Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Volume 9 Issue 1 Volume 9, Issue 1 (2005) Article 1

2005

Property Mosaic and State-making: Governmentality, Expropriation and Conservation in the Pyrenees

Ismael Vaccaro University of Washington

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Recommended Citation Vaccaro, Ismael. "Property Mosaic and State-making: Governmentality, Expropriation and Conservation in the Pyrenees." Journal of Ecological Anthropology 9, no. 1 (2005): 4-19.

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Articles Property Mosaic and State-making: Governmentality, Expropriation and Conservation in the Pyrenees

Ismael Vaccaro

Abstract This article identifies the current explosion of conservation policies in the Pyrenees as the most recent wave of a long-standing tradition of state-driven territorial policies. The very existence of these policies cannot be understood without taking into ac- count the consequences of two hundred years of territorial rationalization, land expropriation and natural resource control. Depopulation, agricultural involution and forest recovery are partial consequences, not necessarily intended, of the expansion of the modern Spanish state. In addition to identifying a similar ideological background for the four phases of the model presented here (municipalization, disentailment, expropriation and parks implementation), I also argue that the territorial composition of the current protected areas would be impossible without the synergistic effects of the preceding state actions. This article establishes a deep historical political genealogy of territorial appropriation that has consequences at all levels of the local landscape.

Introduction For natural resource managers, environmen- and ecological status, we develop an understanding talists and other individuals situated in the thick of of practical, everyday life in the territory (Cronon controversies over conservation and the management 1983). Phenomena such as enclosure, imposition of landscapes, a state-centered historical perspective of strict land use regulations, forced evictions, ex- is last on their list of concerns. The conservation tinction of local land use rights, sudden changes in discourse is one in which the recent past is often ownership or uses and environmental shifts serve as conceived singularly as a period of unmitigated windows into governmental technologies and their natural loss, and the orientation is fixed toward consequences (Darby 2000). future possibilities for reclamation and redemption. The Pyrenees lie within the northern strip of Nevertheless, a historical perspective is often an Catalonia along the French border. At the northern overlooked means of understanding the broader end of the Barcelona province, nestled within a picture of the relationship between state and land- thicket of protected areas, we find the mountainous scape. The comprehension of this historical rela- district of Berguedà. The two municipalities where tionship dismantles the divide between the natural most of the land at the end of the upper watershed and the social. It explains landscapes as the result of the Llobregat River is concentrated—la Pobla of the interaction between biophysical reality, hu- de Lillet and Castellar de n’Hug—have 70 percent man inhabitation, productive practices, and policies. of their territory under the jurisdiction of some Particularly, but not solely in the European context, sort of environmental policy designed to protect an analysis of conservation policies within a much environmental values. As in most of the Pyrenees, larger, state-centered historical and political process this region is characterized by rural depopulation, helps to explain how land tenure regimes came to economic decline, a high proportion of public and be, and gives insight into the current management common land, relatively undisturbed ecosystems and of the landscape. By locating ownership, we locate a disproportionate presence of conservation policies decision-making capability. By recording land uses compared to elsewhere in Spain. Vol. 9 2005 Vaccaro / Property Mosaic and State-making 

Why is it that landscapes in the hinterlands of My research on these topics focuses on three surviving many industrialized societies are currently dominated villages in the Valley of Lillet: la Pobla de Lillet, Castel- by those few key elements: depopulation, a conflic- lar de n’Hug and Sant Julià de Cerdanyola (Figure 1). In tive transition from primary to tertiary sector uses, this article, these three villages are also referred to as a disproportionate amount of public land and the la Pobla, Castellar and Sant Julià. The Spanish policies marked presence of conservation areas? In order in question deal specifically with the ordering of the to explain this familiar situation and the connection upper Llobregat region’s space. It follows from this between state-making and landscape formation, I analysis that subsequent conservation polices are the focus on modern Spanish policies and the historical last wave in a historical succession of reterritorializa- data-rich upper Llobregat region of Catalonia, Spain. tion approaches to the Spanish hinterland.

0 m 1000 m N 2000 m Protected Regions

0 2 4 6 km

area of study

Figure 1. The Valley of Lillet, with the surrounding protected areas (map prepared by Jennie Deo).

