Chalets, cheap houses and huts

The families who made the building of the dam possible and who lived near to it inhabited three types of housing. Upstream and downstream of the dam, new arrivals-built huts. Upstream, in the area where the water would collect, there were also two groups of houses called cheap houses. And downstream, next to the dam, was the town erected between 1949 and 1953 which consisted of 46 dwellings.

As the photo shows, cheap houses were small  l-shaped dwellings with a flat roof and three espaces. They were semidetached in two rows, with some washbasins, showers and latrines at the end. «There was no running water in the house and no kitchen; we cooked on a coal-fired chimney in the dining-room. I used to do the dishes outside in a clay basin and the washing in a wooden drawer», explains María Fernández (San José del Valle, 1949).

In the highest part, next to the dam but separate from the town, there were two chalet-style houses for the administration and for the chief engineer’s family (see photo) and one for the caretakers of both chalets. Below was the housing for other engineers and surveyors; and a third cluster for the foremen, skilled workers or those with important roles, which had 3 bedrooms, a dining-room, bathroom, kitchen and a patio with a sink for doing the laundry. Many of those interviewed highlight the impact that living in a house with a kitchen and bathroom for the first time had on them.

As people progressed in their working conditions and the trust they received from the foremen, their chances of getting a dwelling in the cheap houses or in the town by the dam improved. Pepita Blanco’s account (Algar, 1934) is a common one: «We lived in a hut. As soon as I was old enough they hired me at the dam and we moved to the cheap houses. A year and a bit later I spoke to the engineer about getting a house in the town. When I got married, the house was no longer mine».