Classical sources put us on the trail of the livestock activity of the brave Cantabrian warriors of yesteryear, whom the Romans feared, a task that we assume also took place in the low and flat lands of what we know today as the three Pasiegas towns. Already in the 11th century, with the donation of these lands and forests by the counts Don Sancho García and Doña Urraca Gómez to the monastery of San Salvador de Oña, the Montes de Pas are mentioned for the first time and the “cabannas” are also referred to. ” in which to house these livestock, whose construction became changing and prolific later during the Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary, perhaps originally as huts and cabins similar to those of the rest of the Cantabrian coast, very fragile and predominantly built of wood in this Pasiego territory and, later, in a rectangular plan with walls reinforced with dry edge and wooden framework on which to support the gabled slate roof, an architectural type that, over the centuries, became a tradition in the Pasiega population.
This typology of mixed construction, with a home, stable and hayloft, is divided into two floors, the ground floor to house the livestock and the upper floor for collecting grass and housing for its owners, a pastoral building model that has undergone a slow evolutionary process in other similar constructions in the Pasiega area, with larger spaces and larger openings. These variables, as the archaeologist and ethnographer Manuel García Alonso points out in his work “La Cabana Pasiega, origin and architectural evolution”, were introduced by wealthier noblemen who required, due to their special skill, builders who followed that pattern initiated by the own shepherds of the three Pasiegas villages, thus also deriving the prestige of the famous stonemasons who made a living from their trade and who helped consolidate that characteristic architectural model that endures in our time, especially the master builders from the neighboring Merindad de Trasmiera.
Linked to the construction of these cabins to a certain form of economy and a particular rainy climate, mainly for the accommodation and feeding of livestock, they will gradually become more comfortable and functional, expanding their space and improving their rudimentary and typical structure to culminate in what is also known as a “living cabin” and that, as the historian Adriano García-Lomas points out in his great work “Los Pasiegos”, “…once it was the pastoral “house” exclusive to some hunters from Espinosa and other nobles of the town.” Its constant element is the sunroom or balcony protected by a flying eaves, an extension of the gable of the roof and whose axis is arranged perpendicular to the front, although sometimes this protection is arranged on one of the side slopes.
The cabin consists, as mentioned before, of a ground floor with a stable function and an upper floor for a hayloft and a room. This plant is a rectangle of proportions that vary depending on the number of cows, with usual dimensions between 8 and 10 meters long by 5 to 8 meters wide and made with stone walls. The wood used in the interior is oak and beech, generally with two thick posts of compact oak that rest on stone bases and support the “petral” or mother beam on which the joists and boards that form the floor covering rest. Already on the upper floor, three or more posts serve as support for the ridge beam and whose ends rest in turn on the triangular gables on which the two slopes of the roof rest. This roof is made with large sandstone or slate slabs of different dimensions.
The slow evolution that the cabins had throughout history, as Manuel García Alonso also warns, was accelerated in the last third of the 19th century with the incorporation of the new Friesian breed, more productive in milk and whose size characteristics constituted a first determinant, since they are larger animals, both in height and length, thus modifying the floors, mangers and access openings, which gain in height and width, since until then the historical Pasiega breed cow, much smaller, It required a smaller opening in the stables, as denoted by the most primitive cabins.
The Pasiega tradition, little given to change, has meant that, in terms of the building model, it does not deviate from the rectangular plan and the gable roof with facades, generally, arranged on the short wall perpendicular to the summit, customary which was also maintained in the so-called living cabins, much larger and equipped to spend the winter periods in the lower part of these valleys and far from the mountainous and cold ridges, and even morphology that was maintained in the construction of the flour mills that manufacturing buildings of Pasiega tradition in their form and collected in this beautiful oil painting by the artist Manuel Guazo for the issuance of this philatelic stamp that, said Incidentally, it combines this particular construction model in its three pointed versions of a livestock cabin, a living cabin and historic Pasiega industrial architecture.
The pictorial work, titled “El Molino de Vega de Pas” and dated 1999, belongs to the collection of the “Casa de Don Guzmán” hotel in the town of Pasiega itself and is a lively and beautiful northern image that captures the play between nature and the constructive hand of man, with harmonious and visually attractive lights and colors that correspond to the Pasiego landscape type and that has always awakened in its author, Manuel Guazo, a deep and sincere admiration, with energetic, succinct and nervous brushstrokes, like chromatic lashes to reflect the somber tones and that vegetal splendor that the author always highlights in his works with a very refined technique. The light interacts with the landscape, with a broad brushstroke on the mountain in the background with that zigzagging path and more delicate in the foliage of the forest and in the cottony fog that stalks the composition of the landscape, with more texture also in the reflected architectural elements and in those apple trees in bloom that seem ready to offer their future fruit to the viewer; And, as the great sculptor Jesús Otero said about him: "...the landscape of Guazo is a human nature that speaks of itself, to itself, and for itself, there we have it...let's love it."
Manuel Guazo Calderón, who was also the Dean of Spanish Art Criticism, Mr. Antonio Cobos, stated that “his landscaping establishes the thread of emotional communication and communicates sensations better than if they were examples of impressionism,” is the owner of a master's degree that is disconcerting due to his self-taught training, thus not feeling forced to conform to a specific aesthetic, but established for years among the great Cantabrian landscape painters who form the Montañesa Landscape School, along with great masters such as Casimiro Sainz, Agustín Riancho, Manuel Salces, Tomás Campuzano, Pérez del Camino, Escalante or Aveldaño, among others; and, like them, showing an unusual ability to appreciate the tones of light, especially the profuse variety of green... the color of the pasiegos.
