Traditional houses

These two houses offer a good example of the traditional popular rural architecture of the comarca.

The organisation of the spaces within the house is closely linked to farm work, since family, home and labour form an indissoluble whole. The dwelling is not only the family's place of shelter, but also the storage space and the setting for activities related to agricultural produce intended for sale or self-sufficiency, as the family produced a large part of what it consumed.

The home of a smallholder farming family typically had: in the basement, the "bodega"; on the ground floor, an entrance hall for storing tools, a pantry for preserves and, at the back, the mule's stable, the pig sty and a loft for the hayloft; on the first floor, used as living quarters, they had the living room, the hearth, the sink, the bread-kneading trough and the bedrooms; and on the second floor, "lo perxi" (an open space for drying fruit), the henhouse… The furniture and household utensils were entirely functional, with few decorative objects.

For construction, materials available locally were used: wood, stone, tiles, clay bricks, lime, plaster…

With the arrival of the tractor and the mechanisation of agriculture, houses require more space and many farmers will build their homes on new plots on the outskirts of the village. Social change will also lead to an expansion of the spaces devoted to family life.