The workers’ town, an axis of the industrial paternalism

Workers’ towns were one axis of industrial paternalism from the mid-19th century, with the company looking for financial profitability. They were built near the workplace (whether building sites, factories or mines), with different housing depending on the status of workers and had a church and some basic services like shops, schooling, health and leisure centres.

Portolés y Compañía S.A., the company who won the tender to build Los Hurones dam, had contracts for different works in Spain (dams, roads, tunnels…). It built a town at each construction site for the site bosses and skilled workers, while moving machinery and workers from site to site as required. Likewise, it created football teams, instituted the Virgen del Pilar as the patron saint of the town and organised fiestas including bullfights.

People with more training and responsibilities in the building work were also more qualified to decide and manage life in the community. In Los Hurones town, the engineer Vicente Aycart Benzo not only supervised the work but also made decisions about everyday life. This guaranteed minimum social and work conflict, something important in an isolated and mountainous region where survival tactics such as bootlegging and smuggling (between the colony of Gibraltar and the cities of Cádiz and Seville) where anti-Franco guerrillas persisted.