LAND WITHOUT BREAD
This cinematographic test of human geography was rolled in 1932,
just a short time after the coming of the Spanish Republic.
In opinion of the geographers and the travellers, the region who are going to visit, called the Hurdes,
is a barren and inhospitable region, in which the man is forced to fight, hour to hour, by the subsistence.
Until 1922, year in which the first highway drew up, the Hurdes almost was not known
for the rest of the world and even for the inhabitants of Spain.
Before arriving at the Hurdes, we must pass by the Pond, quite rich town,
of feudal character, that it has a great influence on the life of the Hurdes,
where almost all the inhabitants are tributary of this town.
This is the church of the Pond.
Two skulls in their niche seems to preside over the destinies of this town.
Generally, the houses has three floors. Its architecture is little frequent
in Spain and give to the streets a medieval aspect.
Most of the houses has recorded on their door a religious inscription:
"Ave María, conceived without sin"
On day of our arrival we see the women dressed for a great ceremony.
We ask why they wear those pretty dresses.
They reply that they must go to the Church square, where they're going to celebrate
like every year, a strange and Barbarian celebration.
Newly wedded men, in front of gathered town,
each on of them must take the head of a rooster.
Between two corners, a cord extends
of which hangs a rooster tied by the legs.
Each of the riders, in gallop, will have to take the head of a rooster.
After walking triumphantly with the heads of the rooster through the squares
and the streets of town, the grooms offer wine to everybody.
The escanciadores, along with the wine,
offer pleasures to thousands.
Among others, we see this boy rich adorned with silver medals
Although they are Christian medals, we cannot help thinking
the amulets come from savage villages of Africa and Oceanía.
We left the Pond, where at 7 pm
almost everybody is already drunk.
3 kilometers away, from one of the tops of the mountainss that surround the town,
we discover the fifty two towns that constitute the Hurdes,
with a total population of ten thousand inhabitants.
through steep slopes, we crossed the splendid valley of the Batuecas
inhibited by old monks, who live with their servants.
This valley was inhabited for four centuries by monks, the Carmelites,
who preached the Christian religion in the most important towns of the Hurdes.
The Batuecas has conserved vestiges of intense prehistoric life.
In the caverns the are crafty paintings
representing men, goats and bees.
Toads, snakes and lizards
are the only present inhabitants of these ruins.
The vegetation is anundent,
and more than 200 species grow here freely.
Nevertheless, five kilometres from this valley
no longer we will find trees. Only some fruit trees, rockroses and brezos.
The convent is surrounded by a wall eight kilometres long
that protects from the attacks of wolves and wild boars.
Inside the enclosure, formed by the wall,
the ruins of eighteen hermitages, scattered here and there,
indicated by one or several cypresses.
Behind these tops, that still belong
to the Batuecas, begin the Hurdes.
After crossing them, we find the desert of the Hurdes.
This town is the Aceitunilla, located in one of the poorest valleys.
The white building is the school, built recently.
In the streets onthe slope of the mountain we meet its daily life.
Peculiar detail, in the towns of the Hurdes we have never heard singing.
Sometimes we can run, in the middle of the town, a
miserable brook that descends from the mountains.
In summer, there is not much water in the town
and the inhabitants use it, in spite of the filthy dirt in the channel.
There are weired scenes here.
The river serves the whole town
Three children eat a bread slice dipped in water.
The bread, until recently, was almost unknown in the Hurdes.
It seems that children's teacher,
makes the children eat in his presence, fearing
that as soon as they arrive home, theit parents will take it away.
They call the children to the school.
These ragged, barefoot children, receive the same education
as any other children anywhere in the world who go to the primary school.
The clothes bring the hurdanos that emigrate
for summer to territories of Castile and Andalusia.
They are dedicated mainly to the mendicidad.
When they return to their land, they distribute lots of clothes in exchange for potatoes.
They teach these hungry children, like everywhere,
that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.
In some towns of the Hurdes, most of the children are "pilus".
The abandoned will be looked for by the women of the Hurdes
from the public assistance of Rodrigo City, located
away two days of march through the mountain.
They are in charge of raising them in exchange for a fifteen pesetas a month.
This miserable amount will let the whole family live until the day,
not very distant, when the industry of "pilus" is prohibited in the Hurdes.
Unexpected and shocking picture that we discovered in the school.
Who could make this absurd engraving here?
We opened randomly a moral book that we found in the school.
One of the best students writes in the slate,
on our request ours, one of the book's maxims.
The moral that is taught to these small ones is the one that
prevails our civilized world: "Respect the other people's goods".
