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Discovering the Architecture of San Pedro, Oreña

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Bert45

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This is part of what the sources say: La torre es prismática, de cuatro alturas, con tejado a cuatro aguas y bolas herrerianas en los ángulos.
Google has helped to translate it: The tower is prismatic, four storeys high, with a hipped roof and Herrerian balls in the corners.

But I'm curious. Why don't they say that the tower is square -- cuadrado, cuadrangular? Why don't they say 'de cuatro pisos'? My very decent Spainsh-English dictionary doesn't give 'storey' as a translation for 'altura'. I though it meant that the tower had four stages, visible from the outside, but it only has one 'break', just below the windows of the belfry. It's rather clever that GT can know that 'a cuatro aguas' means 'hipped'.
 
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Bert45 said:
La torre es prismática
Click to expand...
Bert45 said:
Why don't they say that the tower is square -- cuadrado, cuadrangular?
Click to expand...
The writer is aware of the difference between a 2-dimensional object, such as a square or a circle, and a 3-dimensional object, such as a prism or a cylinder. What he or she mainly achieves, of course, is leaving the reader puzzled, confused or guessing.
 
Having read that the tower has 4 floors, I can 'see' them even when I am not inside: 1-Door; 2-Window; 3-Round-arched windows; 4-Bells.


(Click to enlarge)
 
I think that Kathar1na has an explanation there. We would understand what is meant by 'a round tower' or 'a square tower', but, of course towers are not round or square 2-dimensional shapes. The writer could have said the tower is a 'rectangular parallelipiped'. I'm glad that he/she didn't. But prisms can be any shape, so saying that the tower is prismatic doesn't really help. The roof is like a very low pyramid, four isosceles triangles meeting at a point in the middle where there is a cross. I have another question: the sources say that the church is "Situada en el centro del pueblo ... " (this is on a small post in front of the church, see attached image). Take a look at a map. By what stretch of the imagination can its location be described as the centre of the village? Also, 'la ultima de ellos a manos de los proprios vecinos de Oreña' (referring to its restorations) puzzled me for some time. "the last of them at the hands of Oreña's own neighbours" is a literal translation. My dictionary helped, the first translation of 'vecino' is 'neighbour', but other possible meanings are 'citizens', 'resident' and 'inhabitant'. I suppose a Spaniard would not be confused.
 
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Bert45 said:
My dictionary helped, the first translation of 'vecino' is 'neighbour', but other possible meanings are 'citizens', 'resident' and 'inhabitant'.
Click to expand...
I am surprised how often I have seen this wrong translation. Again: context, context, context. In most cases, the correct translation of "los vecinos" is "the inhabitants" but that's not used in English news articles in the same way as in Spanish news articles. In English, such content is expressed in a different way, for example "people in the village", "Londoners" or similar.

More intriguing are the bolas herrerianas. I had no idea what Herrerian balls in the corners are supposed to look like. I now know that a sphere in the style of architect Juan de Herrera (1530–1597) looks like this (see below). I don't know what this decorative architectural element is called when it's found outside of Spain.

 
Kathar1na said:
Having read that the tower has 4 floors, I can 'see' them even when I am not inside: 1-Door; 2-Window; 3-Round-arched windows; 4-Bells.

View attachment 116247
(Click to enlarge)
Click to expand...
The first three floors can be seen by following the layers of different types of stones (and their colors) used in the main building. Sort of like seeing where the construction of the Washington Monument was stopped and then restarted with different colored stones.
 
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Bert45 said:
Situada en el centro del pueblo ... " (this is on a small post in front of the church, see attached image). Take a look at a map. By what stretch of the imagination can its location be described as the centre of the village?
Click to expand...
According to Wikipedia ES:
  • Oreña, 903 hab., distribuidos en los barrios de Viallán (232 hab.), Bárcena (71 hab.), Torriente (44 hab.), San Roque (144 hab.), Perelada (73 hab.), Padruno (28 hab.), Caborredondo (267 hab.) y Carrastrada (42 hab.)
The church is all by itself but judging by Google Earth, it looks like it may well be bang in the middle of the cluster of these villages/hamlets that is Oreña.
 
I blame Google Maps! It shows "Oreña" as an area on CA-131 about 650 m wide. It seems that there is really no such place as "Oreña". According to second.wiki: Oreña is a coastal town in the municipality of Alfoz de Lloredo ( Cantabria , Spain ). It is divided into 10 neighborhoods separated from each other, which means a low population density. The neighborhoods are the following: Viallán, Bárcena, Torriente, San Roque, Padruno, Perelada, El Valle, Espinaleo, Caborredondo and Carrastrada.
That list consists of 10 villages, not one of which is named "Oreña". Yet, as you approach what Google Maps outlines as "Oreña" from the west (but not from the east) on the CA-131, there is a roadsign that says you are entering "Oreña". I will be the first to admit that I don't understand the hierarchy of Spanish geographical nomenclature. {I'm hoping that Kathar1ma will explain: barrio, parroquia, pueblo, municipality, etc. Which has a concello and which has an ayuntamiento?] How can 10 separate villages be called a "town"? There are signs on the CA-131 pointing to other neighbourhoods, e.g Caborredondo, Torriente. The sign for Oreña coming from the east on the CA-131 is here: 43.39774200899122, -4.171266140332447. What Google maps says is Oreña is actually Barrio Viallán according to waze.com.
 
Bert45 said:
explain: barrio, parroquia, pueblo, municipality, etc. Which has a concello and which has an ayuntamiento
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That can probably be better explained by someone who lives in Spain or knows Spain well enough.

I think that concello is used in Galicia/Galician and ayuntamiento is used in Spanish in general.
 
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Bert45 said:
How can 10 separate villages be called a "town"?
Click to expand...
The simple answer is perhaps that it is not called a "town", it is called a localidad. Again, see ES Wikipedia for Oreña and for Alfoz de Lloredo.

Perhaps this is another case where concepts simply cannot be translated by one single word into English, and understanding depends on the context. Certainly in other countries, but presumably in Spain, too, the word in question, such as Gemeinde or commune can denote either the local administration or the geographical entity (which doesn't have to be a continuous area and which doesn't have to include one smaller entity that has the same name as the whole) or the local population/inhabitants, depending on the context. The English word would be municipality but that word is not used as often or in the same way in English.

The Spanish Wikipedia article has a nice long list for the terms for municipality or equivalent in numerous countries. The corresponding English Wikipedia article has a much shorter list and lacks this international dimension; it has a bit more information about usage in English-speaking countries.

I'm not sure how to explain this well. Understanding words of another language does not mean just knowing the words and what the corresponding words would be in one's own language, like a dictionary does. It involves a bit more.
 
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