VILLAFÁFILA SETTLEMENT

Its bending is not estimated to be no great difference with its cartography of past centuries. It is true that the construction materials used, over time, due to the lack of stone, are weak. They have made the rammed earth construction par excellence, with which the buildings have been rebuilt several times throughout history. However, as we can see, with the churches that he counted, documented, they come mostly from the fifteenth century and have endured with the layout of its streets and squares. 

We admit as "urban area" the one delimited by these churches. Since the 13th century, taking into account that afterwards, spatial growth has been minimal. Pascual Martínez Sopena, has calculated the surface, which the "fence" or wall encompassed, which amounts to 19 hectares. Approximately denoting the great amplitude that the Villafáfila doubling had

The games of D. Alfonso X picking up a custom that comes from ancient times say. "as there should be no houses without towers or other buildings near the church"   because the space used to form a square corresponding to it.

Villafáfila had a castle, until today a huge terroir lot has come down to us, which has always been known as the "castle" and which could be the remains of it. It was located in the western part of the Villa. The castle is cited in the fifteenth century.

This also had its "fence" or wall, which included that. We have a reference to it in a donation from 1165 made by Pedro Ferro and his wife Oro Miguélez with his children to the Monastery of La Vega on his property in Villafáfila.

Where was this fence located with respect to the current settlement? Observing its street map we see that the interior road, the so-called ring road, which runs through it, fully coincides with the original wall, inside was the "town" with the castle and the church of San Martín .

The roads that led to the villages or "collaciones" of the alfoz started radially from the wall, as you can see in the attached map, corresponding to the gates of the same.

Outside this primitive wall were most of the known churches. Santa María del Moral, San Pedro, San Andrés, San Miguel, San Salvador, San Juan and Santa Marta.

This wall was made of very thick rammed earth with some stone and brick reinforcements, so it was not surprising that it was easily destroyed. At present, its habitat is a group of houses in a closed block, concentrated around its old churches, now disappeared.

In Villafáfila, a first difference could be marked by the road that joins it with Villalpando and that connects with Villarrín. The layout of the road, arriving from the East, follows a North-South axis, in its contact with the hull, leaving the latter, practically in its entirety, on the right margin of the road, on the left it remains, in its northern part , a block of newly built isolated houses, while in its southern part we find the Barrio Nuevo, with a layout, in which the name itself indicates the lesser antiquity of the area, also indicated by the greater orthogonality of two interior pathways. To the north of the hull and also to the north of the road, we find a series of buildings for agricultural use, farm buildings, generally scattered.

To the right of the road is practically the entire urban area, as we saw in the previous paragraph. The fundamental and dominant typology is that of aligned dwellings, between dividing walls, which gradually form closed blocks and which actually configure many of the streets as residual spaces that remain unoccupied, creating a very homogeneous and compact whole.

The plan of the town presents a certain regularity, in accordance with its walled origin. A street surrounds it, following the old "fence". Within this primitive core is its Plaza Mayor and that of the "clock" or town hall, formerly called the "prison". From this street radiate out others that go to what were their old "collations": El Salvador, San Miguel (el Corrillo), San Juan, Santa María and San Pedro, which corresponded to their old churches, now disappeared. and transformed into squares.

It has three main axes that run through the town following the NS direction and, therefore, running parallel to the road: Calle de San Andrés and its extension, Calle Sacramente, Calle Rejadarada, which joins the Plaza del Ayuntamiento with Calle de Zamora and Calle Nueva, which serves as a border road to the town center in its northeast part, while to the south it extends through Calle del Rosario. Some of these squares had in their center the corresponding fountain-well, for the supply of water and people and animals. All the old sinks have also disappeared. The church of Santa María del Moral, the only one that exists today, stands out within this settlement, with its upright silhouette. 

As transverse axes in the OE direction are Calle de la Botica, Calle de la Fábrica and their extension from Plaza del Ayuntamiento (Calle de Jesús) and Calle del Regato in its extension with Plaza de San Juan and Calle del Triunfo, already in the southern part of the hull. The area that includes these main roads where most of the houses in Villafáfila are concentrated.

The most notable squares are those of San Juan, San Miguel (el Corrillo), San Pedro, two other open spaces in the urban fabric are, logically, the square of the Santa María church, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, which next to it is the largest of all of them is Plaza de Calvo Sotelo, with a large rectangular public green area, playground and pediment.

Towards the East and its necessarily meaning the extension of the aforementioned urban fabric, we find other roads that lead to the outside of the town, normally without any type of paving, and that make up blocks in which, with the exception of the national school and the rest Of the dwellings that overlook Calle del Rosario, the most common constructions are warehouses or warehouses.

Practically the entire town is surrounded by this type of farms, warehouses or warehouses and, in general, more or less dispersed buildings for agricultural-livestock use, which gives the closest environment of the town a certain atmosphere of confusion due to the profusion of these elementes, and subtracting visual strength from the singular elements par excellence of the environment that are the dovecotes. 

BUILDING – CURRENT STATUS

The state of the building is highly influenced by the typology of the buildings that we will talk about in the next point, and above all, by the population dynamics, which also accentuates the problems that this typology presents. Its conservation in general in good, not existing a large number of dilapidated buildings.

The new buildings have had a very negative impact, as there is no adaptation to the traditional typology, having introduced excessive heights and incorporating a whole repertoire of colors and imported elements with discordant effects.

The main destination of the buildings is housing, maintaining the complementarity with agricultural uses in the oldest inhabited by permanent residents and in the one on the edges.

TOPOLOGY AND MATERIALS.

The characteristic urban structure of the area is the closed block, as we have already mentioned, developing one and two heights, as the culmination of a process of silting up the plots.

The characteristic topology of traditional building corresponds to that of the region where the nuclei are located and responds to the following parameters: the material used par excellence is clay; in the form of rammed earth, that is, mixed with straw, generally in the lower parts of the buildings, although it is also very common to extend it to the entire building; adobe, that is, mud mixed with straw, stepped on and dried in the sun; and brick. All this gives wings a characteristic Etruscan color in the area.

As for the openings, the rhythms are usually very uniform, clearly reflecting the internal distribution of the dwellings. It usually appears, in the houses of two heights, which are the majority, the access in the central axis of the facade, guarded by a window on each side. Over these three openings, the scheme is repeated on the upper floor, thus identifying a central axis that separates the common spaces into two zones, on the ground floor, leaving the upper floor for the bedroom area. The windows may or may not have bars, this being, in its case, simple and orthogonal, without decorations or frills. The balconies do not exist or are mere areas overlooking the public road. In this way the facades appear flat, with gaps bordered.

The heights are usually one or two, the first predominating at the edges of the nucleus, while in the center the two heights are the majority. In any case, the communication stairs between the two heights are developed inside the houses.

The average height of the dwellings, in the case of two-story dwellings, is between 5.5 and 6 metres, all generally keeping quite uniformity.

The isolated dwellings are very scarce and all newly built and are concentrated in the Northwest area of ​​the town. These modern constructions import, as we have already mentioned, a range of types and solutions, reinterpreting, in some cases, the traditional solutions in an unfortunate way.

Agricultural production buildings have appeared mainly on the edges of the hull, and their most common characteristics are gabled roofs with corrugated sheets, and brick or plaster cladding.

The degree of urbanization was low, until a couple of decades ago there was no running water and sanitation, the streets were muddy, today there is running water, sanitation, most of the town is paved, avoiding winter mud. Many years ago the town had electricity for its lighting.