In this relatively rich valley, there are some
walnuts, cherry trees and olive trees.
This it is the town of Martilandrán.
The crusts that see between the trees, resambling the shell
of a mythical animal, is nothing more than the tile roofs of the town.
On the town entraning, a choir of coughs welcomes us.
Most of the inhabitants are sick.
The scenes that appear to our sight are of a devastating misery.
The goiter is the specific illness of the Hurdes High,
that constitute the main object of this report.
See this woman with its goiter:
does not have more than thirty-two years.
In a deserted street we find a girl. Do
Ask al mayor what has.
responds that since three days ago the girl is there without being moved.
should be patient, therefore complains.
One of our friends, himself about to her
to be reported of what hurts it in the throat.
Asks It that open the mouth
and we can see him the gums and the throat inflamed.
Unfortunately we cannot do anything by her.
Two days later we returned al town.
Al to ask for her, they responded that it had died.
Of what the inhabitants of this sterile land are fed?
The only food that arrange, or almost,
are the potatos and the beans, and not always;
especially in the months of June and July,
to this same base of its diet lacks them.
Its diet cárnica is composed only of hog.
Only the rich families, if can be called them thus, possess a hog.
Each year kill al hog: devour the meat in three days.
In the most fertile places olives grow.
often the fruits are devoured for the insects.
The goat is the animal that better resists in these sterile spots.
Its milk for the serious patients is reserved that wet in her the bread
that the beggars bring of far away and that also is kept for the patients.
Only meat of goat is consumed when some is killed,
thing that happens at times when the floor is abrupt and the steep paths.
The main alimentary industry of The Hurdes is the apicultura.
But the hives, in its majority, do not belong to the hurdanos.
Besides, the honey that the bees extract of the flower of the brezo, is very bitter.
The owners of the hives are people of The Pool.
Only leave the hives to the hurdanos during the winter,
that here is smoother than in the neighboring province of Salamanca.
In spring, transport the comenas to Castille.
In this epoch, is normal to find one or various loaded animals with the hives
and that are directed to Castille.
A day, we find to this donkey, with its load of hives,
that two hurdanos carry to Salamanca.
a little later, while we eat tranquilly, someone asks aid.
The hurdanos had tied al stupid. One of the hives had fallen
and the animal had been attacked for the bees.
The disorderly movements that caused to be defended they caused
the fall of other hives
and emjambres of bees precipitated on him.
An hour later, was dead person. A month before our arrival,
three men and eleven mulos had died in the same way.
The months of May and June are the hardest since, in this epoca
have exhausted its provisions of potatos.
Then are fed of cherries, and as the hunger presses, do not leave that
come they to mature and them are eaten green, which dysentery causes them.
Is then when begin the migrations.
The men to the ones that does not retain the illness and have been freed of the fevers,
go to Castille or to Extremadura, to try to work in it reaps.
We find Ourselves with some of these caravans, of 10, 30, 50 men,
provided only of a blanket.
do Not have money neither bread and go very far away, on foot, to seek work.
We cross Ourselves, several days later, with a group of those men
that return as themselves they were, without money and without bread.
Arrive now to one of the essential points of this report.
What do the hurdanos to build the field that will permit them to eat?
Begin for choosing a next land to the edge, later with the aid
of its women, its parents and its friends,
eliminate the vegetació habitual of rockroses and of brezos.
The tools are always rudimentary: a peak and a pairs.
do Not arrange of other instruments to work.
The plow is stranger in the majority of the towns of The Hurdes.
Once the land is cleared,
raise walls of stones, put some on another, without mortero.
This wall will protect al field of the winter floods.
When the wall is built, have to be going to seek
the vegetable land to the mountain.
Fill bags that transport later through the zarzas to its field.
This work occupies them generally during several weeks.
See the thin vegetable layer of land that covers a field hurdano.
The first year the crop is abundant, but later the land is exhausted,
to lack of elmentos nitrogenados, and returns sterile.
All the fields of The Hurdes have form of straits
bands of land al edge of the river.
often, them grown winter annihilate in uns instants the work of all a year.
This is the characteristic meander of a course of water of The Hurdes
with the small fields escalonados.
TO lack of money and of animal servants
the hurdano cannot obtain guarantee.
Therefore has to go to the mountain to seek with what to do it,
as the family that see here.
The roads are difficult and the footwear is scarce.
The most appreciated guarantee is the one that the hurdanos manufacture they
with the dry leaves of the tassel, not a very abundant bush in these mountains.