The first section of this article creates a frame- special attention to the presence of public property. work for understanding the relationship between The final section, political genealogy of the contemporary state-making and conservation policy. The second landscape, is a historical review of the different waves section details the methodology utilized for this of state reorganization of administrative jurisdictions study. The third section describes the current status and property regimes that have prepared the area for of property regimes in the Valley of Lillet and pays the current expansion of conservation policies.  Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 Territorializing Like a State Spain’s current environmental policies are a new In these pages, my goal is to discuss the histori- way of reorganizing the territory, its inhabitants and cal impact of the state on the property structure of its uses. However, they remain part of the modernist the study area and its consequences for the landscape. tradition of homogenization of people and territory This goal has forced me to devote more attention to through rationalization and control, mass production the activities of the state than to the local strategies and connectedness to other units of governance. In for dealing with, opposing, or taking advantage of order to master, collect and redistribute resources such public initiatives. Nonetheless, these strategies and wealth, states and markets rely on a particular of resistance exhibit considerable diversity, and my reorganization of a territory and its individuals. They understanding of local initiatives is that national depend, to a large extent, on the exponential increase sovereignty in this arena was, and still is, questioned of territorial interconnectedness and interchange- and reworked at a local level. ability. This process of modernization occurs in the In order to trace the historical conditions that transition from a closed agrarian society to a mobile produced the current situation, I have chosen as a open industrial society (Gellner 1983). starting point the turn of the 19th century, because Thus, conservation areas are one of the spa- that period witnessed the first steps of the emer- tially oriented governmental technologies emerging gence of the Spanish state and a major reorgani- from the consolidation of state sovereignty, and zation of Spanish political imagination. Although conservation areas serve to assert the monopolistic final implementation took more than a century, the capacity of the state as sole managerial entity of the upper Llobregat valley was already in a process of national territory (Hannah 2000; Scott 1998). To deep change. what extent is the rationale underlying this new state The current combination of flourishing wilder- endeavor old, and to what extent does the rationale ness, demographic decay,1 economic stagnation and represent something new? I suggest that the social state territorial management in the Spanish Pyrenees and historical conditions that allowed for the con- is not the random outcome of a playful mountain temporary massive implementation of conservation divinity, nor even the result of the machinations of policies in the Pyrenees, and in most of the other a skilled cult of engineers and politicians, but rather western European mountains, were installed by the an outcome of a multi-causal historical process. His- process of implementation of the modern state and tory in these mountains, as with everywhere else, is capitalism. constrained, affected or conditioned by a complex A fundamental step of modernization of the set of endogenous and exogenous variables. state was the municipalization of its territory through The landscape is at the center of a political process dismantling the old feudal administrative jurisdictions in which social actors collide in their discursive and prac- and creating small, uniform, administratively equal tical quest to obtain comparative advantages in access to units linked together through centralized governmen- natural resources (Blaikie 1985; Bryant and Bailey 1997; tal networks. These administratively equal units were Fairhead and Leach 1996). In western European societ- the first and smallest level of the administrative hier- ies, such landscape politics revolve around the future of archy in the state apparatus and are associated with decaying rural areas. As a consequence of this debate, access to education, courts, postal service and police. the mountainous inland is becoming a patrimonial res- I argue that the rationale that framed municipalization ervoir. This transformation is also changing the rules later fostered state expropriations and those rationale that manage access to, and use of, natural resources, are still informing decision-makers’ choices in their thus redefining the concept of ‘resource’ itself. Every design of conservation policies. When a new park individual, group or institution with interests in the area is created today to protect the biophysical environ- has to adapt to and understand the new frames of refer- ment, there exists an awareness of the position of ence in order to be able to advantageously participate that territory in the national hierarchy, its potential to in the appropriation process. connect public territories and government initiatives,

