The hut

La barraca, by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, takes place in rural Valencia in the late nineteenth century. R recounts the extreme living conditions of the peasants in the area. One character, Uncle Barret, cannot work in the garden that his ancestors had cultivated for generations because he did not have the resources to pay Don Salvador, the owner of the land.
The neighbors of the village, led by Pepeta and Pimentó, conspire so that no one returns to work in that garden. Some time later Batiste and his family (his wife Teresa and their children Roseta, Batistet and Pasqualet) arrived, who, oppressed by misery, settled there and paid the rent.
Since then they have been victims of harassment from the rest of the community, who accuse them of submitting to Don Salvador’s demands.
The harassment comes to a head when the children of the Batiste family clash with other children in the village, and little Pasqualet dies.
A sense of guilt spreads among the community. However, it will be short-lived. Batiste confronts Pimentó in a brawl and a few days later when Batiste is shot, he responds by mortally wounding Pimentó. The Batiste barracks burn in the fire and the family leaves the village.

The immense plain stretched out under the bluish glow of dawn, a wide strip of light that appeared on the Mediterranean side.
The last nightingales, tired of cheering with their trills that autumn night, which by the warmth of its atmosphere seemed spring, launched the final chirp as if they were wounded by the light of dawn with their reflections of steel. From the thatched roofs of the barracks came the flocks of sparrows like a flock of persecuted pilluelos, and the treetops began to shudder under the first romps of these crooks of space, who ruffled everything with the rubbing of their feather blouses.
The rumors that had populated the night slowly died down: the gurgling of the ditches, the murmur of the cane fields, the barking of the watchful mastiffs.
He woke up the vegetable garden, and his yawns were getting louder and louder. The crowing of the rooster rolled from barrack to barracks. The bell towers of the villages returned with noisy badajeo the touch of first mass that sounded in the distance, in the towers of Valencia, vanished by the distance. From the corrals came a discordant animal concert: neighing of horses, mooing of cows, clucking of chickens, bleating of lambs, snoring of pigs; A noisy awakening of beasts that, feeling the fresh caress of dawn laden with acrid perfume of vegetation, wished to run through the fields.

Fragment of the work

Reference edition: Valencia, Editorial Prometeo, 1898.