The quest for a traditional style: architecture and heritage processes in a Pyrenean valley

Abstract

In this article, I focus on the construction and restoration of houses in the Catalan Pyrenees, on their materiality, and specifically on the relationship between architectural and heritage processes that shapes them. I provide an analysis of how architectural forms, norms and regulations, as well as building aesthetics and materials, were transformed in the past decades following a parallel process of changes in the region. The aim is to explore the relationship between the built environment and the cultural and economic shift of the area in recent times. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted in a valley of the Catalan Pyrenees, I show how the material culture, architecture and built environment evolved in close relationship to the spread of heritage discourses leading to a mutually constituting association that helped shape the elements of the new social realities.

Keywords:

• Heritage
• architecture
• built environment
• Pyrenees
• ethnography

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful and careful comments that help me improve the manuscript. This study was carried out as part of a project entitled: ‘El patrimonio cultural y natural en tiempos de crisis. Retos, adaptaciones y estrategias en contextos locales’, which was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the FEDER Program. CSO2015-68611-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE).

Notes

1. Source : IDESCAT (Institut d’estadística de Catalunya).

2. Field work in the district went on for 14 months (in three separate periods between 2005 and 2008) and several short stays of approximately 10 days. A second research effort was conducted between 2009–2011 and comprised several short stays. I conducted frequent informal interviews and conversations with more than 160 informants and one-time interviews with another 105 people.

3. Before the 1980s, there was no element of the valley listed in any of the existing inventories of built heritage of the country. The first inscription of the Roman churches of the valley in an inventory of any kind was in 1982, when the Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic de Catalunya was published.

4. Llei 2/1983, de 9 de març, d’alta muntanya (DOGC 312, de 16/03/1983).

5. Needless to say, this theoretical path is indebted to the development of material culture studies and the flow of thought in Actor-Network Theory (Latour 2005).

6. I carried out this census with the help and guidance of local residents. I counted every ruin in the two villages, since the mere existence of at least some traceable ruins allows the owner to build a new house. In the cases of newly built houses, they have to follow the dimensions and the outer appearance of traditional constructions, but they can be divided into individual apartments in the inside.

7. Llei 4/1980; Llei 9/198;Llei 37/1984; Projecte de Delimitació de Sòl Urbà dels Municipis de Fígols-Alinyà, la Vansa-Fórnols y Josa-Tuixent; Law 2/2002; El Pla Territorial Parcial de l’Alt Pirineu i Aran.

8. Llei 2/2002 de 14 de març, d’urbanisme (DOGC 3600, de 21/03/2002) modified by the Llei 10/2004 d’urbanisme (DOGC 4291, de 30/12/2004).

9. Document available at the Local Council of La Vansa-Fórnols.

10. Population patterns are an important aspect of the recent transformations in the Catalan Pyrenees. Severe depopulation was experienced throughout the twentieth century, but stagnated after the 1980s (Guirado 2007). Nowadays the upper valleys usually present very low population densities: mainly older local residents and some younger inhabitants that could be both locally born or mainly newcomers or neorurals, namely ‘hippies’, as they have come to be called. For more information, see Del Mármol (2012).

11. For more information, see Del Mármol (2012). Similar processes were analysed in the renowned work by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983).

12. ‘Haystack pole’, Catalan expression referring to the foundations of a construction.

13. Edicte de 23 de desembre de 2003, sobre uns acords de la Comissió Territorial d’Urbanisme referents al municipi de Josa i Tuixén (DOGC 4049, de 15/01/2004).

14. Llei 2/2002 de 14 de març, d’urbanisme (DOGC 3600, de 21/03/2002).

15. Llei 2/2002 de 14 de març, d’urbanisme (DOGC 3600, de 21/03/2002). Art. 3.