Oral History of Rural Life and Demographic Decline in Herrera de Alcántara

A qualitative oral history collection from the village of Herrera de Alcántara, focusing on life before and after significant population decline. The description details a drop from 1500 to 300 inhabitants and covers themes like harsh Franco-era schooling, children's work and games, poverty, and threats like wolves and cattle thieves along the Spanish-Portuguese border. The dataset was coordinated by Álvarez Pérez, Xosé Afonso and last updated on May 5, 2024.

Use Cases

• Analyze narratives of demographic decline based on the described population drop from 1500 to 300.
• Study historical education practices based on descriptions of school harshness, desks, and instruments under a Francoist teacher.
• Research childhood and labor in rural settings based on mentions of children having little time to play due to work.
• Examine folklore and community memory based on described stories of wolves, cattle thieves, and 'times before'.

Strengths

• Provides a specific quantitative anchor for demographic change, citing a population drop from 1500 to 300.
• Covers multiple concrete themes of rural life, including education, work, games, and security.
• Includes multilingual descriptions (Spanish, Portuguese, English), suggesting potential for cross-linguistic analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to a single village's oral history.

Provenance

Source

Álvarez Pérez, Xosé Afonso (coord.), harvested via e-cienciaDatos from a Dataverse repository.

Collection Method

Likely contains transcribed or recorded oral history interviews, as inferred from the description's narrative content.

Time Range

Covers a historical period 'before' a significant population decline, with a reference to a Francoist teacher, suggesting mid-20th century.

Freshness

Last updated 2024-05-05 07:25:17; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Focuses on Herrera de Alcántara, a village on the Spanish-Portuguese border region (the 'Raya').