A FASCINATING snapshot into the turbulent history of Benalup, previously known as Casas Viejas, has been released.
Titled Itinerarios por Casas Viejas, the book by Salustiano Gutierrez contains a number of rare photographs taken by American photographer Jerome R. Mintz in the 1950s.
The town was renamed to escape the connotation of a controversial massacre of Anarchist peasants in the town in 1933.
Can we see some then?
You can see lots on YouTube, for example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdci7CQaf4M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8u9-UqKBQs&feature=fvw
Mintz’s original book “The Anarchists of Casas-Viejas” is still available and gives a fascinating insight into the dreadful conditions that agricultural workers lived under in Andalucia in the early 20th Century, and why anarchism took hold. Contrary to popular belief the Anarchists were very well-organised, clean-living, teetotal, many were vegetarians and they accepted common-law marriage (the Catholic Church always supported the establishment rather than the working class).