Buildings
In 1950, Ávila had 2500 buildings, 1930
of those constructions were built before 1900.
According to the graph, a great growth of the urban area was experienced
before the war; the greatest dip corresponds with the period of war. The
houses that had been destroyed during the conflict were rebuilt rapidly
because, if the houses couldn’t be repaired by their owners, they
were either taken by the government or demolished. From those difficult
years to the 1950s the number of houses raised slowly, then a new urban
explosion began. Rural migration was the main cause of the increase. At
those times the wealthiest families lived in the centre of the town in
old palaces near the walls while new houses made up of brick where built
for the middle classes who settled around.
“Two bedrooms, the farmyard and the kitchen, this was our house”
“We
didn’t have a bathroom, we didn’t have running water, hygiene
was unknown to us”
We asked our grandparents to describe the houses where they lived. The next graphs shows the results of our enquiry .In general, the houses were detached buildings made up of stone or “adobe”, mud brick. A 94,10 % of our grandparents’ houses had either one or two floors, while a few percentage had more than two.
There was not sewerage system, some of the dirty
water was thrown either to ditches or canals in the streets, some houses
had cesspools. Instead of tarmac there was cobbled streets.
According the building census of Avila city in 1950, there were 3,770
out of 4,410 houses with running water, only 3,880 had loo or septic tank,
and the amount of houses that had a bath and a heating system was really
low, 290. These figures went down sharply as we moved to rural areas.
During the1950’s houses usually had a vegetable garden where people cultivated part of their food. Privileged people had an ornamental garden for aesthetic and recreational purposes. People who lived in villages sometimes had a farmyard, where people had some small farm animals as hens, rabbits or even pigs. People sometimes left their rubbish in the farmyards, they were also used to defecate so that the animals fed on the waste. That produced hygiene problems, and a putrid smell.
Domestic Appliances
“We didn’t have either electricity nor a washing machine, so we washed all the clothes in the river, our hands became chapped and red because of the cold water”
Rural electrification of the province started in 1955 and a great
amount of hamlets and little villages were provided with electricity around
1957. Besides, as electricity was produced in small hydroelectric stations,
power cuts were very frequent, then they lit candles and set them in saucers.
40% of our grandparents didn’t have electricity. The radio was a
very popular domestic appliance and light bulbs were current too.
"We didn’t have television or radio, so we went to the kitchen, the warmest place of the whole house. We sat down around grandmother Maria, and she told us legends, war stories, and stories about life before the war, the happy life with grandpa Gregorio. Those were the happiest moments of my childhood, the only moments when I wasn’t thinking about how hungry I was”
As they didn’t have fridges one of their main concerns was how to preserve food. There were different system as frying meat in hot oil and introducing them into“tinajas” (large earthen jar) covered with oil. Food could also be salted and dryed for a long time. A very known Spanish food is the salt dry ham, a preservation process in which the meat is salted and cured for months; another common trick of our grandmothers was, the Spanish “escabeche”, today still in use.
Onion
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“Pescado en escabeche” Procedure 1.Firstly, fry the
fish |