1. Introduction
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defines landscape as “a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place” and culture as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”. In this way, the cultural adjective gives the landscape a human component. That is, the cultural landscape would be the one that has shaped human beings over time.
Since the nineteenth century, agrarian landscapes have been a source of scientific study from geography, but also from art because they have been an origin of inspiration for many artists (Besó Ros, 2004, p. 77). In this sense, it should be noted that vernacular architecture has always been perceived as an immutable object over time, and, therefore, given its timeless character, the perception of it has been mainly defined by the spirit of the era and the artistic or architectural values of the moment (Vicario, 2015, p. 93).
Thus, artistic works from different disciplines have helped to shape cultural landscapes that have been part of the collective imagination of generations. The enhancement of productive landscapes from different points of view has led to the creation of a global awareness about the patrimonial value of these landscapes as a product of continuous human interaction on a certain physical space. Its preservation has become a priority for a good part of society, crystallizing in numerous associations in defense of the territory.
In the study environment of the present work, characterized by the coexistence of two clearly differentiated productive landscapes such as the Horta[1] and the Marjal,[2] the appearance of a type of housing present in different points of the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula is particularly relevant: the barraca. The morphological characteristics of this barraca and their predominance over centuries, have ended up representing in an iconographic way the constant presence of human beings in this territory. However, the process of globalization initiated in the twentieth century, in addition to the Industrial Revolution and specific conditions of the environment of the city of València, have led to the virtual disappearance of this constructive typology, its presence already being scarce in the environment. To this circumstance could be added the fact that the rural architectural heritage continues to be less valued than the urban heritage (Cabrera Fausto et al., 2020, p. 79).
This disappearance in the physical environment, however, has not been reflected at the same level in the cultural landscape and the collective imagination of Valencian society, consequently, this paper aims to analyze the influence of the physical environment in the collective imagination in order to discern that which, over time, ends up perishing or disappearing, from that which, despite the changes, persists in society in an intangible way.
This reflection will start from the presence of the barraca as an iconographic representation of the life forms linked to the territory to analyze how their disappearance has affected the perception of the cultural landscape and whether there is a gap between the physical change of the landscape and the acceptance of this change in the collective imagination of a specific cultural landscape.
1.1. The Horta and the Marjal
The study area of the present work belongs to the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula and the western Mediterranean. Specifically, this area is located in the southernmost foothills of the Sierra Ibérica, near the junction with the Bético territory that is more evident a few kilometers inland. In the geological evolution of the study area, “the strong general subsidence of the area is fundamental, favored by the intense fracturing of the Iberian space” (Pastor, 2003, p. 205). This explains the presence of mountains and valleys or marshlands.
Within the Comunitat Valenciana, the study environment is in a privileged situation given its central position that provides good North-South communication (Jiménez Jiménez et al., 2002, p. 26). In particular, the Albufera, as a distinctive geographical element, constitutes a kind of lagoon connected to the sea by two small canals, about 15 kilometers south of the city of València. Its name refers not only to the lake itself, but also to the lowlands around it that will also be the subject of analysis in the present work. Due to its regional characteristics, it belongs to the area of the Ribera baixa del Xúquer whose estuary occupies the southern part of the València valley (Thede & Guarner, 2011, p. 80).
Although the whole area of the Central Plain of València is formed geomorphologically by a sedimentary grassland, this in turn is subdivided into two important areas whose crops clearly mark a division. On the one hand, we find the Horta area and on the other hand the Marjal area. These are therefore the two landscapes on which the following study focuses.
According to Professors Carmona and Ruiz, the geomorphic features of the lower Valencian coastal plains are similar to those of the rest of the western Mediterranean coast. These are characterized by the grouping of floodplains and lagoons that are independent of the sea through sand barriers (Carmona & Ruiz, 2014, p. 96). Between the Mediterranean Sea and the mountainous formations of the west, the coastal plain of València stretches out. This has been shaped by the accumulation of sediments produced by the erosion of the relief over the last million years, it functions as a basin of detrital accumulation with masses of gravel and mud (Jiménez Jiménez et al., 2002, p. 33).
