STONE

The proximity of the city of Toledo, where large architectural works are carried out that require large quantities of granite ashlars for their construction, also has an influence. The quarries of these municipalities have produced stones for such important buildings as the Hospital de Tavera, the Cathedral and the Alcázar of Toledo, the Palace of the Provincial Council, the wheels for the water mills of this city and of the whole province and other buildings at state level such as the Bank of Spain in Madrid.

Nowadays, the craft activity of stonemasonry has been helped by the industrialisation that this sector has undergone and that in a certain way has helped the stonemasons to carry out the most difficult works within this trade, however, the hand of man is necessary and continues to be a pillar of this craft, to mould and shape the pieces created in the many workshops of these localities. Modern workshops that have their beginnings in those quarries that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries began to spread over the public lands obtained by these municipalities, once they became independent from Toledo, hence the emergence of municipally-owned quarries.

Thus, each family of stonemasons would obtain a small plot of land within these plots to develop their small quarrying workshops, which consisted of a small space called a “gango”, made with four stone pillars and wooden or sheet metal roofs and a small room dug into the rock where the work tools were kept under lock and key, All this was associated with a vein of stone from which the raw material was extracted. Nowadays, numerous “gangos” of these primitive quarries can be seen dotting the landscape, which speak to us of the boom in quarrying in Los Montes de Toledo. From the end of the 20th century onwards, all these small workshops were moved to modern facilities where the craft of working the stone with chisel strokes is still practised today. As has happened with leather craftsmanship, not only has it been passed down from father to son, but its working techniques have also been passed on from older craftsmen to young stone craftsmen.