Where I spend my summers, a small village in Alta Anoia that had been abandoned and is home to fewer than ten families in winter, has stood for years a half-finished building. Construction stopped for some unknown reason. Thank goodness they brought out the crane, because it was a danger.
There's practically no town in Catalonia that doesn't have half-finished buildings. In Torrebesses, in the 19th century, the "traditional" church had become too small, and they decided to build a new one. But it remained unfinished, without a roof. "The church that killed the cold," they say. Yes: a severe frost in 1870 killed the olive trees and ruined the residents. Unemployed sine die The Glorious Revolution and the First Republic "helped" the project: it was a turbulent time. Would the "new" church now be too big? Perhaps it was. Those were different times.
"The church that killed the cold" is one of Torrebesses's cultural heritage sites of interest. There are many more: a castle—which belonged to the Escaladei Charterhouse and is now a rural house—a Romanesque church—with a Gothic altarpiece—and several Renaissance and Baroque mansions that make up Vileta, the village's elevated old town. And, of course, the cisterns (water tanks dug into the rock, with a dry-stone dome).
I've arranged to meet the town mayor, Mario Urrea, to visit the cisterns. There are about fifty of them in Torrebesses! In his Nissan SUV, we "stagger" along rural roads while he tells me about this municipality in the Segrià region, which he has governed for years. It's essentially agricultural and has been losing population, although now the population curve is more or less stabilized. "It used to have 1,000 inhabitants, and now it has a miscalculated 280," Mario tells me. The town has one school with about twenty children. Oh, how dangerous it is!
The landscape is very dry and broken. It combines cultivated land with wasteland. We see terraces filled with vegetation, which tells us that cultivation was once more widespread.
"For much of the 20th century, Torrebesses was water-independent. When a farmer left home to cultivate the fields, he didn't need to carry water, either for himself or for his animals; he had a pond or cistern on his farm or nearby where he could hydrate," Mario Urrea, a true expert, tells me. He has managed to secure a Dry Stone Interpretation Center in Torrebesses.
We arrive at one of Mario's favorite cisterns, Ribot's. I stick my head through a small door to confirm it has water. Yes, I see the water quite high up. I see a pulley for extracting water. "There isn't a bucket, is there?" I say to Mario. "No, because of vandalism, they don't leave any." cookie" (yes, they call it here cookie).
"The water in the cisterns is rainwater. It was only for people and animals to drink. Not for irrigation," says Mario. "Are the cisterns used now?" I ask. "Only for watering dogs," he replies.
"Sometimes animals would fall into the water. There was a stick to rescue them," he adds.
We're in an area with a good view, full of pine trees ("invasive species!" Mario remarks). At a lower level, we see a vaulted hut, one of the elements of folk architecture that fascinates me the most. Made of dry stone, they're half-buried (they only have a facade and side walls; the vaulted roof is covered by the floor). Their purpose is to shelter people and animals. There are plenty of them, scattered throughout Torrebesses.
The Ribot cistern has a cachorra next to it (a sinkhole in the rock that has rainwater, even though it hasn't rained for days). Cowl, they call it in other places. Since animals are going to drink, the "cachorras" are traps to catch them. All you have to do is hide behind some branches... and wait to catch it! One way to catch an animal that's going to drink from a "cachorra" is to place a stone—a tile—on a lattice of sticks. When the animal touches it, the stone falls on it.
Next we go to another cistern, closer to the town. They call it the cistern of handIt's in worse condition than we've seen before, but it has a new feature: a stone on top, placed vertically. It's called Caramull. It indicated that anyone who wanted to could drink water.
The cisterns were private and, therefore, for the owner's consumption. In any case, it seems that if a snail was placed in the center of the dome, this indicated to passersby that they could drink water. This is a good lesson in solidarity: don't give what I have left over, but what I need.
Centuries-old water tanks
Building water reservoirs by hollowing out rock has already been done in other times and places, such as in Catalonia, at the Olèrdola site.
Although the name "aljibe" (well or cistern) is Arabic, the Torrebesses cisterns do not date from the time of the Arab invasion, as their name might suggest. The oldest one dates from 1927. They were built primarily during the Second Republic. They are centuries old.
The Ribot cistern and cave are probably one of the least-visited BCINS (Cultural Assets of National Interest) in the country. You can reverse this statistic, because it's well worth a visit!