From an agrarian point of view, these conditions constitute the fundamental basis of the Peninsular economy, which, added to the thermal character of the climate that presents low oscillations throughout the year, allows a great diversity of crops with high productivity (Jiménez Jiménez et al., 2002, p. 80).
Throughout history, the different civilizations that have settled in the study environment, have been able to take advantage of favourable conditions such as the climate, the flat topography, the easily obtained water resources or the fertility of the alluvial soils of the central plain of València for cultivation and, in fact, they constitute the most significant plant element of the territory in which they have been replacing the natural vegetation of the area, characterizing an environment in which, as has been seen, the garden cultivation area is combined with the marshland, in which the cultivation of rice predominates.
1.2. The Valencian barraca
In this described environment a simple structure naturally arises, a product of the means and resources available in the place that Michavila, who wrote the first treatise on the Valencian barraca, details as follows:
“The farmer is left with stone that is rather distant and difficult to carry, he counts on scarce wood, although neither one nor the other are essential to build a comfortable house given the benignity of the climate (…); but instead he relies on very clay-like soil with which less skilled hands can give durable shape to some walls; at hand he has abundant reeds that grow on the margins of the canals, in which also grow enough poplars to build the frame, the skeleton, of the house, and no less far can be found straw, cattail or brushwood with long resistant stems.” (Michavila, 1918, p. 33)
With these materials, the inhabitants of this place, converted into builders of their own homes, develop a simple typology, which is repeated not only along the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula, but also in other places of the world with similar environments and resources. In this case, there is a scarcity of materials that could be interpreted as a problem for the inhabitants, however, in vernacular architecture the scarcity is understood as a socio-material condition, influenced by the relationship between available resources and human needs and desires (Till et al., 2013, cuoted in Ascher, 2013, p. 25). Thus, the scarcity of resources contributes to awakening collective intelligence, which represents one of the values of traditional vernacular architecture.
The architect Miguel del Rey, in his work "Arquitectura rural valenciana. Tipos de casas y su análisis de su arquitectura " (1998), describes the barraca as a construction of a parallelepiped floor with a rectangular proportion built with lateral walls of adobe blocks on which a plant-based cover is raised with a very steep slope, forming a dihedral angle with a very oblique ridge (Del Rey, 1998, p. 151).
It is exactly this inclined roof that offers the barracas a unique image, which emerges from an eminently horizontal landscape and which, after a strong process of idealization has become the symbol of the house in the Valencian landscape.
Throughout the last century, beyond the studies mentioned above, many other works have also been developed in relation to the barracas in the study area, as well as other similar ones throughout the Iberian Peninsula. In this sense, it is worth mentioning the work carried out by Victor Gosálvez, which focuses on the constructive aspects and the disappearance of the type (1915/1998), as well as the work carried out by Max Thede (Thede & Guarner, 2011), which constitutes one of the most detailed works about the Albufera of València and its architecture.
Later on, other works appear such as the developed by Escrivà (1976), García Moya (2015), Lavid Saiz (2017), as well as many others of similar barracas along the east coast of the Peninsula, such as the study on the Ebro barraca developed by Queralt (1992) or from Murcia, such as the one developed by Soldevila Iniesta (2001). These works are extended in the 21st century with works related to the barracas such as that of Campos and Moncusí (2013) among many others.
2. The cultural landscape of the Horta and the Marjal of València
Although the previously used description of cultural landscape implies a modern vision of this concept, the landscape of the Horta of València and the Marjal of the Albufera have been part of the public image of the city of València since much earlier (Díez & Sanchis, 2015, p. 65). In this sense, and specifically with regard to the landscape of the Horta, Andalusian literature and later writers such as Francesc d’Eiximenis, Lluis Vives, Pere Antoni Peuter or Gaspar Escolano already reflected in their work the importance of the large garden adjacent to the Mediterranean city of València (Díez & Sanchis, 2015, p. 65).
In the territory in which this work is focused, as previously mentioned, there exists a duality of a landscape that frequently combines both the Horta and the Marjal of the Albufera. In fact, there are many populations in this environment in which this duality is presented, as is the case of Catarroja, Silla, Sueca, or the city of València itself. It is therefore a diverse environment, in which the boundary between landscapes is blurred and changes over the centuries taking advantage of the economic advantages of the moment.
