Different huts built with local materials

The families who lived around Los Hurones dam came from different rural areas: the Atlantic coast of Galicia, the Extremadura meadows, the Castilian plateau… They had different traditions and experiences of self-building, which will be reflected in their dwellings and in the habits of their new settlement.

They used local materials, either natural ones or those taken from the building site itself. The surface area of the hut was limited by its location, the size of the supports and the stability of the building. Some quarrymen built huts with carved stone, using their professional knowhow. Pepe Benítez (Algar, 1946)’s father built his hut with adobe and paper: «For the wall bricks my father made a wooden mold and we mixed mud with straw from the mule stables. He managed to find some empty paper sacks, because cement then came in paper sacks, and he placed them tied together on the roof. Like tiles, that’ll stop the rain!».

When they started working at the reservoir, Teresa Ordóñez (El Bosque, 1935) and her family lived in El Rodadero ranch in a circular hut:

«The walls and roof were made of broom, and the beam and eaves of wood. Inside the hut my mother mixed some yellow mud which she gathered and spread where we lit the fire so that nothing got burnt. We sprinkled lots of water on the earthen floor and as it dried we would press it down so that it hardened. On the left of the hut were three beds and the fireplace to the right».

The hut on the photograph, where Carmelo Cantillo (Santa María de Nava, Badajoz, 1938) and his family lived, had stone walls covered with mud and straw, the structure was made of laurel branches and the roof of broom leaves stitched together with palm twine. There were cowpats on the floor: «We would spread them on the floor like clay, and when it dried it was easy to wash. It was a very cool floor, better than parquet flooring!».