Las Hurdes 2.39 
As regards the habits and customs of these people, we here 
roughly transcribe from the work of Pascual Madoz! some selected 
extracts that appear to be as accurate to-day as when they were 
written some sixty years ago. 
The food of the Hurdanos is as noxious as it is scanty. The potato 
is the general stand-by, either boiled or cooked with crude goat’s suet ; 
sometimes beans fried in the same grease, and lastly the leaves of trees, 
boiled; with roots, the stalks of certain wild grasses, chestnuts, and 
acorns. Bread is practically unknown—all they ever have is made of 
coarse rye and such crusts as they obtain by begging outside their 
district. Only when at the point of death is wheaten bread provided. 
A WOLF-PROOF SHEEPFOLD ON THE ALAGON, NORTH ESTREMADURA 
Walls 10 feet high: note the shepherd's dwelling alongside. Within are sheep. 
Their clothing consists of a shapeless garment reaching from the hip 
to the knee, a shirt without collar, fastening with one button, and a sack 
carried over the shoulder. They have no warm clothing and all go bare- 
foot. The women are even less tidy and dirtier than the men. Never 
have they a vestige of anything new—nothing but discarded garments 
obtained by begging, or in exchange for chestnuts, at the distant towns. 
Their usual “fashion is never to take off, to mend, or to wash any rag 
they have once put on—it is worn till it falls off through sheer old age 
and dirt. They never wash nor brush their hair, and go bare-legged like 
the men. 
These, moreover, are the richest ; the majority being clad in goatskins 
(untanned) that they kill or that die. These skins the men fix round 
} Diccionario geografico, estadistico, y historico de Espaia, by Pascual Madoz (Madrid, 
1845), 
