The history hidden in the landscape

The accounts of the inhabitants of Los Hurones depict a community of workers who lived for and thanks to their work. Luis Prieto (Belmonte, Cuenca, 1936), a car mechanic at the dam from 1950 onwards retired at the Contreras dam (Cuenca): «I worked for 46 years. I started as an apprentice and ended up as workshop manager. We mechanics were all contracted, and they treated us fairly well, given the circumstances. But you had to comply. Me and everyone looked on the company as if it were ours».

The organisation of the town reproduced the class and gender structures which prevailed in society at the time. María Fernández (San José del Valle, 1949) lived her childhood in Los Hurones, where her father worked as a painter:

«The engineers’ houses were out of bounds for us. They were like a mystery. Just above the school lay the secret: from the window we could see weeping willows and a well-kept garden. I used to call it the rich. They had maids who wore a uniform. I could see that the well-dressed man in a jacket carrying a set of plans under his arm was one of the people in command. The others wore overalls, dirty from work…».

The company only hired people directly connected with the building work or the upkeep of the town. Many jobs were done without a contract. For instance, sewing and washing the clothes of the technicians and builders, cooking, cleaning and doing the housework in the houses of the skilled staff. Low pay forced to bring children into the workforce and to boost incomes doing double shifts or gathering products from the land, hunting and fishing. The photo shows a modest town in a mountainous area surrounded by leafy forests of gall and holm oaks —a peaceful image with a hard history.