Working conditions

In Algar, where most workers lived while the town was under construction, there was no running water until 1975; people used cisterns to collect rainwater. During the night a company lorry collected water from a spring and shared it out among the worker families in Algar. On site they handed out búcaros (local name for pitchers) of water which came from a nearby spring. Over time, a deposit was built where river water was filtered using sand.

Time passed before the workshops were connected to the electricity line from Puerto Galiz, 20 kilometers away up the mountain. And the first lorries used on the site were small HGVs, designed more for war than for building.

There were no spare parts, so the workers had to make them in record time as the machinery was to be used the following day. As cement was scarce, they started making it on site. The main source of limestone was El Cabezo quarry. Manuel Contreras (Arcos de la Frontera, 1938), a welder, recalls: «The crusher would break the stones from the quarry and had large cogs on a slanted axis, and the sprockets were very thick and wore away easily. Repairs depended on your own ability, your willingness to learn, your imagination. How can I weld it so that it doesn´t break first time?».