the social organization of space: class, cognition, and residence in a spanish town

the social organization of space: class, cognition, and residence

in a Spanish town

DAVID GI LMORE-University of Iowa

Anthropologists have long been aware of the importance of social class as a structural principle in Mediterranean and Latin American communities (Pitt-Rivers 1954; Wagley and Harris 1955). However, the customary emphasis on class as an objective structure or morphological device sometimes obscures the fact that class also has an “emic” dimension. A class model may be more than a principle of division by which people are placed into categories; it may also be internalized as a mental image or paradigm by which the universe of cultural and natural phenomena is ordered. Thus class consciousness, like other emic categories (see LCvi-Strauss 1967:128-159), may play an important role in self-image and perception, and it should be amenable to anthropological inquiry.

The recognition of the cognitive role of social class has led to some new perspectives in the study of community stratification. One of these new perspectives may be called “ecological” in that it deals with the manner in which class and status concepts relate to the physical or architectural environment and the effect o f this relationship upon individual and group behavior. For example, in some recent studies, Reina shows how Argentine urbanites “project” a threefold class model into the dimension of space and thereby create imaginary boundaries that are as forbidding as any topographical ones (1972, 1973). He describes how this “projection” has a dynamic feedback effect upon the parent class model by providing an additional basis for the elaboration of cultural distinctions and by reifying social stereotypes and cleavages.

In this paper, I will use this ecological approach to show how a class model operates reciprocally with spatial orientations to intensify cultural opposition in a Spanish town. The point of this analysis i s to illustrate the generative role of the class principle in community social dynamics in southern Spain and to show the power of a class model as a perceptual framework in general. I hope that the data presented here will suggest some new areas for research on the relationship between cognition and social stratification in other parts of the world.

This paper examines the role of social class in the spatial ecology and cognitive culture of a Spanish farming town. It argues that the geographical orientations of the townsmen are a projection of a tripartite class model and that this projection reifies social cleavages, limits mobility, and intensifies cultural polarization in the community. The sociocultural and political implications of these findings for the general study of stratification are brief& discussed.

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class concepts in Fuenmayor’

The Guadalquivir River Basin between Seville and Cordoba in western Andalusia is known as the Campiiia andaluza. Campiiia i s a generic word usually translated as “plain.” But to an Andalusian it means a specific type of flat, treeless terrain devoted exclusively to large-scale dry farming of summer grains and perhaps olives. Human settlements as well as farms in the campifia zones of Andalusia are unusually large for Spain. Most towns in the Sevillian campiiia, for example, number in the thousands of inhabitants, although there is no industry, and some communities contain over twenty-five thousand people. Since Roman times (Moreno 1972:170), these huge agrarian complexes have been stratified into three discrete social classes: large-scale estate farmers, a small-holding peasantry, and a great landless proletariat. These big towns are called “agrotowns”; they give the Andalusian campifiu i ts unique cultural and social character (See Pitt-Rivers 1963; Gilmore 1976).

Fuenmayor is a nucleated agrotown of eight thousand people in Seville Province. Slightly less than one-quarter of i t s inhabitants are independent landowners or tenants who grow market crops of wheat, olives, sunflowers, and perhaps a few vegetables and melons. The rest o f the Fuenmayoreiios are landless laborers or middle-class professionals, with the former category making up about 56 percent o f the total population. About 78 percent of the economically active population is engaged in agriculture in one way or another. There is virtually no industry and l i t t le herding, although dairying was on the rise in the early 1970s.

As is typical of inhabitants of the agrotowns, the Fuenmayoreiios emphasize the social class concept as a principle of social organization. The laborers, moreover, are heir to a sophisticated political tradition of trade syndicalism and are highly class conscious. The concept of “class” in Fuenmayor today rests on five evaluative criteria. Two of these are ranking gradients or scales; the other three are absolute qualities that a man (and by implication his family) either possesses or lacks entirely. The two scaled criteria are ownership of land and participation in physical labor, that is, the amount of manual work a man must do to support his family. The land and labor continua are inversely proportional and form a dual, inverse scale: the more land you have, the less you work, and vice versa (this of course applies only to the people involved in agriculture). The three absolute criteria derive from the concepts of apellido (literally “surname” but here “ancestry”), culturu (education or refinement), and manda (“rule,” that is, political power).

This scheme gives rise to three primary social classes, called seiioritos, mayetes, and jornaieros. A seiiorito (“little lord”) owns over one hundred hectares of land and i s therefore rich enough to avoid working in any form whatsoever. But he must naturally hire many other men on a permanent basis to work for him. To qualify for seiiorito status one must not only have wealth but must also be a descendant of an already established elite family and possess what is called “ancestry” (upellido). A seiiorito should also exhibit at least some evidence of advanced education, and in fact he may hold a professional degree from the University. The seiiorito either holds political office himself or exerts considerable influence upon those who do. Since the early seventeenth century, this group has maintained an iron-fast grip on the municipal government (except for the brief interlude of the Spanish Republic), and the seiioritos are therefore collectively called “those who rule” or “the powerful class.” The seiioritos themselves dislike all these

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labels and call themselves “the educated people,’,’ “the elevated class,’’ or simply “we, the gentlemen.” They make up 1 percent o f the population of the town and own over half of the land in the municipal territory.