These two landscapes, however, share many of the elements that characterize them, and in this sense, Professors Marcenac, Bosch Roig, Bosch Reig and Ballester, in the article “Paisaje rural y paisaje urbano, su encuentro a través de las alquerías” (2010) create a description in relation to the landscape of the Horta that may well also serve for the Marjal:
“This landscape is characterized by the vibrant and fragmented horizontal plane generated by the crops (color, texture, shape, …), with small scattered buildings that act as a counterpoint in said landscape, and that acquire greater importance by being accompanied by mainly vertical (…) The woodland is also located on the edge of some ditches or roads, thus reinforcing the territorial structure (…).” (Marcenac et al., 2010, p. 394).
These small, scattered buildings to which the authors refer are farmhouses, irrigation engines and barracas, a typology that appears in both landscapes and therefore serves as a link between them. As will be seen below, it should be understood that, although the barraca does not represent a keynote in the two landscapes at this time, it did become the predominant typology of the environment during the centuries in which the image was built on the cultural landscape of the Horta and the Marjal.
Thus, since this work focuses on the barracas, it is necessary to focus the analysis of the cultural landscape on these elements, that is, around the constructive fact. The architecture of a rural environment like the one this work occupies, as defined by Professor Besó Ros, is the result of the interrelation of three factors: the physical space, the agrarian landscape and the human community, and it is therefore necessary to analyze its impact on heritage from an interdisciplinary vision that encompasses architecture, but also geography and anthropology (Besó Ros, 2004, p. 78).
As for the relationship between architecture and the physical environment, it is worth highlighting the importance of the physical environment in relation to vernacular construction, since it is this medium that determines the materials used in the construction of the place, on the basis of a pre-industrial premise based on self-consumption. In addition to this material link with the physical environment, there is also the influence that climate conditions exert on architecture, which not only determine the constructive and formal aspects of buildings, but also, for example, the dispersion of the same or the appearance to a greater or lesser extent of shelters in the rural environment.
The relationship between architecture and the agrarian landscape is also evidenced by its relationship with the different agricultural activities and the different uses of the land. In this way, the different crops in each territory can condition the room of the house in case of needing spaces for its management, storage and transformation, as well as the presence of more or less equipment for community use, such as warehouses, stables, etc.
Regarding the relationship between the architecture and the users who inhabit it, this becomes more relevant, if possible, in a rural environment, given that in this environment it is more often the users themselves who build their homes and with it, they are inevitably conditioned, and the future inhabitant becomes the core idea on which the home is inspired.
The vernacular architecture, and in particular the barraca, therefore represents a reflection of the forms of life, but also of the territory it occupies, becoming in some way an ouroboros which at the same time that it forms the cultural landscape, is the result of the conditions that generate it. Next, we will analyze the importance of the barraca in the image of the cultural landscape that still persists in Valencian society in relation to the study environment.
2.1. The barraca in the cultural landscape of the Horta and the Marjal
The cultural image of the study environment, both of the Albufera and of the Horta, began to be forged in the period of the Reinaixença (late nineteenth century), a cultural and literary movement of the Catalan-speaking territories with a clear desire to restore the importance that this language had had centuries ago in universal literature with works such as Tirant lo Blanch by Joanot Martorell (1490).
This time they were already working on a modern vision of the landscape reinforced by a wide representation in art, from literature to painting. In this sense, it was probably Teodor Llorente who put the starting point in the literary construction of this cultural image in some of his works such as La barraca or Valencia, being complemented at the same time by a pictorial image resulting from the hands of painters such as Peris Brell or Ricardo Verde (Díez & Sanchis, 2015, p. 65).
All these artists contributed to the creation of festive stereotypes, excessively chromatic, which often contrasted excessively with a reality that was more faithfully reflected by authors such as the aforementioned Blasco Ibáñez or the writer Antonio Fillol, whose naturalism contributed greatly to a more real approach to life in this environment.