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol9/iss1/1 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2162-4593.9.1.1 Vol. 9 2005 Vaccaro / Property Mosaic and State-making  the structure of the property regime in existence, In order to form a comprehensive analytical and the political strength of the affected population portrait of the property regimes locally, I examined (Aldomà 2000; Williams 1973). the archives of the Department of Environment, During the birth of modernity, territorialization the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Diputació de and reterritorialization strengthened the grip of the Barcelona, the property register in Berga, and the state over the national territory and occurred at the Municipal Archive of la Pobla de Lillet. It was in the same time that modern borders with other nation- dusty halls of these archives of property titles, ex- states were consolidating (Sahlins 1989; Tilly 1975) propriation documents, forestry corps memoranda, or while colonial domains were solidifying (Edney laws, and cadastres that I was able to piece together 1997; Griffiths and Robin 1997). Territorialization not only the recent but also the juridical history of is the process of implementing policies about land every track of land. The main goal of the analysis tenure and territory that establish control over re- was to draw ownership lines over the territory and to sources and people (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001; associate these lines with successive owners. These Soja 1989; Vandergeest and Peluso 1995). Reterrito- documents, ranging from late 18th century until late rialization (Braun 2000, 2002) refers to state-driven 20th century, provided a historic understanding of secondary reorganizations of space, resources and the formation of the current landscape. people. Conservation areas are thus reterritorializa- Once I developed a picture of the general tion technologies, and are the latest generation of structure and historical development of the property disciplinary spatial governmental technology (Neu- regimes in place, I conducted extensive interviews mann 1998; Rangarajan 1996) that communicate designed to understand the contemporary conse- rules about which activities and kinds of resource quences of the juridical structuring of the territory on use are permitted in a territory and who is permitted the local property mosaic, local productive practices such access (Vandergeest and Peluso 1995). and resource use, and the ecosystems of the area. Informal interviews, conducted at the beginning of Methodology my fieldwork, helped to build the interview plan that I From a methodological perspective, the research used to guide posterior and more formal unstructured behind this article included a combination of ethno- interviews. The interview plan was mainly focused on graphic field methods and archival research. From the clarifying productive practices, political jurisdictions early Fall of 2001 to late Summer 2002, I sustained and subjective perceptions of the landscape. These contact with several groups of landscape users in interviews were important because the ownership the Valley of Lillet. I wandered across the fields and documents from the archival research do not offer, ravines with shepherds, forest engineers, farmers and for example, information on managerial regulations, park rangers. The interviewees were selected through and only shepherds or the rangers of the park could a process of snowball sampling (Bernard 2002). The tell me which animals, if any, were allowed in specific collaboration of la Pobla de Lillet’s local council was tracks of land. The old farmers had a first-hand insight fundamental in order to identify key individuals able on the effects that public expropriation had on the to trigger the snowball sampling procedure and iden- ecology of the area. tify ranchers, farmers and public officials of the area. Through participant observation, I realized that the Property Regimes territory was far from homogeneous in the ways that The legal condition of the territory is a fun- people compartmentalized and defined the landscape damental variable for studying the use of natural in their speech, particularly regarding gradient, wet- resources and the relationship of individuals with ness, soil, vegetation and history. However, I quickly the environment. In modern European societies this recognized that one variable was operating as funda- condition is granted in terms of legal ownership; mental background for the rest: property (Behar 1986; terms that determine rights over the territory. These Cole and Wolf 1999; Netting 1981). rights are stratified in different layers that together  Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 compose the absolute property over the land and of the old labyrinth of lordly jurisdictions into the its substrate: physical property of land, its resources homogeneous net of the modern property regime and the different potential uses of the resources. (Burgueño 1995, 2000). Current property structure Differences between universal property and use of Western European countries is based, in theory, property are fundamental. An important portion on private property; that is, absolute individual own- of the territory is managed by those who, through ership.2 In the Valley of Lillet and the surrounding rental contracts, are entitled to its usufruct—they live mountains, the combination of property regimes from the fruits of the land. They work the land, while constitutes an intricate net of diverse tenures that absolute ownership is held by absentee owners. deny this assumption. More precisely, in the Valley At least in theory, modern societies have no of Lillet, the presence of property regimes alterna- terra incognita, no blanks on the territorial maps. tive to private property is extraordinarily high. These Every piece of land, every tree, even the rocks that include municipal lands, group ownership and state lie beneath the surface, have metaphorical tags with property. A closer look at the property regimes of names on them, revealing ownership. The success the three studied municipalities will exemplify the of the modern state is sustained not only by taming context in which environmental policies were imple- the nation’s territory, but also in the transformation mented (Figure 2).

0 1 2 3 km N Municipal property

State property

Communal property

Figure 2. Collective property in the municipalities of la Pobla de Lillet and Castellar de n’Hug (map prepared by Jennie Deo). Data extracted from the property register, cadastre and personal interviews, 2001.