A muyete (unknown etymology) i s a small-scale farmer who owns or rents between four and one hundred hectares o f land. The people point out that he is “at!tonomous” in terms of the land-labor scale; that is, he works only for himself and does not have to sell his labor to another man. While the seiioritos form a monolithic group, the people of Fuenmayor divide the muyete class into three internally stratified status groups. First are the “strong muyetes,” farmers who control over fifty hectares; second are the “middling muyetes,” who control between twenty and fifty hectares; and last are the “l i t t le muyetes,” who have less than twenty but more than four hectares. A few o f the “strong muyetes” may hire workers to help in the olive harvests, but none of them has enough money to maintain permanent workers or domestics. In this way they differ from the seiioritos, who are literally surrounded with lackeys. Moreover, the muyetes possess neither “ancestry” nor education; they have no political clout, and they have the reputation of being ignorant peasants. Even if a muyete were to acquire over a hundred hectares of land through diligence or cunning, he would not rise to seiiorito status. For his wealth would derive from “work” rather than from “ancestry,” and it would therefore taint him.

Making up the “low class” are the jornuleros. The word jornulero derives from jornul (day wage) and means “day laborer.” This class is also called the “proletarian class” or the “wage-labor class.’’ Sometimes the muyetes refer to the workers scornfully as tulegueros. This word derives from the tulegu, a cloth sack used by the workers to carry their mid-day meal to the fields. Carrying a tulegu i s a sign of poverty in the eyes of the muyetes, who always return home for an ample lunch and a two-hour siesta. The jornuleros, whose wives accompany them to the fields and also work, must make do with a paltry sandwich or crust o f bread. Thejornulero stands at the opposite pole on the land-labor scale from the seiiorito. He owns too l i t t le land to support a fahily independently (less than four hectares) and therefore must continually sell his labor to other men. A few of these poor people harvest minuscule crops of olives or wheat, and some keep a few chickens, or a goat or two for making cheese, but their essential quality is that they (and their wives and daughters) must work at field labor for a cash wage. Nearly two-thirds of these /ornuleros, moreover, own no land at all, and therefore represent a kind of subproletariat. The latter people are constantly migrating around the region looking for wage work, and consequently their children cannot attend school and will grow up illiterate. Because o f the harsh nomadic conditions of their lives and the fact that their children will never get enough education to emerge from working-class status, these unfortunates are distinguished from the worker-peasant by the term “true worker” (obrero-obrero ) .

I have shown elsewhere that relations between upper and lower classes in Fuenmayor are socially remote and revolve entirely around farm work. They therefore tend to be both brief and seasonal (Gilmore 1976). During the olive harvests in December, the seiioritos instruct their agents to hire laborers either individually or in family groups. These people are then paid a day wage of about $4.00 and hired on a continuing daily basis, either by the same employer or by others from whom they seek work elsewhere. There are some longer-term contracts but these rarely last longer than the harvest itself (two months). The seiiorito himself never does the actual hiring and rarely attends to the physical operation of the farm in more than a cursory fashion. He leaves this to his permanent staff and instead prefers such occupations as hunting, gambling, drinking, or


lounging. Labor relations are conducted in the working-class bars or in the central marketplace, which is referred to as “the labor market.” Outside of such indirect economic transactions, there is no extended personal contact between rich and poor. This social noninvolvement is by conscious design and is enforced by custom. The seiioriros feel they are a “cultural” elite that has the responsibility of defending the national virtues of Spain from the fulminations of a “backward,” “uncouth,” and “anarchistic” populace. Furthermore, as manual work contaminates, so does contact with manual workers. Thus the seiioritos scrupulously avoid contact with the poor by remaining either indoors or sequestered in their private bars and clubs. The most striking example of this occurs during the annual fair in August, when people of all classes crowd into the small fair site. Instead of mingling with the rest of the townsmen, theseiioriros erect a private dance hall in one corner of the fair site to which neither mayetes norlornuleros are admitted.

