Valladolid, Feb 28 (EFE).- A hotel, a spa, a theater, a viewpoint and even a climbing park. These are some of the changes in the use of silos in Spain.
The list of projects aimed at changing the use of historic grain silos increases year by year in Spain, where most of these ‘countryside cathedrals’ belong to agricultural cooperatives and the State, which tries to sell them periodically through auctions. .
They are true masses, with limitations for the change of use due to their original use as a grain store and their rigid retaining walls, in their day designed almost ‘bomb-proof’, which makes reforms of this type of project difficult and more expensive. , as explained to EFE by the architect Carlos Mateo, dedicated for years to the cataloging and analysis of the National Network of Silos and Granaries -www.silosygraneros.es- and to developing projects for change of use.
In this architectural adventure of changing the use of one of these colossus, one of the first experiences in Spain was that of the Pozoblanco theater (Córdoba), inaugurated in 2006 and consolidated as an avant-garde cultural space, but since then other examples mark a path that , linked to the disuse of traditional railway lines, have tourism as the main ingredient.
The castle of Arévalo (Ávila) -S.XV-, converted into a silo between 1952 and 1977, currently houses the Museum of Cereals and is an interpretation center on the importance of grain warehouses in the 20th century, but it is not the only example of change of use linked to tourism.
The Fuentes de Andalucía viewpoint (Seville), the old flour factory that is now the Tximista hotel, in Estella (Navarra), and the El Silo eco-hotel viewpoint, in Bello (Teruel), are also already realities in this new dynamic, generating job opportunities for people with disabilities through the Titanes urban art project, developed in the province of Ciudad Real.
In this last initiative, renowned Spanish and international urban artists have been involved, who have filled with color the enormous walls of the silos of Calzada de Calatrava, Corral de Calatrava, Herencia, La Solana, Malagón, Manzanares (I and II), Porzuna, Villanueva de los Infantes and Campo de Criptana.
The naturalist organization Grefa, in an action supported by the Ministry of the Environment, also contributed from 2010 to another idea for adapting silos to create an ecological corridor for the ‘lesser kestrel’ with the placement of up to a thousand nests in Madrid, Castilla -La Mancha, Andalusia and Extremadura.
Changes in the use of silos: from parking to accommodation
The last buyer in Spain in one of the direct awards promoted by the Spanish Agrarian Guarantee Fund (FEGA) -owner of most of the properties- has been Jesús Javier Hinojosa, owner of a mechanical workshop in Belchite (Zaragoza), who he sees an opportunity in taking over his town’s silo, as he explained to EFE.
The first way to amortize his investment – some 102,000 euros – will be to adapt a good part of the 5,400 square meters of the silo plot as a car park for his workshop, although the potential goes further and his children are already planning a space for the main building accommodation linked to the use of a climbing via ferrata, with a recreation area.
In a similar sense, but with more implications, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has signed a protocol with the Castilla-La Mancha Government, the Cuenca Provincial Council and the Cuenca City Council to develop the XCuenca project: a series of actions in the field of transport that have tourist derivatives and recovery of industrial buildings, such as silos and railway stations.
Specifically, the idea is to adapt the old railway line between Tarancón and Utiel to a different social use, the urban integration of the railway land located on the sides or margins of the tracks and the adaptation of the railway section as a “greenway” for its subsequent use by pedestrians and cyclists, among other uses, according to the documentation provided by the Ministry.
On this project, the architect Carlos Mateo has highlighted the potential that these ideas have to settle the population in rural Spain, since these are initiatives that have worked in highly populated urban environments in Europe and also in Spain -the case of the cultural space Slaughterhouse of Madrid-. In addition, they can be constituted as a complement and synergy for the economic development of these areas.
A little history
The history of these constructions in Spain is linked to the postwar period and the Franco dictatorship, since the first ones were built in 1944. In a first stage that lasted until 1953 and in which some 35 silos were built, united by a style “very decorative” and located in agricultural regions, at a time when an autarchic and self-supply approach was beginning to take shape, explained the architect Carlos Mateo.
Between 1953 and 1960 construction skyrocketed with 354 new constructions, already in a more serial, cheaper and more homogeneous phase, which continued in the 1960s, with another 435 silos, while finally, between 1970 and 1984, only 127 were raised -of great capacity-, up to the total of 951 cataloged in Spain.
In that 1984, the law that changed everything in the world of silos was approved: “The current economic and international circumstances demand the introduction of profound modifications in the traditional legal framework for the production and trade of wheat and its derivatives, dictated (in 1937, in the middle of the war) under radically different political, institutional and economic assumptions from those that currently inform national life”.
“These modifications must necessarily affect the production and internal trade of wheat, with a view to facilitating its adaptation to the dominant legal framework in Community Europe,” continued the regulatory text, which nevertheless alluded to “reasons of prudence” to keep alive foreign trade through the then National Agricultural Products Service (SENPA).
This path culminated in 1986, with the final entry of Spain into the European Economic Community, although the last silo was completed in 1990 in the Cordoba municipality of Valchilón. EFE
