The Citadel of Gijon

Latitude: 43.5410881 Length: -5.6583548
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It is well known that housing is a basic social need. It is also a right , at least since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the Spanish Constitution of 1978. And yet, its price remains high and unattainable for many, and the supply, always insufficient, has lagged behind social needs.

Throughout Europe, from the mid-19th century well into the 20th, industrial development and the mass migration of rural workers seeking employment in factories led to the first instances of overcrowding in cities. In Spain, in each city or province, the emerging working-class neighborhoods were known by different names: patios, corrales de vecinos, casas de corredor, corralillos, portones, barrios ocultos, or citadels.

What is the citadel of Celestino Solar?

Also known as the Citadel of Capua, it is a unique mini-neighborhood , a model of working-class housing that was replicated throughout Spain but which saw remarkable development in Gijón. Population growth here was explosive after the railway connected the city to the mining basins and the central plateau at the end of the 19th century. This, combined with port activity, propelled Gijón to take off as the industrial capital of the Principality of Asturias. In just a few years, even before the turn of the 20th century, the city grew from 10.000 inhabitants to almost 30.000, creating a serious housing problem.

The Celestino Solar Citadel is now a museum , an ethnographic space in excellent condition, a survivor of the nearly 200 settlements of this type that developed in Gijón during that era. The La Arena neighborhood, specifically, had the highest concentration of these citadels. Celestino Solar's consisted of twenty-four single-story houses (grouped in four rows) and two courtyards. The houses were no larger than 36 square meters and housed at least four people, because in addition to the couple and their children (between two and four), the parents of the spouses often also lived there. The number of single women, widows, or unmarried women with several children was also very high.

The houses were laid out in two rooms, a small living room, and a tiny kitchen. There were no amenities whatsoever: no running water, no sewage system, and no electricity. There were four communal toilets, in addition to a well in the so-called Great Courtyard that supplied poor-quality water. Women and girls made several trips a day carrying buckets to the nearest fountain outside the citadel. Only in the mid-1950s, after repeated protests from the residents, was a fountain installed within the complex.

In the 1960s, the Gijón citadels of La Arena began to disappear rapidly, coinciding with the growing interest in this neighborhood (near the beach) from the middle classes and summer visitors. As early as 1959, a construction company had purchased the land with the intention of demolishing the houses and building new apartments, taking advantage of its proximity to the beach. Delays in the expropriation process saved the complex from demolition, as with the arrival of democracy it became protected under Gijón's first General Urban Development Plan (PGOU). The Capua Citadel was inhabited for a full century, between 1877 and 1975. From that date onward, it began to be abandoned, and its residents moved to the city's new working-class neighborhoods.

Where is the Citadel?

Its location is perhaps the most surprising thing about this space. We're talking about a place that's literally hidden, practically invisible. It's accessed through a narrow, easily overlooked alleyway, located at number 15 Capua Street , behind buildings with understated architecture and beautiful facades typical of the Gijón expansion era.

This location, hidden behind bourgeois buildings , is not circumstantial, but rather one of the most common characteristics of working-class housing estates throughout Spain, prompting numerous sociological analyses. Backyards concealed from view from the street, like the one who sweeps under the sofa, and accessed only through narrow alleyways as the only veiled entry point, were a form of working-class urban planning born in England during the Industrial Revolution and exported to the rest of the world. The estate in question was already enclosed by a wall in 1880, and at the beginning of the 20th century, it was further enclosed within a city block after the construction of the buildings that currently surround it.

Built in 1878 on the initiative of the wealthy emigrant who gave it his name, in the area known as La Garita, it occupied a plot of more than 1600 square meters. Celestino Solar had returned from Cuba and decided to invest in land in a burgeoning area, knowing that workers needed affordable housing. Generally, the owners of these tenement buildings were property owners and merchants belonging to the local bourgeoisie. The houses were rented by the working classes, not only by day laborers from Gijón's factories but also by construction workers, barbers, miners, seamstresses, maids, cooks, cigar makers, street vendors, fishmongers… Their wages barely covered their rent. In contrast, the large buildings surrounding it were initially inhabited by small-time industrial bourgeois, but were soon occupied by professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects, and merchants. Both social classes were forced to live side-by-side, separated by only a few meters. From the outset, workers' housing was criticized by hygiene societies, such as the Popular Association of Culture and Hygiene of Gijón, which advocated for housing to be organized according to the prevailing morality. They believed homes should have privacy so that no one could see or hear what happened inside; that two or more families should not live in the same house; and that the married couple and their children should not share a room.

The Museum of the Citadel of Gijón

Today, one of the rows of restored houses has been converted into a space for permanent and temporary exhibitions and activities . Visitors can enjoy explanatory panels, news articles and documents from the period, as well as a magnificent photographic collection and several audiovisual presentations, including testimonies from some of the former residents. A recreation of the interior of these humble dwellings can also be seen in one of the houses, with meticulous attention to detail: a statue of Saint Pancras with his back turned, an oil can, a coffee grinder, cauldrons and basins with hand-painted flowers… Inside, meat was only consumed in the Sunday stew, and the children's afternoon snack consisted of cream with sugar, sometimes butter and bread, or an ounce of chocolate. The kitchen also served as the bathroom, as the family washed there. It was also through the kitchen that some of the little light and air that ventilated the houses entered. The houses were also the workplace for many women, such as seamstresses, and for some artisans.

This open-air museum preserves the main walls of other old houses, remains of the original floor and part of the wall that closed the citadel at the time of its construction at the end of the XNUMXth century. A series of explanatory panels on the Asturian and Gijón industrial revolution, and on the housing problem at that time, have been arranged in it.

On either side of the alley leading to the Capua courtyard, you can see several large murals by the Asturian artist Ernesto García del Castillo, known as Neto . These large and vibrant murals depict scenes of daily life in the citadel.