Casa Maria is a very distinguished house in Sedella. At the beginning of the last century, the house was owned by the church and the pastor of the village lived here. By then the house was known by Casa Maria, but the name was not used the last 100 years after the church sold the house. It is the last house at the only horizontal street in the village, called Calle Llana. This means 'flat street'. The street is about 150m long, from the main church to the house.

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Traditional building

The house is very traditionally build. The walls are 50-60cm thick. The building material is very hard rockstones, which were found in the neighborhood. By donkey these rocks were transported down to the village. There was no cement in those days either, so the builders used a special mixture of sand between the rocks. When a wall was finished another sand mixture was put on the outside. Then it was painted with chalk. The result of all of this: no wall is straight, but when it is warm, it is cool on the inside. 

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The house had no bathrooms, no kitchen, no heating and no drains. This all had to be built and that was no easy task on thick hard rockstones.

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The village

Sedella was and still is a very quite village. In early days people lived from the olives, almonds  and viticulture. These trees are still there, but it is not the main source of income anymore. Almost all old Spanish inhabitants still have a piece of land to cultivate and graze their donkeys. There is no industry in the village or even close. So many people left for the big cities in Spain. What left in Sedella were older Spanish people, living from their pension and social income.

 

Many houses were abandoned. Over the last years, you see more and more foreigners from Northen Europe come to Sedella, who bought a house over here. And to many surprises, the village starts living again. There is a little supermarket, 2 cafes have opened and the mayor and his crew organize many activities and festivities. The Mayor is very active and everybody loves it.