Guadalcacín is the result of the rural colonization processes implemented in the 1950s as part of the expansion and land reclamation policies of the National Institute for Rural Colonization (I.N.C.). It is the village furthest away from the reservoir of the same name, and occupies the area to the west of the Guadalcacín Irrigation Zone together with the settlements of La Barca de La Florida, El Torno, Torrecera, San Isidro del Guadalete, Nueva Jarilla, Estella del Marqués and Guadalcacín. Guadalcacín lies in the area traditionally known as the Llanos de Caulina, an area of quaternary sedimentary rock formations (the alluvial deposits of the Guadalquivir River, known as the “red sands”). As mentioned, one landmark event which was to prove decisive in the creation of Guadalcacín was the construction of the reservoir. The project was the fruit of the spirit of regeneration and the desire for modernization which gripped Spain at the beginning of the 20th century. In the agricultural context this was reflected in a search for greater crop yields and the diversification of agricultural activity through irrigation. The initiative was also closely linked to the creation of rural colonies to provide accommodation for the many homeless agricultural labourers in the Jerez area. The first project was drafted in 1900 and was completed in 1910, but it was not until a quarter of a century later that the land began to be irrigated. The initiative also included plans for building the Colonia de Caulina, which today forms part of Guadalcacín and which represented the first contemporary rural colonization initiative to be put into practice in Jerez. The colony was the result of the policies implemented by the Junta Central de Colonización y Repoblación (Central Colonization and Repopulation Board) (1907) of the Instituto de Reformas Sociales (Institute for Social Reform), which decided that it should be built in the area known as the Abiertas de Caulina, and more specifically in the Dehesa or Hato de la Carne. From 1916 onwards seventy five families were provided with a home, livestock and two hectares of land, but this colonization experience was not successful.

These events, which took place prior to the creation of Guadalcacín, nevertheless form part of the settlement’s "prehistory". However, the real story of the creation of Guadalcacín, like that of rural Jerez over the last 50 years, is inextricably linked to the I.N.C. (National Institute for Rural Colonization), the organ was created in 1939 as the successor to the Republican Institute of Agrarian Reform and the national Economic and Social Land Reform Service. This was the lynchpin of the agrarian policy pursued by the new regime following the Civil War. In 1947 the Guadalcacín Irrigation Area was declared an area of “National Interest”, and became the site of the third rural colonization plan to be implemented by the Spanish State. The goal was to transform and to colonize all the land served by the canals and water channels connected to the Guadalcacín reservoir.

Having acquired land either through expropriation or as a matter of social interest, the soil was improved and gravity irrigation systems were installed with trapezoidal open water channels. More importantly for this analysis, plans were made to create a number of brand new villages, including Guadalcacín, in Sector VI of the six hydraulic sectors into which the Irrigation Area was divided.

The new irrigation of the area around Guadalcacín did not lead to a change in the way the land was worked or in the traditional crops grown here - corn, cotton, beetroot and tobacco – but it did improve crop yields. The most important crop was cotton, which came to account for as much as fifty per cent of all crops grown in the Guadalcacín Irrigation Area. The smallholdings originally planned were agropecuary concerns, but progressive mechanization soon began to reduce breeding livestock numbers.

The site of the village of Guadalcacín and its surroundings was originally formed by pasture land, or dehesa: Dehesa de Angúlo, Dehesa Jerezana, Dehesa de Sepúlveda and other smaller meadows.

But the historic reality of modern Guadalcacín cannot be understood without also taking into account its early settlers: the colonists. Over the brief fifty years of the village’s existence they have created a whole way of living, with their own identities, traditions and community lifestyle, despite the wide variety of their places of origin.

The I.N.C. established a typical profile to which any colonist who wished to settle in this new agricultural area had to conform. Requirements included being married, having a large family, being in good health and not having a criminal record. The colonists who settled in Guadalcacín therefore came from different places both within the Province of Cadiz and beyond its borders. The majority came from Jerez itself, from the Sierra de Cádiz (Grazalema, Alcalá del Valle...), and from Paterna de Rivera, while some, the specialists in crop irrigation techniques, also came from Granada.

