1 HISTORICAL APPROACH

The Christian Reconquest of Valencian lands was a

relatively short process, due to, among other reasons,

the scarce resistance of the Islamic forces during

most of the sieges and also to the strategy followed

by James I, who chose agreements over invasion.

(Gómez-Bayarri 2003, Vol. III, 175).

The integration of the Arab population in the con-

figuration of the Kingdom of Valencia is considered

one of the main reasons for the success of the Re-

conquest, at the same time favouring the survival of

the Muslim workforce, until their definitive expul-

sion, in the first decade of the 17th

century. However, after the crusade there were constant up-risings, especially in the region of the Júcar river, the Islamic defensive limit in the conquest of the north-ern area of the kingdom and the main focus of riots and insecurities in the years following the land dis-tribution to the Christians. In times of Islamic rule, the hamlet of Massalavés, Maçal-hauézin or inn of the Hauézin (Llorens 1976,55), had a population fundamentally dedicated to agriculture, manned by a defensive construction,

from which there are still remains. After its recovery by the Christians it was given to the Milá's lineage by royal privilege, thus the barony of Massalavés, a Christian manor of mainly Arab population, was created. However, it didn't have a stable governance, being passed onto several feudal lords over the sub-sequent three centuries, until the news of the claim of the Milá in 1493 (Llorens 1976, 64-78). Such social and governance instabilities, together with fortuitous natural disasters, such as the regular overflows of the Júcar river, justified the construc-tion of the new Massalavés's fortifications, using the remains of the Arab tower, as well as the various in-terventions of repair and refurbishment which the building went through during the first times of its existence. Fortifications, being constructions of singular char-acteristics with regards to their implementation and design comparing to the rest of architectonical types, were uncomfortable and difficult to maintain when there was no longer a sense for its usage. They would be abandoned, becoming quarries that has-tened their deterioration, only taking advantage of the materials they offered. In other cases, they were reused, given their convenient location, as base for other buildings, including becoming new fortifica-tions.

Masked defensive architecture. El portal de Massalavés.

Ignacio Matoses Ortells Architect and quantity surveyor, Valencia, Spain

SUMMARY: Sometimes defensive architecture, over time, was adapted so the restorations would comply with any new functional requirements. Such interventions could modify the existing typology, producing su-perimposed typologies that obviated the nature of the monuments. This happened to the doorway of Mas-salavés, a defensive construction that was refurbished integrating its typological characteristics to those of a traditional home, masking the characteristic elements of its nature. The building was used during the 20

th cen-

tury as the Town Hall, which was left in a state of neglect after being left vacant. A recent intervention, aimed at repairing the building in order to give it a new use, has favoured the study of the original construction tech-niques employed to build it, the masonry, the wall made of limestone and masonry mortar in a wood form-work, and the rammed earth, during the process discovering concealed elements of high heritage value. The article will try to undertake a historical and constructive approach of the building by explaining the interven-tions that were employed, to foster their knowledge and dissemination.

Figure 1. Jérica, a Roman tower transformed into a Mudejar

bell tower. Photo F. Sánchez. There are a huge number of cases of fortified ele-ments that have been transformed into buildings for other uses, either defensive towers into homes, cas-tles restored and reformed into shrines, watchtowers into belfries (Fig. 1), walls used as dividing walls, etc. The alterations could be of such a magnitude that they sometimes hid any elements that were charac-teristic of the fortifications, making them unrecog-nizable, hidden under the architectonic circum-stances of their new use. The castle of Massalavés also went through several construction stages throughout its history. Its perma-nence now hides under an unrecognizable appear-ance of a traditional house, masking the signs of its defensive past (Fig.2). As we previously mentioned, it was originally a tower of a Muslim hamlet, adapt-ing its structures to build fortified spaces after the Reconquest, the doorway forming part of it. Later it was used as the palace of the Barony of the Milá's lineage, which achieved social relevance thanks to its contributions to the crown and to links, by mar-riage, to the Holy See (Llorens 1976, 86).

Figure 2. The Casa de la Vila. Photograph from the book: Villa

y Baronía de Masalavés. Unknown author.

