ETHNOGRAPHIC HERITAGE

The town of Los Realejos spreads over a territory that goes from the coastline to the area of La Fortaleza y El Cabezón at a height of 2.150 metres. Therefore, it has got a number of strips regarding weather, which go in parallel with the coastline with some variable characteristics with respect to dampness, rainfalls and temperatures. It has made the agricultural exploitation of the municipality follow the guidelines which take place according to the special features of each area as regards its elevation. Thus, Los Realejos, presents a technique of a straight improvement which is also typical of other towns in the North of the island. The areas in the coastline, with greater temperatures and a large number of hours of sunshine, have been more favourable for the cultivation of products like the vines, the sugar cane and the prickly pear for the woodlouse breeding, from the XV to the XIX centuries, and more recently of the banana plantations, which widened from the first half of the XIX century till now. Over the height of 350 metres, the multiple crops for dry farming take up the cultivated lands. It is worth to mention the importance of the cereal crop in the highest land such as Icod el Alto, La Cruz Santa, Palo Blanco, Las Llanadas, etc.

According to these exploitation techniques, we find remains of different infrastructures used to do the countryside tasks, some of them in a situation of ease and others kept by their continuous use. In this way, next to the cereal fields we verify the existence of threshing floors, spaces of paved lands and limited by a circle of stones, where cereals were threshed. They were arranged at the top of places to make easy the task of winnowing the cornfields. It is a sample of it the settlement of Hoya Farrais, in La Cruz del Castaño and the threshing floor of Los Abreu. The main country estates of the municipality count on their own threshing floors, like Hacienda de la Era in Tigaiga.