GDR Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche

The peoples of the Sierra de Aracena and Picos de Aroche have several characteristics that unite them: their adaptation to the environment, the middle mountainous terrain and vegetation, the people do not represent a rupture with the environment, but a continuation. The cobble stone streets are very useful in the months of heavy rains. The settlement of these people keep a harmonious relationship, which gives an overall view of urbanism, no house is like another, but all have a common aesthetic. White houses with gabled roofs, in most cases, and covered with Arabic tiles. The houses are usually whitewashed for two reasons, one health, as the reserved lime heat and also served as a disinfectant, and the other aesthetic, the building materials were not noble, usually tended to be irregular ashlar brick wall or that so rendered and whitewashed.

within urban areas are vital elements to understand what life in the mountain villages, squares, fountains and wash houses were meeting places and they all have a special beauty and reflect how the town was at the time in which were built.

The mountain towns have their heritage landmarks, the most repeated and important are the churches, with their tall towers with pyramidal spire, the castles, the Banda Gallega stretched across the Sierra, but the eleven castles are concentrated in strategic locations from where are guarding the border, and the third element, the arenas, all built by local builders, most were built between the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of them are very peculiar and all interesting.

The developing economy in the Sierra is intimately linked to the environment, use natural resources, therefore it is an agricultural economy, livestock and also industrial, dominating the meat industry and eighths. This type of economy has led to the preservation of an environment, declared a Natural Park and Biosphere Reserve.

The symbiosis between humans and nature in this district is such that it is impossible to separate, although nature has shaped peoples, people have shaped nature.