The laborers are unlike the seiioriros in that they are strongly equalitarian in sentiment. They disapprove of this practice of social avoidance and consider it a form of “segregation.” Naturally the practice o f “segregation” i s construed differently depending upon one’s position in the class hierarchy. From the viewpoint of the elite, segregation works to maintain social exclusivity and insulation, which are in fact moral requisites of upper-class status. It is therefore an integral part o f their self-image. To the laborers, however, segregation i s seen as evidence of arrogance, and it is heartily and emotionally condemned. The workers, for example, say sullenly that the seiioriros “practice segregation because they don’t even want to see us in the streets.’’ They interpret this as openly hostile and insulting, for in their egalitarian framework, to avoid a man purposefully is to make a clear statement of contempt. The practice of class segregation is therefore the touchstone of group social dynamics in Fuenmayor since it both defines the parameters of interpersonal relations and acts as a continual stimulant for hostile feelings. We can see from this also that class conflict in the town derives just as much from the violation of cultural norms, from “segregation,” as from economic exploitation and political antagonism.

spatial orientations

The town of Fuenmayor is not divided by natural physical barriers. There are no important bodies of water, hills, ravines, or other geologic features that create natural boundaries or reference points for spatial distinctions. Since the town is located in the middle of a plain and is almost two-dimensionally flat, there i s no “upper town” to be distinguished from a “lower town” as in many other Andalusian towns (Pitt-Rivers 1954:78). Nor do important roads or highways traverse or penetrate the town limits. Instead, spatial distinctions derive entirely from residential patterns, from social distinctions: all important subareas arise from the superimposition of the class model upon settlement space. The most important and basic scheme of division breaks the town into three concentrically arranged categories (see Figure 1). Each i s identified as the environment of a different social class. The three categories are (1) el cenrro (the center); (2) /u perifenu (the periphery); and ( 3 ) e/ barrio (the quarter). The cenrro i s associated with the seiioritos, the pr/fer/u with the middle class, and the barrh with the laborers. Although residence patterns are nowhere so homogeneous in reality, each area has a unique residential image that derives from i t s class assignation. The centro is considered the elegant hub of the town, an “urban” place where the wealthy and refined people live in gorgeous homes. The periphery i s a st i l l attractive, but less graceful zone that is inhabited by the solid mayetes; it st i l l has “class.” The barrio is a dismal, depressing]

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isolated place that i s inhabited only by the poorjornuleros. It has “no class.” In fact the people say it has “nothing,” and like the workers themselves, it is thought to be barren, marginal, and deprived.

Figure 1. The basic model of space

el centro The center is a small elliptoid area surrounding the centrally clustered buildings that house the town hall, the parish church, the trade syndicate, the high school, and all the other important municipal institutions. Also located in this area are the banks, doctors’ offices, the post office, the notary, and the barracks o f the Civil Guard. With its concentration of public and administrative organs, the center represents the traditional heart or core of the community.

Again, the model represents a simplification of a more complex reality: the symbolic “core” is not in the geometric center o f the community at all, but distinctly to the southwest. The reason for this is historical. In Islamic times (before A.D. 1250), the political nucleus and geometric center o f the town was a Moorish castle that was probably occupied by a Muslim Lord (Herndndez Diaz e t al. 1954:135). At this time, settlement in the community was restricted concentrically to the immediate vicinity o f the castle for defensive purposes. After the Christian Reconquest and the establishment of a permanent peace in the cumpiiia district, the Moorish castle became the home of the Christian Count of Fuenmayor. It therefore remained the administrative and social center o f the town. But with the direction of later growth no longer governed by military considerations, the


settlement extended lavishly to the north and east, stranding the “center” in what is now the southwest corner of an egg-shaped town.

People tend to think of the cenfro as consisting of the seven well-paved and immaculate streets and the three tree-lined plazas that radiate outwards from this oldest part of the town settlement. One of these central plazas, the Plaza de EspaAa, contains both the town hall and the Moorish castle, and so it is regarded by the people as the political and social hub of the town, the nucleus of the nucleus. These seven central streets and three plazas constitute a highly preferential living space. To live on them implies not only wealth and social position but also a close connection to the community’s cosmopolitan institutions and a nearness to the pulse of life. To live “outside the center” implies a distance from these valued things and appears ‘‘sad” and deprived by comparison.

Throughout the town’s history, all of the sefiorifo families have resided on these central streets and plazas. Many of the comfortable middle-class people also live there, as well as some “strong muyefes.” But the fact that the center has been historically dominated by the huge houses of the elite, with their imposing towers, balconies, pillars, and aristocratic emblems, has led to the traditional association of this area of town with the seriorifo class-despite the fact that other types of people live there also (Table 1). Because of the identification of the serioritos as a class and the “center” concept, the upper-class people are sometimes referred to as “the people of the center.”

Table 1. Social composition of the center.