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol9/iss1/1 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2162-4593.9.1.1 Vol. 9 2005 Vaccaro / Property Mosaic and State-making  Municipal lands are old communal lands progres- Transformation of the Spanish state and the sively integrated by municipalities as public lands and dismantling of the ancient regime affected land own- thereby modernized. These lands belong to the vil- ership in specific ways. This transformation became lage, and thus to the state institutional network. They a process of territorial re-creation. The changes are managed by the local council, and the monetary implemented by the state resulted in reconfiguration benefits are destined for the municipal coffers. The of the basic administrative units, direct expropriation final jurisdiction over sensitive matters like dirt road of large areas and the creation of public monopolies construction or lumbering belongs to the Generali- over specific resources. tat—the Autonomous Government of Catalonia— which retains environmental and territorial planning Political Genealogy of the Contemporary powers, among others, which were transferred from Landscape Madrid’s central government. In la Pobla 1,313 ha The main goal of the section is to establish a are owned and managed by the local council. They four-phase chronological model linking four waves represent 26 percent of the municipality’s surface. of Spanish public territorial policies as part of a In Castellar these lands constitute six percent of the continuous historical process of state-making (cf. village territory. Sivaramakrishnan 1999). State property is under direct management of the government of Catalonia. Diverse public agencies or Municipalization departments manage state property. An important At the beginning of the 19th century, the valley contingent of these lands is part of the Cadí-Moixeró of Lillet and the neighboring areas, from Guardiola Natural Park administered by the Department of at its westernmost point at the mouth of the valley Environment. The village of la Pobla has 654 ha to Castellar de n’Hug and Sant Jaume de Frontanyà managed by the Generalitat de Catalunya. This land bordering the eastern ramparts, had eight taxpay- is 13 percent of the municipality. In Castellar, this ing inhabited local entities recognized by national percentage rises to 21 percent with 969 ha. authorities.5 Currently, only five remain. A third and more rare form, group property, is The modern state began to reorganize its geog- officially called neighborhood ownership. The two raphy at the beginning of the 19th century. The main examples in the study area are “Board of Capmassats purpose of this process was for the state to expand and Magallers” in Sant Julià de Cerdanyola and the and take control of the nation’s territory. This process “Castellar de n’Hug Owners Community.” The propri- links space with power through territorial expan- etors’ assemblies have jurisdiction over management, sion and through systematic assessment of national and these groups are regulated by private internal geography and population involving census-taking, statutes. These institutions were the local answers to administrative subdivision, and mapping territory and particular historical situations. This form is not present resources (Hannah 2000:115; see also Scott 1998). in la Pobla but encompasses 870 ha of Castellar de The first of the Spanish nation’s initiatives, n’Hug, and 1,100 ha of Sant Julià de Cerdanyola: 19 aimed at reconfiguring the state in a modern way percent and 80 percent of their lands, respectively. that could overcome the ancient regime divisions, The final property form,private property, shows was reflected in the 1821Report of the Commission for a high degree of concentration. At la Pobla de Lil- the Spanish Territory Division. The report made official let, for instance, with an official population of 1,422 a series of aggregations and suppressions that began inhabitants in 2002 (2,779 in 1960), 79 percent of in 1813 and, overall, established the new division of private property belongs to 16 owners,3 13 of which the nation into provinces, which was implemented are absentee owners.4 In la Pobla, 61 percent of the in 1822. This commission recommended a series of municipality is private property. In Castellar de n’Hug changes, using so-called ‘objective’ criteria such as the situation is even more exaggerated with 54.6 population size, geographical extension and topog- percent in private hands, and 26 percent of private raphy, which were all related to the degree of con- land owned by two individuals. nectedness between existing population centers. 10 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 The 1840s witnessed a new wave of aggrega- extracted from those lands will revert to the new local tions and suppressions. Although the original docu- council. This is especially significant since the local ments related to these years have not been located, use of common lands is usually limited to household- we know that at this time, Sant Vicenç de Rus ceased based activities such as grazing, wood gathering and to exist as an entry in census and tax records, and its small-scale agriculture, while municipalities, centered numbers were added to Castellar’s records. on obtaining cash, may initiate activities such as large- The 1860 municipal rationalization commis- scale timber extraction. sion was in charge of screening the national ter- The new administrative regime focused on prag- ritory and localizing every village with less than matic rationalism: administrative hierarchies and inter- two hundred villagers and finding an institutional village hierarchies were created with strict observance alternative that would allow its declassification. to demographic and geographic criteria. The ancient After the Commission works were finished in 1867, regime had relied upon tradition, sometimes result- Sant Genís de Gavarrós disappeared forever as an ing in anachronisms and complicated situations, but official entity—as did its associated rights. It is also the constitutional order adopted this state of things interesting to highlight that the 1860 Commission as a point of departure and structured territorial and recommended the dismantling of the local councils governmental services around the demographic im- of Castellar de n’Hug and Sant Jaume de Frontanyà.6 portance of each village, the capacity of its markets, Only the impossibility of finding a reasonable alter- proximity to surrounding villages and, finally, the native village with which to be associated kept these potential connectedness of its infrastructure. municipalities alive. According to successive waves of national This long process of administrative reorganiza- legislators, the municipal structure emerging from tion is very important in an area where municipalities this “constitutionalization” of settlement patterns own and manage substantial amounts of public land. inherited from feudal times was chaotic and irratio- These properties were part of the traditional com- nal. The dimensions and distribution of hundreds mons upon which local subsistence depended. When of small villages, especially in the mountainous ar- a village loses its official status, it is integrated into eas, made the task of expansion and distribution of another municipality. The immediate consequence public services, and the extension of the state itself, of this integration, besides a centralization of public uneconomical. For this reason, several projects of services, is that the new local council gains control of territorial restructuring were undertaken by the gov- the common lands of the ex-village, and the benefits ernment during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Table 1. Change in officially recognized villages 1750-1995.

