In the last two centuries, the idea of isolated and autarchic farmhouse has been a fundamental literary topic for defining a part of the Basque Country. According to the collective imaginary, the term itself indicates the nature of the rural landscape of this territory: the forest people, the people dispersed in the forests. In novels such as Garoa or Peru Abarka, the dwelling appears as an autarchic and isolated reality. The house has all the resources to maintain family members and does not need a relationship with the outside world. In this sense, a legend gathered in Oiartzun, according to which Garbuno was the oldest farmhouse in the valley and Pagoaga the second. Although there are several kilometers away between the two, when they began building Pagoaga, Garbuno’s chief said: “Aldexko, aldexko, for the sake of the neighborhoods.”

The analysis of history, however, shows a more complex reality. The social and economic history of the Basque Country cannot be understood without taking into account the concepts of public land and the importance of collective management of certain rural resources. Today, the memory of these practices, except for the folkloric survival of concepts such as “auzolana”, is practically disappeared, but for centuries they were a basic element in coding the networks of local relations and the characteristics of the rural landscape. The decline of the communal lands coincided precisely with the expansion of the “modern” farmhouse throughout the Modern Age; the mountains were filled with houses and cereals to the same extent as the collective ownership, decision-making capacity of the communities and, to some extent, a more sustainable exploitation of the environment was lost.

Collective nature of the rural economy

By the end of the Middle Ages, most rural communities in the Basque Country are structured around three central institutions. The first was the house, understood as a basic political subject; the neighborhood corresponded to the house, through which the individuals were integrated into the networks of community relations. These houses could be dispersed or grouped, generally located in the areas most suitable for cultivation, in valleys protected by erosion or in areas with mild topography. Each house had its own resources (land, livestock or other property) and exploited them autonomously. The second institution was jurisdiction, that is, the competence of the community to regulate the way of life of people living in a territory defined by concrete limits. The third institution was the communal lands that, in a given territory, were lands without private property, generally located in forests and mountain areas, so their management and use corresponded to all the neighbors with the right of vecindad.

Local communities therefore attached great importance to the delimitation and defence of their jurisdictions and public lands. Thus, since the Middle Ages, numerous documents were produced that accurately described the municipal terms; established milestones were regularly inspected and any violation could be a source of violent conflict. The disturbances on the borders between Zumaia and Deba, for example, began in 1390 and lasted for several centuries. Similar tensions exist in other cases: Arrasate and Leintz Harana, Plentzia and Urduliz, Oiartzun and Rentería, Baigorri and Erroibar…

Speaking of communal lands, from the current point of view it is difficult to imagine its importance in the rural economy of the time. On the one hand, they offered complementary resources for agriculture that constituted the economic base of the majority of the neighbors: cattle pastures, cesteria, fern and spiders, chestnuts and similar fruits. On the other hand, their exploitation could be leased for special uses, such as specialized livestock, coal or woodworking, constituting a direct source of income for the council. Thus, the spaces reserved for the specific models of activity and exploitation of these communal lands were explained, with an increasingly detailed regulation.

A special management model: sarobeak

Among the areas created in this way, sarobe or korta are a very interesting case. Much research has been done on these elements in recent years and, although there are still many questions that have not been answered, it can be said that these were individualized plots within the urban soil, in the form of circles or squares and surrounded by stones. Ownership could be either of the people or of individuals, but in all cases exploitation was private, direct or through income.

Initially, they seemed to be cattle ranching spaces, equipped with drapes and enclosures for the keeping of cattle, but without a delay, they also began to use them for carpentry and coal. In theory, the existence of plots of private use did not imply the possibility of carrying out any activity in them; there are many prohibitions of building stable housing and cultivating land in the regulatory standards of the Middle Ages Berant, in the sards and in the public land in general: Deba (1394), Zestoa (1483), Oiartzun (1501)… However, from the 16th century, the pressure to convert communal land – and especially sarobes – into crops and make them available to private exploitation seems to have increased, due to factors such as trade growth, demographic pressure or socio-economic changes. In this process, the draughts were transformed into stable dwellings, baking the grounds and renting them to a tenant.

Thus, the sarobes can be understood as the vanguard of the privatization of the communal lands, and the circumstances surrounding them provide valuable keys to understanding the process. The examples are numerous: in some cases, the names of the new dwellings give us the hint of the original function – names of dwellings in the form of saroi/sarobe in Gipuzkoa; of embroideries in Navarra and in Lapurdi; of cut in Bizkaia; in other cases, their locations are separated from the population nuclei and isolated from the surrounding dwellings. Finally, in some cases the evolution of the sarobe to the dwelling can be reconstructed, using these criteria and the documentation of the files.

For example, in the year 1533, there was a dispute between the council of Zizurkil and the San Millán eldest relative, Martín Ruiz, in relation to the exploitation of land on Mount Andatza. According to documents from the time, in the communal lands of Zizurkil, they owned several sarobe in which they accused each other of having built houses. On this occasion, the people of San Milan built a new dwelling in the sarobe of Eskeltzu, and the people were against it. According to the witnesses who participated in the process, these lands had poor characteristics for agriculture, as they were at inadequate altitudes and topographies, so although Mr. de San Millan agreed to obtain an economic benefit in the construction and leasing of the dwellings, they denounced that the damage the people received was greater, as it reduced the fodder lands. In this case, the ruling was in favour of the people, since it recognized that the sergeant itself was a cattle shelter, prohibiting the construction of farmhouses in Eskeltzu.

