Silence in La Vereda: The Last Bastion of Guadalajara Province’s “Black Architecture”

Abstract

In the heart of the Sierra de Ayllón, near Pico Ocejón, invaluable testimonies have been conserved for an understanding both of ancestral forms of settlement and of the materials, techniques, and systems characteristic of vernacular building in Spain’s Sistema Central mountains. This “black architecture” of Guadalajara province – specifically studied first by Carlos Flores and Luis Martínez Feduchi in the 1960s, following on from prior studies by Leopoldo Torres Balbás in the 1920s and ’30s – constitutes one of the most unusual examples of ethnographic built heritage in Iberia. Its typological and structural invariants are a product of its total adaptation to the environment of which it is part and helps to characterize. Among the best conserved exemplars of this heritage we may highlight La Vereda, a hamlet that seems to have withstood the passage of time almost intact and which offers us a clear picture of this invaluable traditional landscape.