The notion of tenement refers to the construction that houses numerous small homes and that has certain spaces in common, such as corridors and patios.
For example: "The singer grew up in a tenement in Montevideo" , "A fire in a tenement left three dead and eight injured" , "The neighborhood grew at the beginning of the 20th century due to the installation of numerous tenements" .
It is important to know that not all countries call them conventillos. Thus, for example, in Mexico they are called neighborhoods and in Spain they are called corralas. In large Spanish cities, such as Madrid, it is common to still find corralas in the historic center. And those have become one of the tourist charms of the aforementioned area.
Both in the Lavapiés and La Latina neighborhoods of the Spanish capital there are old homes of this type that, currently, are being renovated to continue serving as houses or being rehabilitated to give shape to museums and cultural centers of different types.
In a tenement, each room or room in the building becomes the home of a different family . Generally these rooms are arranged around a central patio , which functions as a distributor. Sometimes the bathrooms, like the patio and corridors, are shared by all the inhabitants.
Among the positive aspects of living in tenements is that all the neighbors know each other and that, as a general rule, they tend to form a small family. However, it must also be taken into account that, against it, there is the fact that there is a lack of intimacy and privacy as well as the fact that common facilities have to be shared, which can lead to certain confrontations over the use made of them.
Conventillos were very common in several South American nations at the beginning of the 20th century . European immigrants who arrived with limited economic resources used to rent rooms in tenements, which generally had quite precarious sanitary and building conditions.
In these tenements, in this way, people of different nationalities lived together, who could even speak different languages: Spanish, Italian, etc. The Conventillo Mediomundo in Montevideo ( Uruguay ) and the Conventillo de la Paloma in Buenos Aires ( Argentina ) are two of the best-known historical tenements.
The tenements have inspired many artists. Thus, for example, at a theatrical level we can highlight the play "El conventillo de la Paloma", which is a farce with one act and three paintings. Alberto Vacarezza is the Argentine author of the aforementioned farce, which premiered in 1929 and which takes Paloma as its protagonist. This is a woman who lives in a tenement and who has all her neighbors in love.
The idea of conventillo, on the other hand, is used to name a place that is characterized by a lack of privacy or by gossip (the spread of gossip). Someone, in this framework, can claim that they resigned from their job since the company where they worked was a tenement.