Learning from the past. The loss of vernacular heritage in the interest of hydropower development in Spain

Abstract

The fact that water stored in reservoirs may be used for diverse purposes - hydroelectricity, irrigation or industrial use, human consumption, recreation, etc. - explains the widely spread policy of building these structures all over the world during the 20th century. However, dams and reservoirs building policies at those times in Spain led to the disappearance of many villages in rural regions due to the flooding of large areas and, as a result, the loss of vernacular architecture and local traditions was unavoidable.In this research, it is aimed to analyse the building of Ricobayo reservoir by the company Saltos del Duero together with its consequences for the affected communities and their heritage through the case of a particular village: La Pueblica, located in the province of Zamora in Castile and León, Spain. Disregarding the relevance of vernacular architecture, the devastation of La Pueblica, which allegedly existed ‘unaffected over time’, isolated from modern times and whose homes were ‘unhygienic and meagre’, was registered in the documentary called Por Tierras de España (1933) carried out by Fernando López Heptener, who worked for the company and oversaw expropriations of lands and housing in areas to be flooded. Due to the subsequent interest in spreading the film, it is possible for us to recover nowadays the lost image of La Pueblica, the vernacular architecture within as well as the traditions which were carried out in those spaces.If the future of dams is linked to sustainable energy resources and developing countries as thought nowadays, previous positive – but also negative – experiences must be considered, since, despite all the prior benefits linked to water utilisation, building these engineering structures undoubtedly implies a direct social effect on the communities and heritage elements connected to them, which could be decisive to manage our cultural heritage nowadays.