In June 1952 the I.N.C. selected the first 21 colonists who, in September of the same year, moved into the cabins built as temporary accommodation pending the construction of the village from 1954 onwards. As with the other new villages built in the 1950s, the centre of Guadalcacín was planned and its layout was decided methodically in the laboratories and technical offices of the I.N.C. by the Institute’s architects and engineers. The planning approach was scientific, based on logical structures designed in accordance with highly detailed land planning criteria and notable for their uniformity, harmony and precision. The streets were laid out in a grid iron pattern and the church and the Town Hall were located in the Plaza Artesanía, named in honour of the trades (carpenters, shopkeepers, bakers…) originally intended to occupy the buildings which provided the straight boundaries around the partly porticoed square.

THE STORY AS TOLD BY THE EARLY COLONISTS

"The cabins had two rooms, one for the parents and one for the children… the floor was made of palm leaves that had to be moved in order to flatten it, the ceilings were made of card impregnated with tar… I slept in the storeroom, with a mare tied to the foot of the bed, a pig at the door and four cows at the bedside. My first son was born there","There was no electric light, we used a “torcía” or a “carburo” (torch), we had no water, our water came from the same well as that used by the cattle..." , these are the memories of Pepa and Milín, telling the story of their respective fathers, José Naranjo Gómez and Esteban Romero Patiño. And this is the image which remains in the mind of those first twenty one colonists when they recall the time when they left their place of birth.

It was between 1951 and 1952 that the I.N.C. expropriated, by Decree, the land which was to be used to create the centre of Guadalcacín; it was a series of meadows used for grazing, crops, vineyards and cattle tracks (Dehesa de Angúlo, Dehesa Jerezana, Dehesa de Sepúlveda, etc.). The colonists were selected from farmers originally from Alcalá de los Gazules, Medina Sidonia, Paterna de Rivera and Jerez. Work began on the construction of the village in 1954, and until then the colonists lived in cabins on a site nearby.

Memories of those early years are full of nostalgia, and have been recorded thanks to the painstaking research carried out by one of the protagonists, Pepa Candón Sánchez, who gathered together her own experiences and those of her neighbours by going from house to house with a tape recorder. The result is an extremely valuable historical document which will forever keep alive the memory of the good old days: "I had to go to bed so that my mother could wash my clothes, I didn’t have any more clothes and so I had to stay in bed until they were dry...I went barefoot and my mother used to rub oil on my feet because I was looking after the pigs in the yard.... There were five of us to the bed and when we were a bit bigger my mother put a chair there so that our feet wouldn’t stick out...", remembers Milín, "I’ve come here from the sugar plant picking chickpeas at four in the morning...", recalls Mari Pepa, the daughter of José Naranjo Gómez These are the testimonies of the generation closest to us, and they make us aware of a world which existed just a few decades ago.

"... He gave injections here in the village... he went around on his bicycle giving injections,... he made a bit of money, he charged for his injections.... He was a slaughterman, too...he made a bit of money...", this is an example of how those who lived in the cabins made a living, as told by Manuela, the daughter of Diego Padilla Romero, the local nurse until Guadalcacín got its own official state registered nurse.

On 4th December 1956 the I.N.C. announced the creation of a new village to be called Guadalcacín del Caudillo. The colonists’ conditions improved considerably, but they still lived under what became known as a Tutelage Regime. " We lived under tutelage for fourteen years, they took away seventy and left us thirty...all the colonists worked days for free because they said they were days they owed the Institute...they took away twenty five percent of the calves...", says Purita, telling the story of her father, José Pietro Sánchez.

When they think of those early days, the old colonists exude a sense of nostalgia. "We were all very united there..... because we all came from different places and then we were like a family...." , says Purita. Guadalcacín has grown since then, but that sharing of joy and, more often, hardship seems to have bound together their feelings; that family atmosphere has grown into an identification with the land and with the name of the village, which can now signal its history with its own coat-of-arms and its own flag.