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Last modified: 2020-11-07 by ivan sache
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Flag of Casares de las Hurdes - Image by Ivan Sache, 20 March 2020
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The municipality of Casares de las Hurdes (405 inhabitants in 2017; 2,075 ha; municipal website) is located on the border with Castilla y León (Province of Salamanca), 150 km north of Cáceres. The municipality is composed of the villages of Casares de las Hurdes (135 inh.), Carabusino (56 inh.), Casarrubia (33 inh.), Heras (24 inh.), Huetre (138 inh.) and Robledo (422 inh.), and of the depopulated villages of Arroyo Pascual, Casa Hurde and Castañar.
Casares de las Hurdes, once known as Las Casares (The Hamlets), is located in the north-west of the Hurdes district, an isolated mountainous area for long considered as the poorest region in Spain. In the 19th century, the inhabitants of Las Hurdes were considered as primitives, if not barbarians. In Espagne et Portugal (1895), Alfred Germond de Lavigne (1812-1891) wrote: "The Hurdanos, wild people of disgusting appearance, live in holes dug in the soil... they commit all kinds of crimes, parricide included, without any sense of what their are doing."
The French ethnographer Maurice Legendre (1878-1955) defended in 1927 his PhD thesis, Las Jurdes. Étude de géographie humaine; this field study provided the first accurate description of the harsh life of the mountaineers. Legendre recorded the overpopulation of the highest valleys of Las Hurdes as a main cause of poverty; in 1925, the main cultivated area in Casares de las Hurdes was only 25 ares. He believed that the valleys had been settled by Moriscos fleeing persecution; the finding of rock paintings and Roman remains invalidated this hypothesis. Another cause of extreme poverty was the lack of roads and public services; in summer and during starvation periods, the men used to move elsewhere and act as professional beggars to get some food for the winter period.
The official visit paid from 20 to 23 June 1922 by King Alfonso XIII (1886-1931) to Las Hurdes made of the development of the region a national issue. The sanitary status of people improved but poverty remained. Alfonso XIII planned "to destroy the villages whose inhabitants are living dead and their transfer in a region where civilization could protect them". The new village to be established in the Extremadura plain, however, was never built.
The documentary Las Hurdes, tierra sin pan (Land without Bread), shot in 1932 by Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) based on Legendre's thesis, provided international visibility to Las Hurdes, in spire of harsh critic by the Spanish authorities.
[Jean-Mary Couderc. 1966. L'évolution économique et humaine de Las Hurdes (Espagne). Revue géographique des Pyrénées et du Sud-Ouest. Sud-Ouest Européen 37-2, 263-294]
In the last quarter of the 20th century, the element used one century before to emphasis the backwardness of Las Hurdes were recognized as specific features, highlighting a rich culture that had been preserved by geographical isolation.
The Typical Houses, preserved in each of the six villages forming Las Caseras de Hurdes, are traditional stone houses "born from the rock" and covered with slate roofs. Terrace cultivation is a traditional system allowing to grow crops on very limited areas and to prevent soil erosion. The old system of shared irrigation, of probable Muslim origin, is still used in Robledo; a networks of "wells" established in strategic places of each valley, brook or fountain, supplies via "pipes" water to each plot, proportionally to its area.
Ivan Sache, 20 March 2020
The flag of Casares de las Hurdes, adopted on 3 August 2005 by the Municipal Council and validated on 16 January 2006 by the Assessing Council of Honors and Distinctions of the Government of Extremadura, is prescribed by an Order issued on 23 January 2007 by the Government of Extremadura and published on 8 February 2007 in the official gazette of Extremadura, No. 16, pp. 2,124-2,125 (text).
The flag is described as follows:
Flag: Rectangular, in proportions 2:3. Vertically divided, at hoist, 2/3 red, 1/6 white and 1/6 blue, at hoist, 1/6 red, 1/6 white and 2/3 blue. In the center a white stripe of double width, charged with the municipal coat of arms.
The coat of arms of Casares de las Hurdes, adopted on 3 August 2005 by the Municipal Council and validated on 23 March 2006 by the Assessing Council of Honors and Distinctions of the Government of Extremadura, is prescribed by an Order issued on 27 March 2006 by the Government of Extremadura and published on 8 April 2006 in the official gazette of Extremadura, No. 42, p. 6,229 (text).
The coat of arms is described as follows:
Coat of arms: Per pale, 1. Gules six houses or port and windows azure in three fesses of two, 2. Chequy of eight azure and seven argent in five fesses of three. Grafted in base, Argent a chestnut vert fructed or. The shield surmounted by a Royal crown closed.
The Royal Academy of History validated the proposed arms, "a castle, stars; a Latin cross, two doves", proposing to arrange them as:
"Per pale, 1. Azure a castle argent supported by a mount vert and fimbriated sable, 2. Gules a Latin cross argent. The shield surmounted by a Royal crown closed".
The Academy recommended to drop the proposed stars and bordure, deemed unnecessary, to preserve the clarity of the heraldic composition.
The Academy validated the proposed flag.
[Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 1987. 184:2, 375]
The houses (casas) make the arms canting. The second quarter must recall that the area once belonged to the Duke of Alba.
Ivan Sache, 20 March 2020
