If you have visited the Pusol School Museum since last fall, you will have been able to visit the room "The years of change", where, among other pieces, the machinery that was gradually disappearing the most traditional way of life of rural communities is exposed. There, in front of a large-format photograph of a plowed terrain of the Camp d'Elx -snapshot by Jaime Brotons- is one of the pieces that most captures the attention of our visits: the tractor.

Red in color and German brand (Hanomag), this tractor dated in 1955 was from house to house until the late eighties, helping neighbors of the Camp d'Elx and surroundings to work their lands, since a single machine could do in a few hours everything that took the farmer days... Thus, the tractor relieved the draught animals and cornered the farm implements and cavalry tackle. Its appearance is undoubtedly one of the most symbolic moments of the mechanization of the countryside.

As we are told in several interviews José Berenguer and Pedro Quirant, known respectively as Pepe "El Matolero" and "El Periquín", this tractor was owned by one Antonio "El Guardia", neighbor of Daya Nueva. For three years, this machine-as well as a nine-and-a-half-metre long Aljuria thresher, which the tractor pulled to make it work on the ground-was laid out in the open and unused on a farm owned by "El Periquín". But, knowing that his legitimate owner had intended to take both to a museum in Murcia, he intervened so that they remained in the Camp d'Elx. And so, thanks to his efforts and the invaluable help of "El Matolero", the tractor and the thresher became the property of the museum. But the story does not end here, all of us have heard about the transfer of these pieces and their unique entourage...

On the afternoon of October 26, 2001, after the aforementioned acquisition, neighbors/as, family and friends/as met to carry out the transfer of both machines to the facilities of the Pusol School Museum. It was an important event, not only for the museum, which thickened its funds, but for the whole departure of Puçol. Few/as of the/ as that we are part today of the Project live this donation, but we all know its history and what their donors did, as well as the neighbors who made it possible to bring it to our facilities, among which special mention should be made of Carlos Díez "El Mellat". Thanks to a crane from his truck company, the thresher was able to get up from the ground, since, due to the rains of those years, the wheels had sunk into the mud. And, thanks to the mechanical knowledge of these three neighbors and after several failed attempts, the tractor was able to get going and move the thresher to the museum, as it was done in the past, with "El Matolero" at the wheel. [1] During the tour, neighbors received the convoy, saw it pass and even fired rockets and tracas. An achievement that has gone down in the history of School Museum donations. 

But the tractor route doesn’t end there... It was transferred to the IES La Torreta to be restored by the students of the Body Training Cycle and, some time later, already in the museum, the tires were replaced. Despite having recovered all its splendor, the tractor had to be stored, first in the workshop of the same museum facilities and then in one of its warehouses, since there was not enough space to expose it to the public properly...

Eighteen years after its first transfer to the School Museum, the tractor returned in 2019 thanks, again, to the help of Carlos "El Mellat" and the new exhibition space subsidized by the Costa Blanca Tourist Board of the Provincial Council of Alicante. In addition, thanks to the management of the museum gardener, José Esquembre, the neighbor of Valverde Roque Bru lent us of one of his tractors the fins that cover the engine, pieces that were missing to our machine, after being restored by the comrade Javi Beltrá.

"Every time I go to the museum and see it, I drool," Pepe told us "El Matolero" in a recent interview, because he always remembers the story of the tractor and the thresher with longing and emotion...

After many comings and goings, the tractor can finally be enjoyed by the/the visitor of the Pusol School Museum, who can evoke and/or know through the piece that time of transit, those years of change.

Author: Marian Tristán, coordinator of the School Museum.

[1] DÍAZ BOIX, Humbelina: "An emblematic piece: Chronicle of a donation" in El Setiet, 13, spring 2002, pp. 104-107. Online: www.museopusol.com/media/downloads/10.pdf.