Mills in Altoaragón - harinero
Buerba
Buerba is on a side-branch
of the road between
Sarvisé (Valle de Broto)
and
Escalona (Río Cinca, North of
L'Ainsa).
Now walk through the village and take the steep trail down to
Yeba and the
Río Yesa. You will find the remains of the mill down in the valley,
where the Barranco del Cubo and the Barranco Manatuero merge (1). The mill is also known
as the
Molino de La Artica.
Pictures: xii.1996, 31.xii.2019
Lucien Briet, the French pirinéiste,
on his way from Yeba to Buerba passed here on October the 4th of 1910 and took a picture (*).
He wrote about the mill that he found it closed and mute
with a quiet artificial pond behind it. He also said that the Barranco del Molino, the west branch of
the Barranco de Buerba, had dried up. Nowadays the maps of the Spanish Instituto Geográfico
Nacional show Bco del Cubo
for the former and Bco de Manatuero
for the latter barranco.
It is not clear if at the time of Briet's visit the mill was still in use. Where he is writing about artificial lakes of mills
in El valle de Vió
the German Rudolf Wilmes (‡), mentions the existence of such a lake
on the path between Buerba and Yeba, next to a mill which is in ruins. Wilmes did his fieldwork
between 1929 and 1932 and if the mill then was in ruins it must have been shut down many years earlier.
It is remarkable that we can still find remains almost a century later.
* José Luis Acín Fanlo
— 2006 — Tras las huellas de Lucien Briet Soberbios Pirineos.
Edita Prames, Zaragoza. ISBN: 84-8321-214-5.
‡ Wilmes, Rudolf — 1996 — El Valle de Vió. Estudio etnográfico-lingüístico de un valle altoaragonés.
Edita Prames, Zaragoza. ISBN: 84-87601-64-2. Compilation of the works of Wilmes about the Valle de Vió
(original German translated in Spanish).
