3 de October de 2016 | Ana Amelia Patiño Esteo | , Blog
As an antecedent of the actual council houses, we are going to take as a referent the council houses from the second half of the 19th century upto the 1970s in Spain.
Because of that we can realise that there are different types of <strong>developers</strong> and they can be clasified depending on their nature and priorities: public action developers, cooperatives, bussiness, Church, private developers, credit identities and at last self-buildings and slumification.
<strong>Public action</strong> created a discussion nearby 1854 about which was best: single family home or collective house. Ateneo Catalán de la Clase Obrera and Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País took part of that discussion. As a response of that, in 1856 an alternative of single family home was proposed as a council house, which was called Villa de Isabel II in Madrid by the architect Daguillon, but it was denied and finished being just another project. Later on, in the Primo de Ribera’s dictatorship some council houses were built for public servants. Finally, during the Francoist dictatorship and by the Delegación Nacional de Sindicatos, Obra Sindical del Hogar was founded in 1942 (but in 1957 it ended to depend on Ministerio de Vivienda) and did more than 200 000 council houses, and as we will see later, because of the investment done for that many materials developed many diseases with hight costs in restoration.
<strong>Cooperatives</strong> were also something to have in mind if you analize council houses in general, because they did not cooperate together through Spain, they were important in autonomous regions. Pablo Iglesias Cooperative was the most important one. It built more than 244 houses in 11 years.
<strong>Enterprises</strong> were also one of the most important promotors, because in mining, iron and steel industry, textile industry and infrastructure, houses built for their workers made a situation that was between paternalism management and an unbalanced real state agency situation, because many of these houses were built by enterprises to be rented to workers. This started to be done during the civil war but strengthened later with colines and residential areas.
<img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-307″ src=”http://www.lucycons3.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/workers-659885_1920.jpg” alt=”workers-659885_1920″ width=”100%” />
Another group that was very influent in promotion of council houses was <strong>credit institutions</strong> that did labors of promotion before, during and after the civil war. However this action was just local. Some examples of that is Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad of Barcelona, Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de león, Caja de pensiones para la Vejez from Barcelona or Caja de pensiones from Valencia, as well as Banco de Ahorros y Construcción Madrileño. Nowadays this kind of organizations continue acting as promotors, but their role has changed, since real state bubble, crisis arrival and the way through it has changed families economy.
<strong>Catholic Church</strong> also took part as a promotor, but indirectly, through associations that were regulated by them. An example of those promotors is Constructora Benéfica de Madrid (that did the district of Tetuán) and same Círculos Católicos Obreros all over Spain.
On the other had we have some <strong>private promotors</strong>. Around half of the 18th century bourgeoisie (even low bourgeoisie) tended to buy houses to rent them, so real-state situation was oligopolistic. Later, at the end of the 19th century, due to Ley del Inquilinato (that was applied from 1842 to 1920) there were many situations in which rented properties price were unfair, so different generations of a family or some families lived together in the same house. At teh same time industry was moved to suburban belts created with an urban project either an higienical plan. This was being solved from 1960s with the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal wich especified the need of an interior patio in a building and the rights that the inhabitants of the place had in it (it was forbbiden to close it, for example).
Between 60s and 70s there was a tendence to sell those houses to their users, mostly it was because there was a liberation of the price of the rent and wear of the house, they were got worth and started to need to be maintained.
Meanwhile, the most disadvantaged people followed a trend that started at the end of the 19th century. Most of the families that could not take advantage of these laws developed selfbuilt houses, without lisence, foundations but with the family and with rural methods. This movement happened in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao and Zaragoza.
One of the things to highlight in those houses are materials, that made all those houses cheaper, as well as their size, whose minimum and maximum were registered by the law, as we will see in the following posts.
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