Appreciating the ugliness of (Spanish) vernacular architecture

José Fariña is writing about Galicia, but his comments are generally applicable: form follows function, so rural flight and the conversion of C20th smallholding culture into industrial agriculture and bear forests will inevitably lead to the entire replacement of the gloriously heterogeneous building culture of the past by drab “rural” 2nd home estates of Asterix & Obelix stone-clad clones with the IKEA barbecue and the dogshit on the dead turf, and Disney-old urban centres like -for example- Aínsa’s upper town.

I’m a big fan of the old ugly, which is to say active humans, though obviously (you never know who’s listening) not in the terms of Roaring Lion’s Ugly Woman calypso – “If you want to be happy and live a king’s life, never make a pretty woman your wife”:

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