1750 1800 1820 1840 1870 1930 1945 1985 1995 Sant Jaume de Frontanyà x x x x x x x x x Sant Vicenç de Rus x x xa ------Castellar de n’Hug x x x x x x x x x Sant Martí de Brocà x x x x x xb --- Sant Genís de Gavarrós x x x xc ----- La Pobla de Lillet x x x x x x x x x Guardiola de Berguedà x x x x - x x x x Sant Julià de Cerdanyola x x x x x xd -- x aIntegrated into Castellar de n’Hug. bIntegrated into Guardiola in 1942. cIntegrated into Guardiola after a huge legal fight with Castellar de n’Hug, Sant Julià de Cerdanyola and the inhabitants of Gavarrós that preferred Castellar. They had been absorbed by Brocà in 1867. dIntegrated into Guardiola in 1942. It recovered its status in 1992.

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In sum, under the new criteria, only la Pobla made a quantum shift, not only from a production de Lillet, unquestionably the social and demographic perspective but also in terms of collective identity. center of the area, was perceived as a viable project The village succeeded in becoming a tourist attrac- by the state officials responsible for rationalizing tion, a place to visit throughout the year and to spend the administrative network of Spain. Guardiola, summer holidays. not yet mentioned in the records, is a special case. Gavarrós and Brocà did not fare so well. During most of the 19th century it was a miniscule They could not take advantage of new uses of the group of houses near the river at a crossroads. The landscape. They fell under crises brought first by final construction of the main road and the railway the collapse of traditional agriculture and ranching, fostered its growth until it absorbed the jurisdictions second by the attraction of the expanding industrial of traditionally larger neighboring villages like Sant job market in the cities, and finally by the acute crisis Julià and Brocà (Table 1). of this very same market. The social failure that these abandoned villages The inherent instability of the Spanish state represent must be related to lack of connectedness. during the 19th century makes it difficult to identify An important part of the medieval Pyrenean trade a specific moment in which to historically locate followed range routes. The network of paths extended the completion of the Spanish territorialization from east to west and vice versa. They had, of course, process. Although the administrative reorganiza- connection to the plains, but the closest villages were tion of the state was formally implemented around always in the next range or the next valley. The com- 1850,7 the parameters established by the territorial munication lines integrated the whole of the Pyrenees. commission had recurrent consequences until well They connected one valley to the other through the into the 20th century. mountain passes. Castellar de n’Hug, Sant Martí de Brocà and Sant Genís de Gavarrós were located at Disentailment 8 the high points of these old infrastructures. The state’s mastery of the territory did not The modern state and the capitalist market stop with its reclassification of feudal lands as state followed a different rationality and were strictly con- lands, nor did it stop with the reordering of its trolled by urban centers. This new rationality fostered villages into modern bureaucratic municipalities. a new kind of connectedness concerned with produc- During the last one hundred fifty years, the state tion, distribution and mass consumption. It fostered launched several waves of physical and territorial radial connectedness with the urban centers at the appropriation as well. nodules of the net. In the 20th century Pyrenees, this My reading of the development of the mod- new conceptualization of communication translated ern Spanish state requires wrapping appropriation into a radical shift in infrastructure from range paths moments, territorialization and reterritorialization to roads at the bottom of the valleys. The inter-valley into the same historical process. The disentailment connectedness was neglected in favor of the moun- campaigns were the beginning of the reterritorial- tain-plain axis. In addition, the whole territory came ization of the state: an institutional reassessment to be reorganized through urbanization processes of the national geography with the explicit goal of (Harvey 2001; Nel•lo 2001; Williams 1973). identifying and taking physical control of the national Those upper villages became communication resources. dead-ends. Only Castellar de n’Hug survived, because The Spanish liberal state, pressed by a general it was large enough to endure external pressure and economic crisis, decided to tackle the remnants of because of the extra income that contraband from medieval property regimes in order to obtain abun- France offered in that particular location. Even so, dant economic benefits