After acquiring the title of Villa by royal privilege in the 16

th century and after the municipal charter in the

17th

century, there are several references to the use of the castle as a place for meetings of the Vila’s Gen-eral Council (Madoz 1848, Vol XI, 278; Llorens 1976, 133), the prelude to its subsequent refurbishment into Town Hall, in 1889, when the Barony of Mas-salavés died out with the abolition of feudal lords in Spain in 1838.

2 DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING

The state of the building at the moment of the inter-vention already foretold of the existence of the origi-nal building. With the loss of the coating on the first level on the front facade, a wall of limestone ashlars

became visible, with a slightly pointed arched access built from ashlar, that was blocked for the insertion of a trabeated hole. These elements were strange for a building whose parameters were those of a tradi-tional house between dividing walls: a house of two levels, with a gabled roof, a façade of short length

Figure 3. Elevation of the Casa de la Vila before the beginning

of the works. Photograph I. Matoses.

perforated with gaps of symmetrical composition and built using simple techniques and cheap materi-als (Fig.3). Inside, on the lower level, there is a pointed barrelled vault, outside of the building's symmetry axis and resting on a wall made of rammed earth, reinforced by a dividing wall of modern construction. On the back facade there is another ashlar pointed arch, big-ger in size than the one described on the main facade and also partially blocked with reused ashlars, allow-ing for a trabeated gap that connects to an exterior staircase, of modern manufacture, that connects with the upper level rooms. These rooms on the upper level, all had independent access from the staircase, and their roofs were covered in wood, wattle and plaster. The structure, resolved with wooden trusses resting on the walls, had partially collapsed due to a lack of conservation works. The archaeological intervention answered many of the questions raised during the initial visits. On the inferior level, the original paving and the auxiliary access elements, such as the portcullis, were discov-ered. But more interesting was the finding of a small space, between the wall of rammed earth and the di-viding wall. It had a staircase providing access to the superior level from a semi-circular arched door lo-cated inner elevation, blocked with reused masonry.

Figure 4. Inside after the removal of the coating of the wall,

loophole sectioned by window. Photograph I. Matoses.

Together with another door from which the footings of the jambs are known, it very probably delimited the room that Pascual Madoz mentions that was util-ised as a dungeon during the times in which the building was used as the headquarters of the General Council of the Vila (Madoz 1848, Vol XI, 278). Unfortunately, an unwise decision was made that justified the search for lower layers, which led to the removal of the medieval staircase, which had sur-vived until now. On the upper level the archaeological intervention discovered, against an initial hypothesis, that the medieval building reached said level, compromising a wall made of limestone mortar and masonry with the rammed earth technique. Loopholes, that had been blocked, appeared in its walls, two of them having been sectioned during the opening of the modern windows (Fig. 4). The door of the balcony and the upper level access door, both located in the symmetry axes of the inner and outer facades, were built over pre-existing holes resolved using semi-circular arches of brick row-locks. Beneath the remains of the uncharacteristic roof, on the faces of the walls the putlog holes for forgings that had disappeared could be seen and the footings

Figure 5. Hypothetical reconstruction of the doorway. Image

from the museographical project by J. Hidalgo.

of a timbrel vault, probably a roof, more typical of these type of constructions. The construction tech-nique most used by the Arab workforce in the Júcar river area (Hidalgo and Matoses 2012) were walls made using limestone and masonry mortar in a wood formwork. In this case, its use would correspond to the reconstruction of a previous space, or to the con-clusion of an unfinished one, with less financial re-sources. With regards to the layout of the modules, the wall is made of limestone and masonry walls of approximately 2.80 m. in length, equivalent to six cubits ma´muní and one metre in height, 2 cubits ma´muní, joined to the lower and upper rowlocks but not to the limestone walls of the perpendicular walls, in whose joints the traces of the top end of the tim-ber formwork, called barzón, alternatively appear. The distance between the putlogs of the formwork is approximately one metre and it is square in shape, 0.10 m. each side, with a wall thickness of around 0.80 m. This data shows a somehow rudimentary work, with a formwork made of less elaborated pieces (the wooden laths used just needed small cuts) compared to those used in the same area in times of Islamic rule. Besides great differences in the measurements of the elements of the wall, an over-simple displacement of the formwork at the wall joining points occurs, all of these signs of the tech-nique’s empovering.

