Rural House
“Pepita la de las ores”
OUR HISTORY
The oldest data that exists dates back to about two
hundred years with my great-great-grandfather
Fco. Rodríguez Guerra, who inherited, bought or
built the first part of the house, where the living
room and kitchen are today, later he built the area
where the two bedrooms are, all of the above plus
4 terraces of farmland and part of the mountain
that is behind the house at the time of a small
amount of water from the spring. It was my great-grandfather
Juan Rodríguez Suárez who inherited the properties and later sold
it to my grandfather Juan Andrés Rodríguez Navarro, it was sold
in usufruct in 1931 for a value of 5000 pesetas (30 €) "draft
purchase-sale". By then Juan Navarro had already built a house
attached to his father's house intended, in part, as a shop in the
area. My grandfather after his trip to Cuba in 1917 with his two
younger brothers "emigration card" and with the money he was
able to save there, built this last part of the house, this part not
being tourist accommodation.
The house of Pepita, the one with the flowers, is named after her
grandmother who looked after and pampered a large number of
flowers and plants that were found on the paths to the house and
in the courtyards of the house, while Diego, her husband, was
dedicated to farming and other work creating forest trails and
building dams. This house was a social meeting place in the area,
as well as being a shop, the house housed
the only gramophone in the area and also
the first radio in the place. The
neighbours would come here in the
evenings to enjoy the company of so
much new technology that, to some
people, seemed to be the work of the devil
himself.
Pepita and Juan came from humble families and had nine children
who were born and lived there. As young people they experienced
the effects of the Spanish Civil War, having small children.
However, the effect that the war had on the centre of the island
was not so much the warlike aspect and the weapons, but the
consequences of a ruthless military-religious dictatorship and the
shortage of basic products for survival, foodstuffs and, like so
many others, with the ration card, the small pieces of land, the
pond that Diego made in his free time for fourteen years with the
help of a simple pickaxe, a pond that currently exists next to the
house and with the savings from Diego's trips to Cuba, they raised
their family.