La gestión del agua y su influencia en la construcción del territorio

Resumen

Water, source of life, is the most important element for understanding cultural landscapes. Its necessary mobilization through the use of gravity creates territories through a wise management. The human being has been able to generate inhabitable landscapes and revert negative natural original conditions into positive conditions by proposing management and functioning techniques very close to the water cycle and nature. By studying these techniques, it is possible to discover villages such as the “Hydraulic spaces” that manage water within its territory. This fact empathizes a complex system, which is absolutely measured and constructed according to the strict discipline of water, managed in “man común” from the “casal”, which is the base cell of the community. The different hydraulic units are articulated amongst themselves, always with the preminence of those located upstream so that those located downstream will benefit from “overflows” in a coherent set where the different elements, dams and levada are coupled together so water is in ceaselessly ongoing and use: “water does not sleep”. With this logic, a system that allows to adapt to the variability of nature using water resources as a process in which human being intervenes has been created. An interpretation that not only allows to historically understand a mode of occupation, but reveals a rich knowledge of local conditions and provides information for the development of new techniques that incorporate these wise principles.