When they arrive at a favorable place, they fill the bags with the precious leaves.
But in these places the víper is a very widespread animal.
One of these peasants was stung by a viper some days ago
when collected leaves of tassel.
The mordedura is not almost never mortal by itself same.
The hurdanos are the ones that, while they try to be cured, at times infect it mortally.
When they have finished collecting of leaves, the peasants return to the town
and empty the content of the bags inside the houses.
On these leaves animals and people sleep together.
The leaves decompose slowly and, some months later,
they will use them as a guarantee.
This is the house of an inhabitant of Fracassant.
Through the entrance you walk on a bed of leaves,
that is always present in the houses of the hurdanos.
Interior characteristics of a house.
All the utensils are primitive and scarce.
The smoke leaves where it is able. There are no chimneys or windows.
In summer, the water runs almost dry and this fact
is the origin of malaria, transmitted by the mosquito anofeles.
is able to say that all the hurdanos are affected by malaria.
This illness at present is fought by
the doctors of the three "Factories" of The Hurdes.
The larva has to rise to the surface of the water to breathe.
If it stays parallel to the surface, it is a larva of anofeles.
If is stays perpendicular, it is a larva of culex, an inoffensive mosquito.
The adult anofeles is found in all the houses in the hurdes.
it can be recognized because of its perpendicular pose on the wall.
This is the result of a anofeles bite.
A man attacked by the fever, seated near its house.
You can find many patients on the streets.
This patient put to bed on the balcony does not suspect our presence.
Balconies are rare
in the majority of the towns of The Hurdes.
The dwarves and the cretins abound in The High Hurdes.
Generally their families employ them to take care of the goats.
Some are dangerous.
OR well flee of the men, or well attack them to stonings.
They are found in the mountain at the fall of the night,
when return to the town.
We had great difficulties in filming some of them.
The realism of a Zurbarán or of a Bank,
remains under very similar reality.
The degeneration of this race owes itself mainly to hunger,
to the lack of hygiene, to the misery and to incesto.
the lowest that see here is twenty-eight years old.
Here is another type of old cretino.
We could only film this thanks to the contribution
of one of our friends of the hurdanos that knew to entertain its speaker.
A day, we see a group of persons in front of the door of a house.
A boy has just died.
The mother.
A death is one of the rare events that can roll himself in these miserable towns.
The women respond in mass to the funeral house.
They have explained the complications in transporting a corpse,
due to that, in many towns, there is not cemetery.
They had to transport this boy to the cemetry of Nuñomoral,
and we decide to continue the body.
The corpse was placed in a trough
and taken for many kilometres through the thickets.
If the dead person is an adult,
they tie the body to a stair and carry him thus to the cemetery.
This sometimes requires hours of march.
See the step of a river with the corpse.
The cemetery shows that, in spite of the great misery of the hurdanos,
its religious and moral ideas are the same as
in any another part of the world.
The court summons of the tombs is indicated by a cross
or by a piece of wood.
The uniquely luxurious things that we have found in The Hurdes are the churches.
This is found in one of the most miserable towns.
An interior of the most comfortable of the inhabitants.
Here are the father, the son, the daughter-in-law and the two grandchildren.
On the wall, the presence of this role trimmed and
the alignment of the covers detonate a certain sense of the decoration.
In some towns, a woman travels through the streets at night.
Is the pregonera of the death?
Goes agitating a chime and at times stops for salmodiar a prayer.
All the inhabitants of a house hurdana live in an only room.
This house is a little more comfortable.
Is composed of a stable in the lower flat and,
in the first flat, of a kitchen and one room.
Surprisingly, there is a bed.
The hurdanos go to bed completely dressed in winter.
They wear the clothes until they fall in shreds.
This is what this woman says:
"Not to have swum that maintain better awake than thinking always in the death.
you Pray a Fowl María by the rest of the soul of. .."
after being two months in The Hurdes, we leave the region.
The misery that this movie comes to show us is not a hopeless misery. In other regions of Spain,
montañeros, rural and working its conditions of life managed to improve being associated, being helped mutually,
being claimed near the Public Powers. This current that will carry the Town toward a better life,
will orient the last elections and will give place to the birth of a government of the Popular Front.
The rebellion of the generals helped by Hitler and Mussolini should re-establish the privilege of the large owners,
but Working and Rural of Spain they will conquer to Franco and their accomplices. With the aid of the antifascist of all
the world, the calm, the work, the happiness, they gave rise to the civil war
and they will make the miserable homes that this film has shown you disappear forever.