The cultural image of the environment of the Horta and the Marjal is highlighted by the appearance of a series of common elements in the literary or pictorial descriptions of this landscape, especially in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, one of the keys in many of these representations is the intense human presence. In contrast to the image of many other European agricultural landscapes, the Valencian rural image is crowded with inhabitants. This contributes to the fact that the portrayed scenes are frequently located in the entrances of the barracas, or farmsteads, and only rarely can you contemplate a panoramic view of the environment.
This condition highlights, on the one hand, the importance of the human presence in the construction of this productive landscape and, on the other hand, the importance of vernacular architecture in the cultural perception of this landscape. Thus, among the different constructive typologies of the environment, in the artistic representation from the Renaixença stands out the barraca, as an icon of the Horta and the Marjal of the Albufera, explained in large part by its predominant presence in these years and by the constructive uniqueness in the presence of other typologies such as the farmhouses.
In this sense, it would be worth pointing out the theories of Alois Riegl on the Kuntswollen who relates the formal affinities within the same period in all cultural manifestations with that “will of art”. That is, art is understood as a reflection of the sentimental projection or Einfühlung of society itself and its worldview (Cagnolati & Segovia, 2021, p. 64). This could help to understand the reason why this architectural typology is so present in certain artistic movements and in certain historical periods.
The relationship between the cultural landscape and the vernacular architecture that represents the Valencian barraca is therefore evident. On the one hand, the barracas are a reflection of the landscape itself, its resources, its people and the uses of the land, as shown by Professor Besó Ros (2004, p. 78), and on the other, their presence throughout history has unequivocally contributed to the linking of landscape and barraca in the collective imagination, proof of this being the different representations of this typology in literature or in paintings, thus contributing to the creation of a cultural landscape that was reinforced especially since the end of the nineteenth century.
3. That which perishes. Changes in the landscape of the environment of València
In relation to the city of València and its metropolitan area as the main population nucleus of the study environment, it is worth highlighting the transformation experienced by it during the last years of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. The city, and the majority of nearby towns, have considerably increased their urbanized area, based on a model of residential expansion of private development, while a multitude of projects have been launched by the public administration.
This growth model has its origins in the second half of the twentieth century, when there was a significant growth of business urbanism which addressed and speculated on the uses of space (Campos & Moncusí, 2013, p. 369), however, this model was modified at the beginning of the twenty-first century with an urban planning model that seeks the creation of competitive and global creative cities, in which large events, promotional campaigns and emblematic architectural projects become a central concept of municipal policies.
This evolution in the growth models of cities can also summarize what was experienced by the city of Valencia, and to a lesser extent, that of a multitude of populations in its metropolitan area. This growth, in the case of the capital, has been influenced by three geographical features that give València its own character: the Horta that surrounds the city, the ancient Turia riverbed that crosses the city and the sea as its eastern limit. In relation to the Horta and, to a lesser extent, given its separation, the Marjal, it continues to dispute the use of land to residential areas, and thus the city has gained ground from the Horta for the construction of other public facilities such as the Activity Logistics Zone (ALZ) of the port, a water treatment plant, Merca Valencia or part of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences). These actions have not been free from controversy and over the years different neighborhood associations have been created that have ensured the protection of these productive landscapes, such as Salvem and its different specific movements for each area of the territory or the city (Campos & Moncusí, 2013, p. 372).
Actions such as those mentioned above, and in particular the creation of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències as the maximum exponent of the urban transformation of Valencia, have helped to shape a modern city in which these buildings coexist both with historical buildings in the city center, as with the Horta in its peripheral part, creating a city of physical contrasts that do not cease to be a reflection of other social contrasts such as the open economic gap between the most humble neighborhoods of the city.
These urban changes that have affected the landscape of the study environment, add to other processes started in the early twentieth century and that have ended up eliminating virtually all remnants of the barraca in the Horta and the Albufera.
The improvement of the standard of living of the study regions during the first decades of the twentieth century are one of the causes that explain the replacement of this typology (Casas Torres, 1944), together with the formal limitations of the barraca, which made it difficult to evolve and adapt to the sociological changes of the moment. To all these circumstances is added the prohibition to build and repair the barraca derived from the different fires that affected population centers formed by the grouping of barracas during the nineteenth century (Del Rey, 1998, p. 168).
