BRING THE PAST BACK

On the second day we revisited the host territory and again we were accompanied by Beatriz García Álvarez from Naturea Cantabria, and Miguel Ángel Toca Gutiérrez, councilor of the Campoo de Yuso City Council and responsible for this project.

The objective of that day was to see how agriculture and its future in mountain areas involves recovering and updating an agricultural past. The past teaches us the possibilities of the territory and current science shows us how to work effectively and profitably with that past.
First, the first micro-reserve for native crops in southern Cantabria created by the Campoo de Yuso city council was visited.

The Town Council has obtained the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and the CIFA of the Government of Cantabria to launch the garden that will keep varieties of cereal, vine and crops in danger of extinction. From a dump to a garden “Noah’s Ark”. A small corner that was used as an old dump in the town of Quintanamanil until 2019, has been transformed into a small “Noah’s Ark” for the future. Through the agreement between the Neighborhood Board of Quintanamanil, the ranchers of the town and the City Council of Campoo de Yuso, it was agreed to clear the area, improve it and create in the old landfill this project for the recovery of the agricultural heritage in danger of extinction. In the small reserve, new species of traditional cultivation and gardening will be progressively incorporated, such as cereals, daffodils, legumes and meso beans, among other varieties of threatened crops. For this project on the banks of the Ebro Reservoir, it has the support and assistance of the CIFA Agricultural Research and Training Center of the Government of Cantabria and the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Employment Workshop 2019

This micro-reserve has been created within the Employment Workshop 2019 of the City Council of Campoo de Yuso. This initiative ‘Advanced gardening for rural and urban diversity’ is promoted by the City Council of Campoo de Yuso and has had the support of the Cantabrian Employment Service and the Neighborhood Boards of Quintanamanil, La Población, Corconte and Orzales.

Collaboration with private gardens

The Town Council of Campoo de Yuso intends that this microplog of safeguarding native crops is the basis for establishing collaboration between administrations and private neighbors. Following the Swiss models of the cantons of Zurich and French experiences, where the use in private gardens and private orchards of threatened and wild species is encouraged, we want to facilitate the propagation and spreading this heritage to the neighbors and gardeners of Campoo de Yuso. Thus, the neighbors are involved in protecting, for the future, this genetic and agricultural heritage. For this, the micro-reserve of native crops of Campoo de Yuso, will serve as a seed source that allows to provide clones of cereals, legumes or traditional old vines to the orchards of the neighbors of the various towns that request it, within the municipal project “Huerta de los abuelos”. Thus ancient varieties that are close to disappearing are disseminated and promoted, by modern mechanized agriculture and industrialization.

Collection of vines from the South of Cantabria

In the micro-reserve of native crops of Campoo de Yuso is already housed, the collection of vines from the south of Cantabria. This collection consists of replicas of feet, of ancient black and white native vine of Muscat, some documented with more than a hundred years. These ancient vines have been collected by the Center for Agricultural Research and Training (CIFA) in the Campurrian villages of Arenillas, Ruijas, Polientes and La Población de Yuso. In the houses, orchards and farms of Campoo there has always been a fig foot, either to make wine or as fruit, so from the City Council we want to collaborate preserving this tradition.

A rural heritage in danger

In all the villages of Campoo, until the 1970s, varieties of cereals, legumes and genuine vegetables were grown, adapted to the climate and Campurrian conditions. These arable varieties have been selected for centuries by Campurrian farmers. From the pratification, the passage to livestock and the abandonment of crops, these species of native crops have been taking refuge in small orchards of the villages and in the care of elderly people who are disappearing, extinguishing their knowledge, knowledge and seeds. Since the early twentieth century, scientists have made campaigns to collect seeds from native crops throughout Spain and its peoples. Therefore, the Town Council of Campoo de Yuso wants to be the point of collaboration between the seed collections of the State, the Government of Cantabria and the neighbors. With this objective, the City Council has created this small micro-reserve that will act within the network of conservatories and collections, safeguarding ancient crops, archaeophytes and traditional cereals. These networks of collections, gardens and genebanks act as centres for the protection of agricultural genetic resources. Conservation gardens such as the one created in Quintanamanil, is a safeguard crop and a conservation stock to preserve this agricultural and genetic heritage bequeathing it to future generations.

This project was carried out thanks to the collaboration of:

National Institute of Agricultural and Food Research and Technology

Agricultural Research and Training Center

The second visit was to the restored mill in the town of Orzales.

The force of the water

The force of the water moves the impeller, the force of the water moves the turbine. The foundation of modern hydroelectric power plants and old maquiladora mills is the same. Human beings have used the torrential force of water since ancient times to their advantage. Whether it is watering its meadows, crops and orchards with canals; washing ore to extract iron or gold from the earth; or storing it in dams first made of sticks, then stones and today concrete to use its enormous driving force to grind cereals or “make light”.