Total Number of Percentage Total Percentage Number Percentage Number of Sefiorito of Number of of of of

Families Families Total Landowners Total Professionals Total

310 20 5 168 46 54 15

Percentage of Total I 9

Number of /ourno/eros

69

Since the center is thought to be the environment of the rich and powerful as well as the fount of political power, the laborers avoid going there. Many of them explained their reluctance by claiming that they “felt uncomfortable” in the center because the people are better dressed and hostile to the shabby-looking people from the barrios. Others simply state that the center was better avoided because it is “for the rich” and not “for the poor.’’ The pattern of working-class avoidance i s relaxed on only three occasions: first, when the workers are seeking day labor and must come to the centrally located labor market; second, during the festival of curnuy(II, when the normal order of things is reversed and the center i s surrendered by the rich to the people from the fringes (Gilmore 1975b); and third, for the Sunday stroll, or jwseo when the entire town dresses up and promenades up and down the main streets in the evening before dinner.2

For the upper-class people, contrastingly, the area outside the center must be treated gingerly as an alien and uncharted territory, full of unpredictable dangers. Many of the seriorifos never leave the center at all except when driving out of the town and when attending the feriu in August (the fair site is located on the town’s edge). One sethrifo described the center as the morally “good” part of the town and characterized the barrios as ugly, depressing places and the breeding grounds for vice and communism.


Tapping his chest mournfully, he added that it was “painful” to be in the barrios and professed utter amazement that my wife and I enjoyed taking walks on the outskirts of the town.

la pewiferia The periphery is the wide concentric ring of urban settlement that surrounds the central nucleus. It consists o f forty-two streets and has a total population o f 4,647 (57 percent o f the town’s population). It i s demographically and geographically the largest of the three basic units.

The social status of the periphery’s inhabitants is not uniform but i s a mixture of muyetes, professionals, permanent workers, and jornuleros. However, when it is conceptualized as a general spatial category by townsmen, it is associated with the middle-class model. Thus people state that “the ‘true laborers’ live in the barrios” and that the social environment o f the periphery i s “more middle-class,” or “more muyete.”

In physical appearance, the periphery differs only in minor respects from the center. Most of the streets are paved, though not with the high-quality cobblestones found in the center. There are sidewalks and even a few trees. The houses are roomy and white, although they are less impressive architecturally and smaller than those in the center. They lack the latter’s towers, large balconies, pillars, and heraldic devices. The streets are wide and clean, but again there are none o f the charming plazas or important public edifices that one admires in the center o f town. The bars and shops are fewer, smaller, and dingier than those in the enter.^ But aside from these minor differences, the periphery resembles the center in having as (‘urban” an atmosphere, and most of i t s streets appear trim and prosperous.

The boundary between center and periphery i s amorphous, but the periphery is clearly bounded on i t s outward side. I t s outer perimeter is marked by a circular roadway that entirely encompasses the town. This road, which for part of i t s length coincides with a paved provincial highway and elsewhere is merely a broad dirt track, serves as the traditional social frontier o f the community and is called la Redondu the “circumference.” La Redondu provides the people of Fuenmayor with a clear-cut dividing line separating the inhabited, social space o f the town (el pueblo), that is, the center and the periphery, from the uninhabited, nonsocial space of the fields (el cumpo). At the same time, la Redondu serves as the demarcation line between the community proper and the outlying, isolated workers’ quarters, or barrios, which make up the final component in the basic model o f space. The burrios are in fact actually located beyond the unofficial social frontier of the society. They are therefore, like the laborers themselves, marginal to the community and to i ts economic and social life.

barrio The term barrio has a narrower use in Fuenmayor than in some of the less stratified Castilian and Mexican towns, where it is used to describe any distinctive residential section (see Lewis 196O:SO-53). In Fuenmayor, burrio is used only in connection with two working-class sections (Table 2) that the people call Barrio Sun Rafael and Barrio La Runu. The word barrio conveys a number of unpleasant nuances to townspeople who live elsewhere. It implies a poor working-class atmosphere and thus a connection with a marginal and despised style o f life. It also suggests a social isolation or detachment from the town, a sense of not belonging. Many middle-class people state contemptuously that the barrios are “beyond the circumference” and therefore “outside the town,” or as one is tempted to translate both remarks, “beyond the pale.” The barrios are not only overwhelmingly jornulero in social composition (see Table 2) but are also inhabited mainly by completely landless people, or “ t rue workers.” The barrios are

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relatively new settlements, built within the past twenty-five years and thus lack the solera, or “vintage,” of the older, more established sections. The barrios are said to be shamelessly neglected by the municipal authorities. Electricity, water, and sewerage systems are described as woefully inadequate, and the streets are muddy and unpaved. As a result, in this unhappy place one has to hop about “like a frog” when it rains, a situation that gave rise to the nickname la Rana (the Frog).

Table 2. Social composition of the Barrios.

Number Number of Percent Number Percent Number of Percent of Landowning of of of journalero of

Barrio Families Families Total Professionals Total Families Total ~~

LaRana 156 3 2 4 3 121 78

San Rafael 48 3 6 2 4 38 79

The barrios are also said to reflect a style of l i fe associated with poverty and working-class deprivation. An important part o f this style of l i fe is a tendency toward political alienation and agitation. Thus the barrios are felt to be the “home of the left-wing element” in the town-an accurate assessment since most of the militant leaders live there-and they are regarded suspiciously by the Falangist town hall authorities. About five years ago, political graffiti attacking the conservative mayor were scrawled on the walls of the barrios. This further exacerbated tensions between the center and the fringe and reinforced the association of barrio residence with political dissent and “not belonging.”

