Recessional heritage

Rural dra­mas are not a new genre in Cata­lan. They have been cul­ti­vated through clas­si­cal au­thors such as Víctor Català (Cate­rina Al­bert), in nar­ra­tive, and Àngel Guimerà, in the­atre, with works such as Terra baixa. The for­mer even has a col­lec­tion of nar­ra­tives en­ti­tled Drames ru­rals, and pub­lished Soli­tud 115 years ago, but the sub­ject mat­ter re­mains valid and the changes that have taken place in coun­try liv­ing are well analysed. With­out in­clud­ing the term drama, there are other re­cent ti­tles such as Anna Ball­bona’s No soc aquí, which re­ceived the Ana­grama award, sev­eral by the au­thor of Pal­lars, Pep Coll, La drecera by Miquel Martín and one with the flair of a clas­sic rural drama, Ter­res mortes, by Núria Ben­di­cho.

How­ever, here we are not deal­ing with dra­matic nov­els set in a rural en­vi­ron­ment, but rather the drama of a large part of rural life, putting the spot­light on the state of the many farm­houses that are being lost in Cat­alo­nia.

Marta Lloret Black­burn (La Gar­riga, 1982), known on so­cial net­works as La Caçadora de Masies (The Farm­house Hunter), has been tour­ing the coun­try for years look­ing for em­blem­atic farm­houses, talk­ing to farm­ers and own­ers, por­tray­ing them, cat­a­logu­ing them and, above all, high­light­ing their legacy and im­por­tance.

She has now pub­lished La caçadora de masies. Les cases de pagès, el lle­gat del nos­tre país, in which she has se­lected 15 farm­houses to pre­sent and de­scribe. They are: Cal Nes (Baix Llo­bre­gat), Cal Ra­bella (Alt Penedès), Can Mont­cau (Vallès Ori­en­tal), Can Nu­alart (Vallès Ori­en­tal), Can Pasqual (Anoia), Can Rajol (Vallès Ori­en­tal), Cal Viladés (Bages), El Colomer (Osona), La Masó (Alt Camp), Rovira (Segarra), Sala de Sant Llog­ari (Moianès), La Saleta (Berguedà), Masada de Joanet de Pepet (Montsià), Mas Brigel (Gironès) and Mas Car­i­tat (La Gar­rotxa).

Each farm­house has a story full of life and emo­tion, in some cases, and drama and un­cer­tain prospects in – too many – oth­ers. With this book, she wanted to pro­vide the his­tor­i­cal and per­sonal con­text be­hind the 15 houses. Lloret has found wor­thy sto­ries that re­flect the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of Cata­lan farm­houses.

“It is not in­tended to be a man­ual or a work of his­tory on the farm­houses, but a hum­ble re­flec­tion on the legacy that ex­ists be­tween their stone walls, where they come from, where they are and how they are fac­ing the fu­ture,” the au­thor ex­plains.

Very aware of the value of the coun­try’s rural her­itage and its pro­gres­sive aban­don­ment, since 2019, Lloret has shared pho­tographs of the farm­houses she doc­u­ments on so­cial media. Re­gard­ing her pas­sion for farm­houses, the au­thor de­fines it as fol­lows: “They are a phys­i­cal tes­ti­mony of our past, which tells us where we come from; it’s a her­itage that teaches us how we lived here from very re­mote times, how build­ings were con­structed and how we man­aged to sur­vive. It also ex­plains how our en­vi­ron­ment is shaped, since farm­houses have al­ways served as the back­bone of the ter­ri­tory.”

COUN­TRY LIfe