From hydraulic Utopia to rural retreat: Saucelle's hydroelectric settlement and the transformation of territory under Franco's regime

This article examines the hydroelectric settlement of Saucelle, designed in 1954 by architects Manuel Ignacio Galíndez and José María Chapa for Iberduero in the province of Salamanca, as a case of corporate urbanism under Francoism. Drawing on original plans, photographs, corporate publications and comparative literature, it analyses how architecture, planning and industrial paternalism produced a functional, symbolic and hierarchical environment in which housing, work, welfare, religion, leisure and landscape were closely interwoven. The article argues that Saucelle was not merely an auxiliary settlement for a dam, but part of a broader territorial project through which hydroelectric production, corporate authority and state presence were materially and symbolically articulated in a remote border landscape. It also traces the later transformation of the settlement into the rural tourism complex Aldeaduero, showing how an enclave originally shaped by discipline, labour hierarchy and Francoist ideals has been re-signified as a leisure and heritage landscape. In doing so, the article connects the study of Francoist hydraulic modernisation with wider debates on company towns, cultural landscapes of engineering, post-industrial heritage, democratic memory and the social afterlives of authoritarian infrastructures.