Subsistence agriculture: the importance of family groups (Spain)

The image shows a typical scene which illustrates —with a clearly romantic idyll — the reality of the family economy based around cereals and livestock typical of Castillian peasants. The group carry huge trunks in their cart and have stopped to celebrate along the way. They are wearing esparto espadrilles, dance to the beat of the drum and are surrounded by domestic animals and fowl.

Women and men work together harvesting, threshing and carrying out other agricultural activities, as it happens today in many African, Asian and Latin American countries, where the work done by women is often defined as “family help”. In Spain, this situation persisted practically until the first decade of the 21st century, when important legal changes were made on the ownership of the land.