Las Hurdes (; Extremaduran: Las Jurdis) is a comarca in the Sistema Central, at the northern end of the province of Cáceres in the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, Spain. A well-known historical region, Las Hurdes is currently a Site of Community Importance of the European Union.
Description
Las Hurdes covers an area of , bordered with Sierra de Gata to the west, Sierra de Francia (Salamanca Province) of Castile-Leon to the north and Trasierra/Tierras de Granadilla to the south. It is a relatively high mountain region with low population density. Its territory is linked to the neighboring valley of Las Batuecas, in whose lower fringes lies the Las Mestas alquería which is historically part of Las Hurdes.
The average weather patterns of the region mark the climate in Las Hurdes as Mediterranean/Continental with Atlantic influence. Despite being usually included as part of the "humid" section of Spain ("España húmeda"), the physical conditions and natural vegetation are semiarid. There are seven rivers cutting stony valleys in Las Hurdes: The Río Malo or Ladrillar, Batuecas, Hurdano, Malvellido, Esperabán, Ovejuela and the Río de Los Ángeles.
History
Early history
Archaeological evidence has been found that Las Hurdes region was inhabited in the Chalcolithic Age. The oldest stone inscriptions (petroglyphs) date from about 4000 years before the Iberian Roman era began. The remains are largely testimonial, proving merely that the area was inhabited, for there is no evidence of large settlements.
Remains of settlements from Roman times, when the whole area around Las Hurdes was part of the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, have been found in sites near Caminomorisco.
The Las Hurdes region was depopulated after the Arab invasion of Spain in the 8th century, and the first vestiges of repopulation in isolated compounds of a few dwellings or hamlets, locally known as alquerías, are dated around the end of the 12th century.
The dark legend
The Las Hurdes region was remote, poor and isolated. The poor diet and general lack of hygiene meant that goiter, pellagra, parasitic worms and other, sometimes repulsive, diseases were common. Many of the local inhabitants (hurdanos) were also suffering from birth defects owing to inbreeding. Livestock illnesses were also widespread. The conditions in the households were unsanitary and, according to visitors, the stench and the misery were overwhelming. The name of the region is believed to derive from the Latin gurdus, a word of Iberian substrate origin meaning "doltish, stupid."
There was also no literacy in Las Hurdes owing to the harsh living conditions, as well as the distances and travel difficulties involved in reaching the closest centres of learning. The weak church presence favored widespread ignorance and the survival of ancient superstitions. The first census in Las Hurdes was made in the 16th century. And it is at that time when the legend of the darkness and backwardness surrounding the region began to be established.
Before 1635 playwright Lope de Vega set a comedy, Las Batuecas del Duque de Alba, in Las Hurdes in which he cast the area as a haunted place and its inhabitants as benighted and barbarous. Porque no saben que hay Dios / ni más mundo que este valle. (Because they do not know that there is a God/neither a world beyond this valley) Lope de Vega relied on writings by Alonso Sánchez, Prebendary of Salamanca (“De Rebus hispaniae”, Alcalá de Henares, 1632), who travelled to the region and was shocked by the poverty he saw, to write his play. As the centuries went by other Spanish writers would follow, casting Las Hurdes as a "bad and hidden place", thereby adding to the myth, the prejudice and the horrified fascination.
Even some serious chroniclers, like Pascual Madoz in his "Diccionario Geografico Estadistico-Historico", published in 1849, magnified the perceived savagery and moral degradation of the local Hurdanos, with statements like "religion is unknown (there)". This spurious contribution to the dark legend about the region was denounced by a Spanish intellectual, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who deemed that such information was "probably supplied by a disgruntled priest of the region" and that Madoz did not bother to verify it.