The small cramped houses in the barrios were built by their present inhabitants with “their own hands.” This means that these houses (and by implication the barrios themselves) are the product of the manual labor of their occupants. In this way they differ from the houses in the other areas, because these have been purchased by money or inherited and are therefore conceptually linked to the possession o f land or some other fam i I y property.

Finally, as the people who live in the barrios often point out, there are no public facilities or recreations in the barrios. Their inhabitants complain unhappily o f the absence of shops and bars and even of plazas where people might gather together and intermingle.4 Such public places are highly valued in themselves for lending ambienfe (spirit) and vida (l i fe) to a residential district, and their absence i s a source of much lamentation among the poor /orna/eros, who do not have the resources to create their own amusements. For example, one man commented sadly that his barrio lacked the leisurely pace and the “good spirit” o f the other areas because there was no place to meet or promenade. Another informant mused that “there i s nothing to do in the barrios, so there is no life.” One man said, “We have nothing in the quarter, nothing at all. Even if I want to go for a walk, I have to go somewhere else. No, there is no l i fe in the barrios.”

a symbolic confirmation :the municipal cemetery

By now it should be obvious that models of physical space and social structure are mirror images. But how deep is this relationship? And what does this unity of images show about the basic values and perceptions of the Fuenmayoreiios? One way of


answering these questions i s by examining symbolic reproductions o f town society that are created outside the town according to conscious plan b.y the townspeople. One such symbolic reproduction is the municipal cemetery, the place where Fuenmayorefios bury their dead in accordance with the prevailing norms and values o f town society.

Like all other towns in Spain, Fuenmayor has a compact, nucleated municipal cemetery. It i s located some fifty yards from the Redonda in a northeast direction. All the citizens of the town are buried there after death with the exception o f public atheists and suicides. Andalusians favor “niche” burials and stack their dead above the ground in the whitewashed walls of the cemetery, rather than inter them in the ground. The concentrated spatial quality of the cemetery reminds one o f the town settlement and indicates that the same structural principles that are a t work among the living may be detectable in microcosmic and transfixed form among the dead.

The physical framework of the cemetery, like that of the town itself, is simple, direct, and trichotomous. The walled cemetery is divided into three roughly equivalent rectangular terraces. These are separated by high stucco walls, rows o f cypress trees, and by other foliage. The hollow walls that separate the terraces also house the burial niches, the dead being interred horizontally in four neat rows.

The first terrace i s located adjacent to the entrance, that is, closest to the town itself. It boasts a beautiful l i t t le flower garden and i s much more attractive in appearance than the other two. I ts burial niches are highly favored by the townspeople and they cost 1,000 pesetas each. The second terrace is reached only as one walks past the first. It has no flower garden, but it does possess a small park-like area o f cypress trees and manicured grass. Although i ts niches are less coveted than those in the first terrace, they are s t i l l quite acceptable. They cost 500 pesetas each. The third terrace is located in the rear of the cemetery, furthest in absolute distance from the town. It i s considered isolated and “sad,” for it has neither flowers nor park. In fact, it is overgrown with weeds and has a neglected, forlorn appearance. People who cannot afford a burial at all and who must be interred through civic charity are buried in the undesirable third terrace. Its niches cost only 250 pesetas.

This division of the dead, as might be expected, is an exact microcosm of the threefold class and spatial models among the living. The dead of the sefiorito class occupy the first terrace along with some of the richer muyete and commercial families. The first terrace therefore replicates the society of the centro. The second terrace is occupied by the dead of the “true muyete” class, by permanent workers, by middle-class merchants, and by some of the better-off /orna/eros. It therefore replicates the social composition of the periphery. The third terrace is occupied exclusively by the dead of thejorndero class and corresponds socially to the barrios. The caretaker o f the cemetery put it this way: “In the first terrace is the upper bourgeoisie. In the second are the mayetes, and in the third we have the laborers.” One therefore finds a marked, in fact isomorphic, parallel to the trichotomous class system, a symbolic confirmation. But these correspondences o f class structure and mortuary space are even more striking when one considers the burial customs of the seioritos within the first terrace.

