Doña Barraca – El Palacete – Cuevas de Almanzora

When silver deposits were discovered in the mountains surrounding Cuevas del Almanzora, a boom began that attracted engineers, businessmen, and above all workers.

The population doubled and then quadrupled. Something had to be done with all of these people.

Mining towns were set up to house the workers in gigantic barracks, the first steam engine in Spain was built for the extraction of ore, loading docks were set up on the coast, ports, and railway lines too, but mainly it was excavated. Each mine went about its business, although they all faced the same problems: basically the seawater that flooded the wells, the toxic fumes from the smelter, and the management of so many personnel, their food, and their needs. At one point there came a time when some 10,000 people worked underground, almost the current population of the entire demarcation of Cuevas del Almanzora.

Doña Barraca was a humble woman, from a large family, but one of the old ones, with 16 siblings.

So almost since she was a child she was used to organizing, sharing and managing adults and children.

So it was without intention, she ended up being the General of the mining town of El Arteal.

Every day hundreds and hundreds of people descended through tunnels hundreds of meters deep and barely two meters in diameter. They had to be put in, they had to be taken out, they had to be fed, they had to rest, and they had to last long enough, because nobody wanted to take the dead, literally speaking. There were ten thousand people playing daily at being ants inside a huge Gruyère cheese. This was the panorama of this town back in the 19th century.

Doña Barraca understood that this was not a way of living, nor of treating people, and that it was unsustainable.

The various mines competed fiercely instead of coming together to solve their common problems.

People were replaced as easily as spare parts for machinery.

Fed up, she left and settled on the beach, where no one wanted to live. She set up a big house, just the way she liked it, so that she could receive visitors, so that they could stay and share and laugh.

Who would have known then that years later this area would be a mecca for select tourism?