz (Spain): the memory thread
The building of Los Hurones dam (Cádiz, Spain) between 1947 and 1965 initially aimed to cover the water needs of the naval base and other military installations in the city and bay of Cádiz, and later to provide for the civilian population. The chosen spot, in the middle reach of the river Majaceite, was located among mountain ranches of Mediterranean forest, well off the beaten track and far from the surrounding population centres (Algar, San José del Valle and Ubrique).
The first projects date back to 1921; by 1939 there was already a geological map of the basin, specific topographical work started in 1947 and in 1949 a service road was opened to the area allowing access to machinery and delivery of materials. In 1965 Los Hurones dam began to collect water. During the building of the dam a workers’ community of different origins, cultures and languages grew. In the space of ten/twenty years most families had to find a new place to live and work.
Nearly all the families of workers complemented their meagre salaries and services making use of the natural resources and helping each others. The town and services provided by the contracted company for the dam were an important support just for some of the families of workers, and only temporarily. In fact, the building of the dam relied on independent and traditional ways of life.
With the coming renovation of Los Hurones town as a tourist site, the Junta de Andalucía decided to gather the history of its inhabitants from archive and oral sources and make it available. Treveris publishing company, in charge of the project implemented in 2022, set out to identify the keys to the work and daily life of this workers’ community which grew around the building of the dam. This exhibition shows some parts of the afore-mentioned study through pictures and the voices of those interviewed.
Further reading
Díaz Martínez B. and Sígler Silvera F. 2023. Historia y vivencias del Poblado de Los Hurones. Cádiz, Tréveris, Junta de Andalucía. ISBN: 978-84-125022-9-9. En prensa.
Methodological focus and meeting
Beatriz Díaz Martínez graduated in Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and specialises in Environmental Biology. She works as a freelance writer and researcher. She has wide experience in researching Oral Memory through interactive group workshops and in-depth life stories, specialising in daily life and survival mechanisms.
Among her works we highlight: the audiovisual archive of life stories in the Basque Country Herri Memoria (2014-2016), carried out with Elkasko Association for Historical Research and funded by the Basque Government; her independent research Vida cotidiana en las chozas y en las chabolas (Daily life in huts and shucks, 2013-2018) and Enseñanza no formal en el siglo XX (Non-formal education in the 20th century) (2012-2023), both in Tarifa (Cádiz); and her work on oral memory with Editorial Tréveris on the worker’s town of Los Hurones reservoir in Sierra de Cádiz (2022-2023). Her latest books are Las manos siempre mojadas (Hands always wet) and Juntar las letras. La Alfabetización en el campo; del afán de saber a la autogestión (Link de letters together. Literacy in the countryside: from the desire for knowledge to self-management).
On the Virtual Museum of Human Ecology you can find the following by Beatriz Díaz: Walls of stone and roof of bulrushes, Urbanisation Ecology and Stone oven: nutritional autonomy and communal living, the works of the month Women as guarantors of life in shacks in La Línea, Cádiz, and Cristóbal and palm, and the temporary exhibition Gibraltar and La Línea: a cross-border community in oral memory.