from it. The plan was simple: in the 1970s Castellar was close to the point of no confiscate non-private property and sell it. From 1836 return; the village was almost empty. At that point it to 1841 the Mendizabal program affected land in 12 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 ecclesiastical estates. In general, most of the parcels Expropriation ended up in the hands of the growing bourgeoisie or The beginning of the 20th century brought new were added to the legal possessions of the still power- preoccupations to state officials. The mastering of ful aristocracy (Bauer 1980; Gómez 1992). the territory and its government was influenced by In 1855, the General Expropriation Law brought environmental concerns. It was the beginning of on the next wave of disentailment and affected what the Forest Engineers Era during which the Foresters the state called the wastelands, which were mainly Corps developed an almost uncontested control over commons. This project, known as the disentailment the mountainous landscape. of Madoz,9 had direct repercussions on the study In the study area, the engineers started to take area. The mountain communities had experienced physical control of the land with the first expropria- major successes preserving the common lands from tion in 1907 (the Sidera). The last of these ‘forested’- previous division and privatization trends. oriented expropriations took place in 1969. The The law also defined the case in which a patch legitimization offered by the body of engineers was of land or a mountain could be saved from expropria- that they needed to ensure the safety of the upper tion. A village had to prove that a specific mountain watersheds by controlling erosion. They were con- was essential for the survival of the community and cerned with protecting the new big dams that were that it had not been producing monetary income. The being built downstream. This period was also the territory that fulfilled these conditions was considered time of the deforestation obsession. What began as an exception and returned to the local community. an isolated takeover became a solid expropriation However, there was a difference between the previous trend that ended up, in the late 1960s, with most of status of those lands and the situation that emerged in the southern slope of the Cadí Range at la Pobla and the aftermath of the 1855 law. The excluded moun- Castellar in the hands of the state. It also affected the tains were, before the law, commons belonging to and lower parts of the northern slope of the Catllaràs regulated by the entitled neighbors of the local com- range, at the lower limits of the municipal forest. munity through a set of traditional regulations. After Forest engineers participated as institutional the law, these same mountains became property of the agents in the redefinition of the Spanish mountains. municipality and were managed by the local council. Forestry, as a scientific and applied discipline, is In other words, these lands became integrated into connected to state-making. In other words, forest- the national public territory. ers are integrated into the bureaucratic network of In the study villages of Sant Julià, la Pobla and the state as public officials, and are in charge of Castellar, the amount of affected land was substan- implementing schemes of territorial reorganization tial, including almost one hundred percent of each (Scott 1998; Sivaramakrishnan 1999). The formation village’s commons. Both villages resisted this process of the School of Forestry in 1848 was the first step fairly well. At the end of the 19th century, however, the of the institutionalization of scientific forestry as a state institutional network owned, for the first time, discipline in Spain. The Corps of Engineers, as part large patches of the mountain ranges that surround of the state’s administrative network, gave scientific the Lillet valley. La Pobla, as a municipal entity, for legitimacy to successive transformations of the prop- instance, acquired 1,134 ha of public land, the same erty regimes of the mountains. In the process, they amount that the community, as a group of individu- acquired managerial rights over significant areas of als, lost. Throughout the 20th century, small patches land throughout the country—control that lasted at bordering on these public lands were progressively least through the turn of the century. The underlying integrated into the municipal territorial pool. The belief, pervasive in forestry theory, was that the forest reports describe the abandonment of parcels and the was a fundamental element for sustaining hydrologi- absence of a clear owner. In some cases the process cal cycles, and only public ownership could ensure was successful; in others, people resisted. its preservation (Gómez 1992).

