In the photo of the village opposite our house you can see the horizontal lines of the terraced hillside - between the two roads.
The earliest terraces are very ancient indeed, built by slaves and peasants centuries ago.
The people who lived here in earlier times had to make the best use of the mountainous land available to grow their crops. The hillsides were therefore worked into areas of level ‘steps’ or terraces each supported by a dry stone wall. When the heavy rains did come the soil and its crops were not easily washed away.
The terraces are the most striking feature of the hillsides of the area.
It is not certain when the terracing began but the Romans came to the Iberian Peninsula in 200BC and had a presence here for six centuries. Roads, bridges, and towns were a feature of their civilisation and improvements in agriculture and irrigation came with them. If the terraces had not existed before they came then the chances are the Romans would have started them. The basic pressure was the population of an area and as it increased so, of course, did the demand for food, and more terraces.