In the corner of the f irst terrace, closest to the town, there are seven large mausoleums grouped together in close association. These imposing monuments are the resting places for members of sixteen of the twenty sefiorito families. Only four o f the el i te families condescend to use the common niches. Each elite family’s name i s prominently displayed over the mausoleum’s portal, and these elite tombs are directly and privately owned by the occupant family. Thus, when these people are interred in their mausoleums they are entering their own private property, their own land. Only the sefioritos possess a

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traditional burial plot under this sort o f arrangement, since all the other people rent their niches from the municipality. Moreover, these rented niches are only temporary and must be cleared out after five years unless the family makes an additional payment (the bones are otherwise tossed into a common ossuary). The concept o f private ownership therefore lingers as an aspect of social distinctions even after death. One may in fact perceive a common theme uniting the centrally located townhouse, the private dancehall on the fair site, and the mausoleum. All three symbolize land ownership and inherited wealth and therefore social status and exclusivity.

As well as faithfully echoing the trichotomous class scheme and the parallel model o f municipal space, the cemetery also serves as a reminder of the town’s political oppositions and power relationships. The rightist and leftist antagonists who lost their l ives during the Civil War are also spatially separated in death. The men who died fighting for Franco are honored by burial in a clearly marked tomb located in the second terrace. This monument bears a commemorative bronze cross and is fastidiously tended by the caretaker. The left-wing and working-class people, the republican sympathizers, and the socialist officials who were executed by firing squad after the uprising are buried in an unmarked grave in the third terrace. During a rainy spell a few years ago, the water table rose and disturbed these Civil War interments. The town hall authorities decreed that the rightist corpses be removed and relocated above ground in the safer wall niches. However, the working-class dead were le f t to rot in the ground and no mention is made of them officially. Thirty-five years after the war, the authorities are st i l l unwilling to forgive their political and class enemies, and a strict spatial separation of right and l e f t i s s t i l l rigidly enforced.

the sector principle : secondary divisions

The center and the barrios are viewed as homogeneous, indivisible entities. But the periphery is socially heterogeneous and is subdivided into secondary units that are called sectores. The sectores are large residential areas, usually consisting of three or four streets. Each sector bears a descriptive nickname that derives from some topographical or architectural peculiarity. For example, el Cerro (the Hill) i s so called because it is the highest spot in the town, although only a few meters more elevated than the rest of the generally f lat settlement. N Postigo (the Back Door) gets i t s name from the fact that one of the provincial roads enters the town through this section. Lo Puerta del Monte (the Wilderness Gate) is located on the edge of the town where an iron gate once separated the town from the empty space of the cumpo. La Estuci6n (the Station) is located adjacent to the abandoned railroad station. La Lunu (the Moon) takes i t s name from an unusually broad street that forms the core of the section, la Alameda (the Garden) is named for a l i t t le public park that i s located in i t s midst.

These six sectors are not normally distinguished on the basis of these minor architectural features, but rather on the basis of the social characteristics of their inhabitants. Thus, of the six sections, la Luna and la Estucidn are famous for being “rougher,” and the people say that their inhabitants are of a “lower class” than the other people in the periphery. They are, in fact, associated loosely with the lower-class model. N Postigo, which contains most of the town’s industry, and la Puerta del Monte, which i s the home of the independent pastoralists and dairymen, share the best residential images outside of the center. People regard them as “more middle class” in ambience. The following chart (Table 3) gives the class and occupational characteristics of each of the sectors.


Table 3. Social composition of the Sectores.

Sector

La Estacibn 695 178 15 9 27 17 18 1 1 107 63

El Cerro 739 185 32 19 1 1 6 37 22 92 53

La Alameda 739 215 30 16 13 7 27 14 121 63

La Puerta del Monte 711 175 53 27 23 12 31 16 86 46

La Luna 240 52 0 0 5 10 9 18 36 72

El Postigo 1,523 387 67 20 44 13 29 8 209 59

Totals 4,647 1,192 197 17 123 10 151 12 651 55

As noted above, the periphery as a whole does not have elegant plazas or other public places where people can gather to chat and to watch the passing crowds as in the center. However, some of the peripheral sections do feature informal l i t t le spots that mark them o f f positively from the workers’ burrios, which are said to have “nothing, nothing, nothing.” For example, the Alumedu section is the site o f the town’s lovely l i t t le municipal gardens. These gardens are enjoyed by the people o f the sector for informal encounters and for strolling. The gardens are also the site o f many courtships and surreptitious meetings between fianc6s. Hence it gives The Alumedu section a lively “spirit,” which sets this area apart from the others.

In the sector known as la Estucibn young boys use the empty area in front of the abandoned train station to practice their soccer skills and sometimes play informal matches there. On the other side of town, the section called e/ Postigo is located adjacent to the town’s fair grounds. The fair site is a municipal property that is used only during the festivities in August and otherwise kept clear. Thus the youths from this section are able to take advantage of this situation to play ball games in the empty fair site.