The general trend was, however, the opposite. In the area of Hernio, for example, the councils of Zestoa and Errezil had twelve sarobe in intermediate ownership. The oldest reference is a 1452 document, which for three centuries, after being repeatedly audited by the representatives of both peoples, allows us to reconstruct in detail the evolution of these sarobe. Two of them (Artaunsoro and Barrensoro) disappeared very early; in 1503 they were bought by Joan Pérez Idiakaitz and in 1562 they were farmhouses dependent on Zarautz's older relatives. A third sarobe, Ezkurroa, became a farmhouse in 1636, on the initiative of the Council of Zestoa, and it seems that the decision was made by demographic pressure, accepting the permission to cultivate land in exchange for an income. Errezil's council denounced the decision, claiming that it was detrimental to its neighbours, but he also built the dwelling in the sarobe of Etumeta, and Gipuzkoa's adjuster gave Zestoa the right. Taking advantage of the precedent, he built a new farmhouse at the Ariztain seto, in this case in 1736. Today, of the twelve original sarobe, seven are dwellings.

An extreme example is provided by Aldude. This environment was exploited by a community made up of the neighborhoods of Baigorri and Valle de Erro, at least from the Middle Ages, according to a system of cattle ranching based on beams and seines. Here it also seems that the acquisitions of communal lands began in the 15th century, causing clashes between two sides; in addition, after the conquest of Navarre by Castile in 1512, a new border was established in the region, which complicated the situation. In this context, the Kingdom of Spain and France signed in 1614 a number of Royal Capitulations establishing the right of the Baigorri to “cultivate and sow all the land cultivated until then”, but on the condition of not opening new lands “to protect foraging areas”. For these works, they were authorized to build slabs, provided they were made of wood, and permanent housing was not built. These rules do not seem to have been very successful, as by 1773 a new village had been set up in Aldude, with his parish.

Creation of a “traditional” farmhouse

The process described above reflects a profound transformation of the rural landscape. Traditionally, the demographic evolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been explained by the theory of the “corn revolution”. Accordingly, the new crops brought from America, and especially maize (Zea mays), would have represented a revolution in the socio-economic structure of the Atlantic side of the Basque Country, allowing the colonization of the previously uncultivated lands and the extraordinary increase in harvests. However, the first references to maize crops in the Basque Country date back to the 16th century, but it does not seem to be widespread before the 17th century. It can be thought, therefore, that the introduction of this new species was not expressly a transforming factor, but an ideal resource to delve into a dynamic that came beforehand.

In fact, we've seen that communal lands began to unravel since the late Middle Ages, probably in the context of urban and commercial development of those centuries, due to the pressure exerted by the growing accumulations of capital. This trend was developed to the detriment of collective uses – grassland, ferns, etc. – to create new agricultural holdings. This led to conflicts, which cannot be said; in addition to the example of Zizurkil that we have already mentioned, many other cases could be cited. Thus, in 1694 there was the case of Altzo, since after the construction of the new houses of Otsegi and Intxaurrondo, several neighborhoods were confronted: “All the neighborhoods of Altzo have the right to collect ferns, lobsters, chestnuts and fertilizers; all of this is shared among the neighboring houses, and if new housing is allowed in the neighborhood, they need to be removed from their parts to give the new house, seriously to the detriment of all the houses of the town” (General Archive of Gipuzkoa, CO UCI 1066).

In this port, the entry of maize, in addition to colonizing new lands, allowed the reduction of the red soil through the introduction of two-year rotation systems, alternated with wheat, which could be complemented by other products such as allubia and turnip. This allowed dramatic crop growth in the soil unit, but at the same time increased the need for fertilizers. Given that the pastures of the communal lands were reduced, the solution was the stabling of livestock, working other products for their food: nabo, hayuca, green maize… In addition, in the eighteenth century the use of lime for the increase of land was also generalized, as Manuel Larramendi pointed out: “Experience has shown that, despite all fertilizers and improvements, land is weakening a few years later. To deal with this, every nine years they are fertilized with lime, so almost every house has its own calera, which with a lot of work and a lot of wood expense it uses to produce lime” (Corografía, 1756). Proof of this are, even today, the caleros or peas present in the landscape of many peoples.

In short, all this indicates that, in the domestic sphere, more and more productive processes were accumulating to respond to a series of needs that were once met through the communal lands, working increasingly intensively the soils. This trend inevitably exacerbated social inequalities. First, because access to collective resources was limited, dismantling the economic base of medieval rural communities. Secondly, because according to the new model, the economic success of each house depended on the quality of the land owned by it. Thus, throughout the Modern Age, an increasingly polarized property structure emerged, a source of the great social inequalities that dominated the Atlantic Basque Country in the nineteenth century. The oral literature of the time, like the series of bertsos Joana Bizenta Olabe de Bilintx, rigorously described this reality: on the one hand, the rich owners of various dwellings – property that some researchers have defined as “scattered latifundio” – and on the other, a class of precarious peasants, who often had to migrate from one dwelling to another.