El poblado del Esla (Zamora): Arquitecturas para la industria energética a partir de sus fuentes documentales

The development of Spanish industry at the beginning of the 20th century had one of its greatest exponents in hydroelectric infrastructures. Villages were soon built ex novo to provide shelter for the personnel who worked in these facilities, all of them planned and far removed from spontaneity, located mainly in rural areas and usually with high standards of design and quality. Many of them, now abandoned, represented perhaps the greatest architectural innovation in the rural environment, either ascribed to the vernacular style or reflecting modernity. This seems to us to be reason enough to examine them. We propose to study the Esla planned town, built next to the Salto de Ricobayo (Zamora), with the particularity that this is the first time that the sources and archives of Iberdrola in the province of Zamora and of the bishopric of the diocese of Zamora have been accessed for this purpose. We analyse the built complex and its urban planning, its most significant and iconic architecture and, at the same time, we promote its enhancement through the discovery of its most relevant values.