Hórreos, Palomares, and Rollos de Justicia

While walking the Camino, you will often come across a strange looking structure, built up on stilts, with a cross on top. What ARE these?

These are Hórreos, and are a type of corn crib, built to store dried grain, and made to keep rodents out.

These structures have different names depending on the province where they are located or the shape they have. They can be called espigueiro or canastro in the north of Portugal, cabazo in Lugo and A Coruña, canastro in Orense, cabeceiro or canizo in the Vigo estuary , piorno in Salnés. Generally, however, you will hear them referred to as hórreos. Hórreos are also known as horriu, horru, horriu, hurriu, hórreo, paneira, cabazo, caniço, hôrreo, and garea, garaia, or garaixea (Basque.)

Hórreos are built of wood or stone, depending on location.

They can be short or long. The longest hórreo in Galicia is located in Carnota, A Coruña, and is 35 meters long.

Here is a photo of a very long one:



According to location, they can be built rectangular, square, or even round.



On the Camino you will see at least two round structures built of woven sticks like basketwork. These are called cabaceiras and serve the same purpose.




The hórreo roof can be thatched, tiled, slate, pitched or double pitched.



The oldest known hórreos are from the 15th century.

These days, hórreos are almost always protected by most local governments, which means if you purchase a property with an old hórreo on it, you are not allowed to tear it down.

Other interesting structures you will see on the Camino are dovecotes. These are called palomares and are almost always round. You will see a lot of these around Boadilla.






From a blog by Allison Reid:

Doves and pigeons were an important resource in the Middle Ages, valued primarily for their meat, eggs, and feathers. Falconries used them as quarry, and their guano was a highly sought-after fertilizer. In southern Europe, it was spread on hemp fields and vineyards. In Northern Europe, it was said that pigeon guano was worth ten loads of any other type of fertilizer.

Until the 1600s, strict laws forbid anyone other than the nobility or monasteries from keeping doves and pigeons. Though some castles and manors had built-in nesting boxes, for the most part these birds were housed in freestanding structures called dovecotes. They were round, stone buildings with either a domed or conical-shaped roof. The round shape made it easier for people to collect young doves or pigeons (squabs) from the nesting boxes. Squabs were considered a delicacy.

The inside of the building had a large open space, with ledges or cubicles jutting out from the walls. Pigeons would enter and exit from openings just beneath the roof. The nests could be accessed with a ladder attached to a revolving pole called a potence.

There is some evidence that pigeons were also used for communication, but only after exposure to Middle Eastern practices during the crusades. For the most part Western Europeans had no concept of how birds migrated. (They thought that Swallows hibernated during the winter in the mud beneath ponds.) The use of homing pigeons to communicate over long distances didn’t become common throughout all of Europe until after the medieval era. However, those regions that continued to trade and communicate with the Arab world during and after the crusades began to build networks of homing pigeons. The Republic of Genoa was the most notable of these, and built towers for that purpose along the Mediterranean Sea.

Pigeons were able to deliver messages relatively reliably and quickly over hundreds of miles from their home. By feeding them in one location, and nesting them in another, they could be trained to fly back and forth between two locations. But more often, once they were released and delivered their messages, pigeons had to be transported back and forth by cart. This method of communication was not without its limitations, however. Any message sent by pigeon had to be very short, and the receiver on the other end would have to be literate enough to read it. Such messages could also be intercepted by trained falcons and hawks, or by archers.
***

ROLLOS DE JUSTICIA:


Another structure you will see, often in the village square is a column called a Rollo de Justicia. These are often topped with a ball or a cross. Sometimes there will be iron rings in the structure.

What are the rollos?  The rollos represented the administrative category of the place, built only in the villages that had full jurisdiction, indicating the regime to which it was subjected: councilor, ecclesiastical or monastic lordship. It marked the territorial limit and, in certain cases, was a commemorative monument of the concession of the town.

The rollos were also used as "pillories", although their functions in the Middle Ages were different. A pillory was the place where criminals were exposed to public shame, often by public whipping. The iron rings were used to hold the prisoner by rope or chain. Rollos were also a place where the dead bodies or heads of criminals were hung as a warning.

Though the Cortes of Cádiz promulgated a Decree in 1813 ordering, at the request of the city councils themselves, the demolition of all signs of vassalage, many remain as historical objects and are protected.

One of the most photographed along the Camino is the one you will see in Boadilla.