Los Lavaderos

In La Orotava you can find multiple buildings that have remained as testimony of a not so distant time in which the use of water was essential. Los Lavadero or the washing place. In La Orotava there were up to five public laundry rooms of which only this one, known as the San Francisco laundry room, from the 16th century, remains. A ditch for washing clothes was diverted from the main water channel that supplied the mills. The old main ditch, where they used to wash in common, was replaced in the forties by twenty-four individual sinks with their own spout. 20 years later, the use of these sinks was abandoned due to the domiciliation of running water. The current space was recently recovered to serve as a patrimonial example of the laundress trade and the uses of water in La Orotava. The laundress trade was traditionally female. Here the maids, the humble housewives and those who had the job of laundresses washed together. They used to sing together while washing. This was one of the very few opportunities for women to socialize, and this was an exclusively female space, although they often had to manage to protect themselves from the gaze of the men who spied on them from the mill window. Since the end of the 18th century, the women were forced to clear the place every afternoon, since the laundry room became a kind of casino for the men, where they drank wine and played cards.