We love our horreo. It has lots of uses and it has 1929 written on the top of it under the cross. 1929 was the year of the Wall Street Crash and its effects were certainly felt in Spain. The economic crisis that followed this led to the downfall of General Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorial government on January 29, 1930, and the second Spanish Republic was proclaimed the following year. Read more here. Perhaps whoever lived here in this house built the horreo then to ensure there was food as times got tough.
We use it for storage of course. It has all sorts of useful stuff in it, none of which I can name right now, but it is a fabulous dry space for that. It runs east/west which I guess means it gets the southern sun on its side all day and avoids the wet weather, which tends to come from the north-west.
It is great as a feral cat feeding station! I wonder what the original owner would think of that. Probably not a lot! I have been trying out strategies to keep the males from fighting each other over food, and one such strategy is to place bowls on either end (on top of the rat-turner) so that any diner, particularly male and not NIgel, can see Nigel coming. He is a brute and I have tried to catch him to get him neutered but to no avail. He keeps looking at me like below, as if he knows I want his cojones.