The humble origin that has been studied of these constructions, on the other hand, also contrasted with the improvement in the interiors of the barracas in which its inhabitants were expressing the improvement of their economic conditions (Gosálvez Gómez, 1915/1998, p. 80), also explained in part by the transfer of a large part of the labor force from the field to the industry, producing the abandonment of an architecture so intimately linked to the primary sector.
4. That which persists. The Valencian barraca in the collective imaginary
As we have seen, the city of Valencia and its surroundings, which largely covers the area of study of this work, have undergone fundamental changes in the image of the landscape in recent decades. The territory is a dynamic reality, and the interaction between the human being and the environment is progressively alternating the physical forms of the landscape; however, these physical changes, which in recent decades have occurred in short spaces of time, have not meant a change in a mental sense, that is, in the cultural image of the space (Díez & Sanchis, 2015, p. 64).
This idea, and its impact on the perception of the collective landscape of the Horta, is reflected in the article Territorio e imagen. La percepción del paisaje de la Huerta de Valencia (Torrijos & Ibor, 2015) written by professors Díez Torrijos and Sanchis Ibor. In it, they collect the drawings made by different groups of students between 5 and 12 years after visiting the environment of the Horta. At the request to represent this landscape, the students mainly embrace the preconceived idea of it, and so, in their drawings appear a multitude of barracas, although nowadays their presence is already residual, eliminating at the same time all those elements that do not correspond to the collective icon.
This experience places special importance on two key ideas to understand the importance of the barraca in the cultural perception of the landscape, as well as in its preservation and recovery. On the one hand, in the drawings, the presence of these structures compared to other majority structures today such as farmhouses, evidences the symbolic load of the barraca in the collective imaginary, its iconicity prevails compared to the lack of specimens that have survived the twentieth century. On the other hand, the persistence of this symbol in the imagination of children aged 5 to 12, who have not been influenced by memories in which the barraca had a greater presence in the Horta and the Marjal, reveals the idea that changes in the landscape and in the cultural perception of it are often not simultaneous, but that years must pass until this perception changes.
5. Conclusions
Throughout this paper one of the representative elements of the productive landscapes of the Horta and the Marjal de València has been analyzed in detail as well as how this element has become a constant in the mental representation of these landscapes.
Not only the history and the constant presence of the barracas in the territory over generations have contributed to this task, but also the presence of the same in different artistic disciplines, which have managed to shape the collective imagination, especially since the last decades of the nineteenth century. This artistic effort is, possibly, what has allowed the Valencian barraca to become an icon of this territory that persists despite its practical disappearance throughout the twentieth century.
In recent decades, the different institutions with power over the territory, mainly the municipalities and the autonomous government, have put in place different instruments of planning and management of the territory aimed at recovering this landscape, which was damaged especially during the second half of the twentieth century. In addition to these initiatives promoted by the public authorities, different institutions have been added such as the Universitat Politècnica de València, which has launched programs such as “Amb les mans”, an Innovation and Educational Improvement project focused on the recovery and enhancement of the built heritage of these landscapes. To this effort has also been added the work of many researchers who are contributing to the study and preservation of the barraca as a representation of the ways of life of the historical inhabitants of València, as well as of the way of understanding and exploiting the territory in a more sustainable way (Rosaleny Gamón, 2021, p. 126).
Thus, we could reflect on the urgency for the recovery of the barraca before their disappearance ends up affecting the collective imagination regarding the landscape, not only because of the patrimonial value that this type of vernacular architecture represents, but, above all, because, as has been seen, the barraca itself represents and synthesizes better than any other element the landscape values of the study environment.
It is not easy to find a word to translate “Horta” into English. The term “Orchard” could be quite adjusted, however, the symbolic load of the term in Catalan is relegated in the translation. The term “Horta” not only describes an agricultural landscape but is also its toponym, for this reason, in addition to the above, it has been decided to keep the name in the language of the study environment.
The “Marjal”, or Marsh, is the name given to the surroundings of the Albufera lake, characterized by rice plantations, ditches and specific constructions linked to cultivation and irrigation.