The rural landscape

Cereal spread throughout Cantabria, be it rye and wheat, and then the corn revolution filled Cantabria with hydraulic devices. First, with dams made of sticks, trunks, and wood, and later with masonry and masonry, the water was retained to give driving force to the stone wheels that transformed the grain into flour.
With the arrival of the 20th century, oil lamps were transformed into electric ones, many mills along the great Cantabrian riverbeds became “light factories”, they were expanded and equipped with turbines and motors to produce electrical energy. While this was happening, first in the 19th century in Northern Cantabria and then from the 1940s in Cantabria del Norte, corn became fodder and began to be dedicated to livestock, all cereals disappeared in favor of mowing and mowing meadows.
In this period, the rich heritage of Cantabrian mills is being ruined by laziness and abandonment.
In this same town of Orzales, there are testimonies of two old hydraulic devices that have disappeared in the area of ​​Los Molinos, upstream of this same stream.
The Orzales mill is located on the bed of the river La Pesquera, on the north bank of the Ebro Reservoir, in an area of ​​great scenic interest and is an element that testifies to the life of the people in these lands, now flooded, just like in Las Rozas de Valdearroyo the flooded tower of the Villanueva church does so.
The flour mill of Orzales, together with the particular one of La Costana, is one of the only two mills left standing within Campoo de Yuso. Previously they were very numerous and were distributed through many streams in Yuso, with testimonies in La Población, Orzales, Monegro, Servillejas, Servillas and Quintanamanil, among others, but the ruin or flooding of the Ebro Reservoir killed them all.

A family mill

The building was built about 150 years ago by Mr. Eusebio Fernández, “El Indiano”, later it passed to his son Mr. Fidel Fernández Peña and later to his granddaughter Mrs. Emilia Fernández Bustamante. Fidel was expropriated for the construction of the Ebro Reservoir, although it was not demolished at the time. However, its owners continued to use it on a precarious basis.
The small riverbed moved, with dams, the three-wheeled wheels that ground the grain. With the Reservoir already built, when its water levels were high, they are flooded and unable to be milled. Thus, the millers decided to install electric motors to move the wheels. The western stone was used for fodder, while the other two were dedicated to wheat flour.
In the fiscal license of the industrial tax for the year 1961, the building is listed as a three-wheel maquiladora mill, Ø 3.30, having a productive activity of six months a year. The three wheels were alternately driven by a 4 H.P. electric motor. and it is stated that when the reservoir contains high levels of water, the grinding season is reduced to 3 months a year. In 1969, Ms. Emilia Fernández Bustamante, the builder’s granddaughter, became the owner of the mill. Already in 1987 only two wheels will work and that is when the fiscal license for commercial and industrial activities is definitively withdrawn by its owner.
Later, it was used occasionally as a chicken coop and warehouse, to finally become unused and deteriorate. It was said that the flour from this Mill had a good refinement and a very good touch, much better than the Medianedo Mill and others in Campoo.

The controversy

Between 2008 and 2010 unsuccessful negotiations took place between the neighbor Mr. José Manuel Álvarez Díaz (heir to the former owners) and the Mayor of Campoo de Yuso, Mr. Eduardo Ortiz García, before the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation to obtain the transfer of the Mill for the Campurrian neighborhood, without getting any response.
In 2011, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation requested a municipal license to demolish the building. After learning of the petition, Mr. Miguel Ángel Toca Gutiérrez, from the Santa Águeda de Campoo de Yuso Cultural Association (ACSACY) is promoting a campaign to protect the Mill for its cultural value. The Campoo de Yuso City Council immediately joined it, rejecting the demolition, together with numerous residents of the town of Orzales and their Neighborhood Council.

The Association insistently demands that the money that the State was going to use in its demolition be used in its reconstruction, without success.
From the City Council, the file is sent to the General Directorate of Culture of the Government of Cantabria, which disregards the protection of the Mill.
The City Council of Campoo de Yuso, on April 19, 2011, unanimously agreed in plenary session, that the Orzales Mill be protected and that the Government of Cantabria register the monument in the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage of Cantabria.
Finally, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation withdrew from the demolition and, after lengthy negotiations with its Presidency, handed over the monument to the Campoo de Yuso Town Hall on August 14, 2012.

The recuperation

The entire building was damaged by abandonment and progressive ruin. The roof of the building was partially sunken, the floors affected by rot and the canals without gates and terrified.
Fortunately, the desire to protect the Campurrian heritage and the decisive action of the Campoo de Yuso City Council and its neighborhood, together with an ambitious and very careful project, skilfully executed by the contractor and a lot of effort by the staff of the Campoo de Yuso City Council, has allowed the recovery of the Molino de Orzales as an ethnographic cultural monument.