FOLKLORE MUSEUM

In order to preserve our origins and cultural traditions, the Museum of Arts and Customs (Musen de Artes y Costumbres) was created in Benagalbon in 1995, through the civic initiative and protectorate of the Cultural Department of the Mayor's Office of Rincon de la Victoria.
This museum is mainly composed of two parts: one that shows the farmhouse (bedroom living room and kitchen) and the other, the tools and crafts for farming.At this point it is necessary to mention that almost all the existing pieces were donated to the museum by the inhabitants of the village.

The Museum of Popular Arts was born from the "Cultural Weeks" organized at regular intervals in the town. These included exhibitions in the public library and from this came the idea of launching a campaign to collect cultural material related to their past.

With the work of the main promoter of the idea, Mrs. Natividad Díaz, the resources of the museum, were collected and arranged in defined units that represent the different rural activities of the region and the different spaces of a traditional house. The Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions was inaugurated in the Cultural Week of 1993 as one of its main activities and received enormous acceptance from the population.
Features and exhibition spaces

The museum is located in a large, flexible, irregular footprint that has been used to create different environments with continuous exhibition continuity and where the different collections have been set up with a certain impression of ordination according to activities and spaces of the traditional house There is a clear physical or conceptual separation between the different exhibition units.

The first exhibition unit simulates a bakery or tahona, where the simulation of a bread oven has been built, next to which a wooden trough is arranged, with whose sieves the flour is sifted and the bread is kneaded as well as the shovels insert the shaped dough into the oven and take out the bread already cooked.

Following this, as an independent exhibition unit, a store with shelves and counter, where they were installed acclimatized: Scales, pieces of different sizes, on the counter; and on the shelf a tobacco card, a cigarette rolling machine, various cans and packages of food, etc. Next to the bookshelf, directly on the floor, there is a scale for weighing bulky items, a roman, a counter and an oil separator. In addition, there is a curious old telephone to hang with a crank and a roulette with metal structure and crystals of different colors, a game of the most popular old parties and taverns.

In front of this second unit is the third exhibition unit, where the objects related to the field work are hung on the walls, including different types of traditional plows and different harnesses to harness the beasts: the frontiles (heads for the bufos from the holders), the fork or the belly. To prepare the animals for tillage and transport, several yokes or ubios are presented, as well as the aguaderas or cantareras, the esparto pigs, etc.. Two types of threshing are also exposed. The traditional wooden board, in which spun stones are arranged in the lower part, and the most modern trillo with a structure of metal gears.

The wine is represented in the fourth exhibition unit, where the raisin, the most typical product of the country, is the queen of the exhibition. Among other things, we can highlight the fruit bowl with the pad on the bottom, so that the raisin can be transported from the vine to the passers-by. Extreme care must be taken, as the whitish powder that covers the already ripe grape must be kept for perfect drying it is passed by the passengers and reproduced in a model representing a workhouse exhibited in this device. In addition, there are various vine and branch pruners, formalets for "chopping" the raisin, molds for assembling the "seretes" and boxes of raisins, some old examples of which are shown, as well as photographs that facilitate the understanding of objects in their traditional use, giving the viewer a useful overview of the collections.

From here we go to the fifth exhibition unit, where the kitchen was set up acclimatized. First, we found a kamal hanging from the ceiling, where the pig was placed after slaughter and subsequent preparation of the products obtained from this animal. The kitchen, equipped with the construction of a fireplace with chimneys and shelves for your household, reveals silver furniture with old stoneware and almireceros with their syrups. On the working structure are arranged pots of different sizes, lanterns and lanterns, porrones, kettles and skimmers or shovels, buñeroles, charcoal irons and tables for cheese making. and next to all these two great machines related to coffee: one for roasting and the other for preparation.

Next to this unit, in one of the few display cases of the museum, some documents related to the place are exhibited. Next to it is the sixth exhibition unit in the museum: the dining room with a table and four chairs, on which there is a beautiful glass lamp.

The last exhibition unit, the seventh, is the bedroom set up as a diorama and consists of an old metal bed with traditional bedding, a chest of drawers, the crib, trunk and ark and two counters with aguamaniles. one in metal and one in wood for men.