Powder manufacturing in the Sierra de Tardienta

The word guerrilla, Spanish for a small war, spread into other languages during the fight this picture belongs to, the years Napoleon's armies occupied Spain. Goya painted it somewhere around 1810 to 1814, and instead of a battle he shows the work behind one. In a rocky stretch of the Sierra de Tardienta, north of Zaragoza in his native Aragon, men grind and mix gunpowder for the resistance. That district was known for the quality of its powder, and the bands here were organised by a shoemaker from a nearby town who set up powder and shot workshops up in the hills. It is a small panel, one of a pair, its companion showing the same men casting bullets. These two are the only paintings in which Goya set the war in the countryside he came from.