Unlike the situation in some Spanish and Latin American towns, the sectors are not important foci for personal loyalties for people in the town. In fact, sector-based patriotism is strongly manifested only by adolescent boys. According to some informants, youths from different sectors used to form gangs and menace rivals from other sectors and often threw rocks at intruders. But rivalries of this sort have declined considerably in the past decade, and their only expression today is in the occasional soccer games played by informally organized groups of boys from the different sectors. After adolescence, sector feeling becomes even less important and gradually disappears as an aspect of spatial orientations for many people.

One of the symptoms of this lack of sector identification is the absence of formal associations or group ceremonies in the town that reflect a territorial orientation. The

social organization of spam 447

sector i s in no way a corporate entity, and there are no sodalities of any sort that recruit personnel from them. Moreover, unlike the situation in many other Spanish towns, there are no barrio or sector saints or cults (see Freeman 1968:482-483). In fact, there are no distinctions made by people among sectors on religious, ceremonial, or ritual grounds because there is simply nothing on which to base such distinctions.

Social l i f e in the sectors, aside from the adolescent play groups, centers in the neighborhood bars and taverns, where the adult men congregate after work to spend the evenings chatting with their friends. Most o f the bars and taverns have a regular clieritele that is recruited from the surrounding sector. Accordingly, each bar displays i t s own class image and stereotype that is derived from i t s location and i t s “regulars.” For instance, one bar that is located in e/ Estacidn area is notorious for being a workers’ dive and i s supposed to be a hang-out for politically “restless people.” I t s owner i s a reputed Freemason. Middle-class people do not enter this establishment. Another bar, just up the street and more toward the center o f town, i s referred to as a bur muyete and i s said to attract a clientele of a “higher class.” Although these two groups of bar “regulars” coexist in a small geographic area, they do not interact, and the two bars might as well be in different towns.

There are many obvious ways in which the configuration of social space described above contributes to the segregation o f classes in the town. By creating three physically bounded, socially contained worlds, the threefold spatial model promotes a class rather than community identity, inhibits personal contacts, keeps people separate, and thereby perpetuates class segregation. This condition in turn contributes to class hostility since class segregation irritates the laborers and exacerbates the atmosphere of tension. For the remainder of this section I will concentrate on two such factors that appear to me to be the most important in terms of community social dynamics.

First, the center-barrio opposition not only contributes functionally to the sociocultural marginality o f the laborers in the barrios, but also to their conscious recognition of their marginal status. Existing as they do on the dismal fringes of the physical town, with their world circumscribed by la Redonda, the laborers find themselves denied access to the cosmopolitan social and political l i f e o f the community. This exclusion from perceived social “goods” contributes to their sense of frustration and alienation and intensifies their hostility to all the existing structures. One has only to hear the constant grumbling about the lack of “l ife and spirit” in the barrios to understand the sociopolitical implications of this physical separation. It is not surprising that la Rana is the home of the “left-wing element”

The concept oT ambiente is also important here. To the people of Fuenmayor the quality of l i fe is measured by i t s degree of ambiente (atmosphere, spirit, or social effervescence). This quality emanates from large numbers o f people interacting in public places. But because the barrios have no architectural loci for public gathering and few bars and shops, the people who l ive in them feel that they are unfairly prevented from distilling umbienre. As a result, they feel deprived and resentful. Only during carnova/, when they take over the center of town, do the marginal people experience this cherished quality.

A second factor has to do with the dynamics of fellowship and friendship in Fuenmayor. I have described elsewhere the critical role of friendship in providing a mechanism for social integration in this society (Gilmore 1975a). Mature friendships are initiated and acted out daily in the bars and clubs of Fuenmayor and never in private homes, which are always closed to all but the closest kinsmen. Adolescent friendships are cemented in the streets of the sectors. Because neighborhoods tend to be homogeneous in


class composition, the childhood play groups (pundi//m), which form in the sectors, also tend to be bound by class lines. Since the pandi//m are often the basis for later mature relationships, the spatial segregation of classes tends to limit the formation of adult friendships across class lines. The same obstacle to interclass friendship exists also in the other locus of friendship, the bar. Since the “regulars” of each bar are almost always confined to one spatial section of the town, they are mainly members of one social class. The same is also true of the private clubs, the casinos, and even the cinema, which is scorned by the rich and patronized only by the poor. Thus none of these locales can serve as a public context for the formation of interclass friendship. As a result, social distance is maintained and the possibility of dialogue between classes is removed.

summary and conclusion

A tripartite class structure is introjected in the public consciousness and then “projected” upon the nucleated settlement space of a Spanish town so as to create bounded class communities among the living and the dead. This projection orders the third dimension of town life, that of physical space, in the image of the threefold class model and generates concrete definitions for cultural distinctions and cleavages. It also establishes inclusive parameters for individual behavior that limit residential mobility and foster a defensive and parochial isolation of class communities. The result is a reification of class consciousness, a restraint on social mobility] and a deepening of cultural antagonisms that are caused partially by distance. In a sense, therefore, the el i te are caught in a dialectical contradiction of their own making. Their efforts at class avoidance exacerbate the very hostility they wish to evade and stimulate the formation o f a radical proletarian consciousness.