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[To reach their natural goal] and to ensure and the expropriation of isolated farms in the ranges did guarantee its existence [it is necessary that] the not awaken resistance because peasant agriculture was public possession of the mountains, far from already a fading way of life. The local population, with constituting an exception to the rules established by relatively limited connections to the urban way of life, political economy and express contradiction to its was not organized for resistance. In many cases, they accepted laws, comes, on the contrary, to harmonize them in a way in which the collective good supports were renting houses and land from absentee owners the private without limiting the activity of the residing in the lowlands that were happy to sell their individual. (García Martino 1869) lands to the state. Tenants, thus, had no legal basis for opposition. Since mountain agriculture and ranching Studies of how colonial powers embarked upon are difficult occupations, the factories from the val- territorialization through declaring lands as State leys quickly attracted this dispossessed population. Forest in their colonies (e.g., Peluso and Vandergeest The expropriated land was declared Forest Patrimony 2001; Sivaramakrishnan 1999) provide parallels to and Public Useful Mountains. The state progressively the way in which the nascent European liberal states became the absolute owner of, by Catalan standards, of the 18th and 19th century reordered their rural a large extension of land. The dominant official dis- hinterlands. Both the colonial and the national hin- course assumed that the farmers and their traditional terland contexts are characterized by the presence of agricultural practices were responsible for severe de- territorialization policies, the imposition of external forestation (García Pérez and Groome 2000; Gómez priorities, and the enactment of disciplinary regimes 1992). The documents show an effort by the state to and development schemes. The similarities between be systematic in the confiscation, and to avoid leaving the colonial territorialization processes and territorial non-public patches amidst the newly formed estate. appropriation process studied here invite a reconcep- The first measures taken by the new owners tualization of colonialism that does not necessarily were to establish vigilance, to extinguish old con- rely on the old separation between developed and tracts and uses, forbid tree cutting and start massive underdeveloped countries. replanting. Landscapes were radically changed by the The contenders for control of the landscape— state—from productive farm terrain into growing the private owners and collective traditional institu- forests. The assumption underlying this set of poli- tions—were seen by the state as threats to the national cies was that forested landscape was environmentally interest because private owners participate in the free or socially more valuable than terraced, cultivated or market and thus could ravage the forests; state officials grazing land. Institutions of the state, by intertwin- feared that the inevitable breakdown of traditional ing science, managerial practices and national needs, communal institutions might produce a “free for all” proceeded to reconfigure the landscape and, along commons situation necessarily leading to an exhaus- with it, its inhabitants (cf. Robbins 2001; Sivaramak- tion of the natural resources under consideration. rishnan 1999). New concepts of territory, resources, citizenry and state were being implemented (Guha The common uses, the villages uses, all these 1989; Hann 2003; Pottage and Mundy 2004). socialist practices must disappear and the irregular, The Forest Patrimony of the State, and specifi- confusing and primitive uses of the soil. It is good that this private property, nucleus of all progress, cally its Forest Hydrologic Service on behalf of the guarantee of all order may substitute this kind of Ministry, managed these lands for decades until the peasant socialism. (Mountains Law Draft 1872) creation of the Instituto para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza.10 The Institute was in charge of the The Ministry of Agriculture did not only choose expropriated area until its transfer to the Generalitat vacant land for their forest experiments; numerous de Catalunya due to the new winds of democratiza- parcels had owners, settlers and dozens of uses that tion and decentralization brought by the death of were altered by those policies. The new management the dictator Franco in 1975 and the advent of the closed farms and expelled cattle and people. However, new democratic constitution in 1978. 14 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 Conservation the Instituto para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza As a final phase of land appropriation, coher- under the Natural Protected Spaces Law of 1975 ent with the incremental activity of the state in the (García Pérez and Groome 2000; Gómez 1992). field of territorial planning and control, I want to The relevant legal documents currently in use consider the wave of environmental conservation are the Natural Spaces Law of 1985 and the Natural policies implemented since the early 1980s in the Interest Spaces Plan of 1992, both of which were interior of Catalonia. The new parks and reserves promulgated by the Generalitat de Catalunya. They used the previously re-qualified or expropriated restate some of the concerns already included in the parcels as a territorial base for their implementation. Territorial Policy Plan Law of 1983. In the general The state land and the municipal land became the Spanish context, the legal framework is established anchors allowing a net of conservation policies to be by the Conservation of Natural Parks and Wild drawn across the landscape. Conservation policies, Flora and Fauna Law of 1989, issued by the Spanish however, cover larger portions of the territory and central government. These laws highlight the need to have engulfed significant amounts of private land. consider the necessities of local populations: In 1973, the Hunting National Reserve of the Cadí was created. At this time, in accordance with … an important part of the spaces with natural values are localized in socio-economically declining the prevalent political climate, the rationale behind areas suffering depopulation processes. In these the policy was to regulate and improve hunting of cases protection should not result in additional large herbivores, mainly chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) burdens that may impair an already difficult and later, through reintroduction, red deer (Cervus situation. On the contrary, it must foster an elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). The reserve effective improvement of life conditions …. Many became the territorial nursery for what later became times, man’s presence perpetuates the ecologically adequate conditions of the territory. (Diari Oficial the Cadí-Moixeró Natural Park. de la Generalitat de Catalunya 1985:2113) After the designation of the reserve, hunting became regulated by permits and controlled by Although local development is theoretically guards. Local hunting groups had rights to a small possible under conservation regulations, these regu- number of hunting permits but most were sold to lations alter the conditions under which develop- professional hunters from all over Spain and Europe ment may occur. In this case, regulations continue at high prices.11 This strict permit policy played a to protect an environment considered valuable for main role in the recovery of chamois population that, recreation and non-productive use by people residing at the time, was nearly extinct from overhunting. The in the overpopulated cities of the lowlands: designation of the reserve and the strict enforcement The goal of the Natural Interest Spaces Plan is the of the hunting regulations increased the tangibility delimitation and the establishment of the basic of the state in the area. In the following years the conditions for the protection of natural spaces the reserve became the seed around which the state grew conservation of which is considered necessary in a variety of protected areas. order to ensure the scientific, ecological, dramatic, By the end of the 1970s, changes in the politi- cultural, social, didactical and recreational values cal Spanish landscape included the introduction of that they possess. (Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya 1985:2115) environmental concerns through legislative initiatives at provincial, regional and national administrative For people residing in the valley, mountains levels. In pre-constitutional times, the jurisdiction are considered not just a resource of natural value, over natural values were issued by the central Spanish but also their home. Economic life may experience government and were held successively by the Na- a significant transformation under the development tional Parks Commissariat under the authority of the constraints imposed by a national park. Ecotourism National Parks Law of 1916, the General Direction seems to be the preferred field in which local devel- of Mountains under the Mountains Law of 1957, and opment is encouraged. Agriculture, ranching and

