Cortijo history
Cortijo la Tenada is part of a 150-year-old farm set in the fieds of Nijar which used to be known as El Hornillo. There are documents from the 1850s which mention this Cortijo:
Madoz, P. – Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de ultramar
Madrid 1846-1850, Establecimiento tipográfico de P. Madoz y L. Sagasti.
Cortijos, haciendas y lagares – Provincia de Almería
Consejería Obras Públicas y Transportes, Dir. Gen. De Arquitectura y Vivienda, 2004
El Hornillo is a part, along with other farmhouses of this size (the Montano, Fraile) of a typical and logical settlement system measuring exactly the resources of the site to determine the number of people who could be sustained by the land and what distances should be put between each farmhouse.
The ground surrounding the courtyard was exclusively dedicated to agriculture, growing the typical harvest of this dry region, such as olive and almond trees and wheat fields.
The amount of settlers in the past times were perfectly balanced with what the territory offered. This feature has been kept in the centuries to come and it is what we call “sustainable occupation of the territory” in modern terms.