Figure 6. Image of the pouring of limestone mortar on the wall

built in the doorway. Photograph I. Matoses.

3 ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVENTION After being left vacant following the building of the new Massalavés Town Hall in 1975, the undertaking of a rehabilitation of the building as a history mu-seum was recently decided. The project lacked pre-vious studies, a fundamental tool in these kinds of interventions for the analysis of the building from formal, historical, constructive, archaeological per-spectives, etc., so there was not enough of a knowl-edge base to establish the appropriate intervention criteria for the analysed data (González 1999,54-57). The administrative situation wasn't favourable either, as usually happens with most historical heritage res-torations, the funding was obtained through public administration grants, with very tight deadlines and resources and very inconvenient requirements. The initial plans were modified, beginning with the objective of the intervention, finally finding that, due to the findings at the archaeological stage, it was more appropriate for the building to become a mu-seum of the site. The objective of the intervention in a building of his-torical heritage greatly conditions the architectonical project and the effect of the works on it. That is why the decision about its final intended use it is of huge

Figure 7. Image of the building after the intervention, with the

recovery of the flat roof. Photograph I. Matoses.

importance, evaluating the compatibility of said use with the proper conservation of the heritage. So interventions open to unspecified use must be avoided; interventions where there is no evaluation of the minimum impact required for the implementa-tion of the desired activity or for the convenience of its co-existence with the building. In our case, the objective triggered the creation of a museographical project, elaborated by the architect Javier Hidalgo, that would explain the phases that the building had gone through and the value of the material remnants of each of them, had they survived or not, to provide visitors with a better understand-ing. The intervention no longer intended the condi-tioning of a building containing a museum, but the valuing of the building as a museum. One of the decisions that further conditioned the in-tervention was the reconstruction of the roof, which was in a state of total disrepair, due to the abandon-ment that the building had suffered. It had to be rebuilt and it was deemed that the con-struction of a flat roof, typical of the structure’s de-fensive element (Fig.5), was more appropriate for the building, rather than a sloping roof. If the sloping roof had been kept, reflections about its replacement or not could have been opened, as it had value as an element of traditional architecture and for being part

Figure 8. Image of the inside of the building, with the arch

blocked. Photograph I. Matoses.

of the history of the building, but that was not the case. For its materialisation the walls had to be raised to level their height, and this was achieved with a wall made of limestone mortar and masonry that was re-covered from the excavations. (fig.6). To do so sam-ples of the mix were produced, allowing checks of texture and tones. The battlements that were proba-bly part of the doorway cresting were not built, as there was no hard evidence about their existence nor any information on their appearance, so that the in-terpretation of their inclusion could be confusing. The museum intended to highlight its defensive stage, more attractive for the visitors, but without neglecting the period during which it was the Town Hall (Fig.7). In this sense, the windows of the main façade were blocked, to recover the loopholes that had been sectioned when they were opened, but ele-ments that witnessed their prior use were kept, such as the forged elements of the balcony, the oculus with the date when the refurbished building became the Town Hall, the embedded safe on the first level, etc. Even then, the lack of specialization of the contrac-tor company and of the technicians and directors re-sponsible for the intervention, contributed to the loss of remnants of undeniable value, such as the footing

of the timbrel vault on the upper level or the medie-val staircase previously mentioned. Other aspects of the intervention that were important for its proper understanding include the opening of the back arch, whose blockage prevents the vision of the access to the space, fundamental for the under-standing of the doorway (Fig 8). It couldn't be opened, as the adjacent space belonged to a different owner, leaving its acquisition and opening for the fu-ture.

4 CONCLUSIONS This article, a synthesis of a deep study of the build-ing, intends to disseminate the experience of the Por-tal de Massalavés restoration, a building of a defen-sive character concealed behind the typical image of a traditional home. Besides the historical approach

and the formal and constructive descriptions of the building, a critical analysis of the intervention is made, with the objective that the information can work as reference point for similar future interven-tions.

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