What does this mean for the study of social class in general? Most importantly, it means that in communities like Fuenmayor the social class principle is more than a structural device for categorizing human beings. It is also a mental map by which people organize their natural and fabricated universe, a cognitive orientation as deep and basic as language, which works in a// dimensions of social life. Although this may be true to an unusual degree in Fuenmayor (which i s admittedly a highly polarized and class-conscious society), it is probably true to degrees in most other class-based communities. If true, then no pattern of behavior or individual action in such communities can be fully understood without reference to the class model and i t s influence on social act and thought. When anthropologists have grasped the implications of this fact, new vistas will be opened for theory in the study of social relations in Spain, Latin America, and elsewhere.

The practical implications of the data are also obvious and immediate. Even a physically flat community can have i t s inaccessible elite peaks, i t s proletarian valleys and outcast islands, in short, i t s own unique cultural topography. A distance of a few feet may represent an unbridgeable gulf between social worlds; a road or even a pathway may be a formidable barrier crossed only at peril. Carelessly conceived changes in urban context in such places may be interpreted as assaults on traditional social structures and

social organiza:ion of rpaca 449

may be stubbornly or even violently resisted by dominant groups. Planners should be aware of this before they make the mistake of cavalierly obliterating imaginary boundaries because they cannot see them.

notes

Fuenmayor is a pseudonym. Fieldwork in Spain took place from July 1972 to August 1973 and ‘was generously supported by a Predoctoral Fellowship and Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Additional funds were made available by a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant-in-aid. My thanks go also to Ruben E. Reina, Margaret Gilmore, M.D., and Susan Tax Freeman, all of whom read and commented upon an earlier draft of this paper. ’ Reina found a similar pattern in Parana, an Argentine city of 100,000 inhabitants (1972:74).

’The center has the highest number of public service establishments per family (forty-three for 370 families, compared to forty for 1,192 in the periphery). The burrios have a total of three bars and two grocery stores servicing 204 families. All o f the dry goods stores and all but one of the other commercial establishments are located either in the center or in the periphery: Despite i ts large population, la Runa was without a bar between 1965 and 1973, so most o f i t s inhabitants patronized a tavern in the old San Rafael burrio. Because la Runu is newer and poorer than San Rafael, it is sometimes called a “true barrio” (burrio-borrlo), while San Rafael is just a burrio.

The central shopping arcade does draw people from all over the town but since men never do any of the shopping, this activity brings only women to the center. In this sense, Working-class men are more “marginal” than working-class women.

Number of establishments

Center Periphery Barrio

Food,drink ................................... 27 28 Textile ....................................... 6 4 Med ical-pharm aceu tical them ical ................... 4 5 Construction .................................. 1 2

- - Energy ....................................... 2 - - Stationary, paper.. ............................. 2

Miscellaneous,. ................................ 1 1 1

Totals 43 40 6 ..................................

See note 3.

references cited

Freeman, Susan Tax 1968 Corporate Village Organization in the Sierra Ministra: An Iberian Structural Type. Man

1975a Friendship in Fuenmayor: Patterns of Integration in an Atomistic Society. Ethnology

(ns.) 3:477-484. Gilmore, David

14:311-324. 1975b Curnaval in Fuenmayor: Class Conflict and Social Cohesion in an Andalusian Town.

Journal o f Anthropological Research 31:331-349.

Quarterly 49:89-106. Herndndez Dt’az, Jos6, e t al.

1954 Cat6logo arqueol6gico y artktico de la provincia de Sevilla. Seville: Diputacidn Provincial. L6vi-Strauss, Claude

1967 Structural Anthropology. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Lewis, Oscar

1960 Tepoztldn: Village in Mexico. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Moreno, lsidoro

1972 Propiedad, clases sociales, y herrnandades en la Baja Andalucia. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de

1976 Class, Culture, and Community Size in Spain: the Relevance of Models. Anthropological

Espaiia Editores.


Pitt-Kivers, Julian A. 1954 The People of the Sierra. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1963 Introduction. In Mediterranean Countrymen: Essays in the Sociology of the Mediterranean.

J. Pitt-Rivers, Ed. Paris: Mouton. pp. 9-25. Reina, Ruben E.

1972 The Principle of Social Class: An Example of Organization in the Argentine City of Parani. In New Perspectives on Modern Argentina. Ciria e t al., Eds. Bloomington: University

Indiana Press. pp. 69-82. 1973 Parand: Social Boundaries in an Argentine City. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

1955 A Typology of Latin American Subcultures. American Anthropologist 57:428-451. Wagley, Charles, and Marvin Harris

Date of Submission: January 15, 1976 Date of Acceptance: August 2,1976


the social organization of space: class, cognition, and residence in a spanish town

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