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol9/iss1/1 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2162-4593.9.1.1 Vol. 9 2005 Vaccaro / Property Mosaic and State-making 15 forestry are acceptable but regulated, while urban This fact makes necessary the elaboration of a and industrial development is viewed with the most regulation that may articulate human activities and hostility by the conservationist administration. environmental protection since nowadays there is no protection regime valid in the area …. Art.1.2. The goal of this special jurisdictional regime is to Art. 3.a. Traditional activities and the orderly use of protect its geology, vegetation, fauna, waters and resources are generally allowed in the natural spaces atmosphere as well its ecosystems. (Diari Oficial de included in the Park, unless specific restrictions are la Generalitat de Catalunya 1983:2125) established to reach protection goals. … Art. 4.1. The territories included in the ambit of the Park where urbanization is restricted land will remain The Cadí-Moixeró Park, situated over a pre- non- urbanized and will be the object of special existing high concentration of public land, was protection. (Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de designed to protect mountain ecosystems and it is Catalunya 1983:2125) primarily limited to high mountain ecosystems. This leaves most of the cultivated or historically cultivated Recall Figure 1, in which there are three pro- areas of the lower parts of the valleys outside the tected areas comprising the valley that interests us: park. The annexation of upland areas, mostly com- the Natural Park of the Cadí-Moixeró, and the Catl- mon or municipal property, awakened less opposition laràs and Montgrony Natural Spaces, both included than might have come from annexing the completely in the Natural Interest Spaces Plan. They belong to privatized agricultural fields that surround the rivers two different levels of the hierarchy of protective in the lower areas of the valley. policies and are managed very differently (Carceller This implies that lowlands would be the culti- 1995; Font and Majoral 1998). Natural parks come vated, civilized and permanently inhabited landscape, with their own staff, budget and strict regulations, and the latter would be protected wilderness—an while Natural Spaces do not have their own admin- ecosystem remnant of the ancient natural landscape. istrative apparatus and depend on regional officials However, there is biological continuity between the with many responsibilities. different altitudinal strata of the area, as well as The 1983 Decree of Creation of the Natural social and productive continuity. The agricultural and Park of the Cadí-Moixeró was issued by the Gen- ranching activities performed in the valleys were only eralitat de Catalunya and drawn up in explicit con- part of a larger system of production that included cordance with the 1975 Spanish Natural Protected grazing on the upper pastures for a major part of Spaces Law. In June 2000, two resolutions were suc- the year. Without the montane resources, the valleys cessively issued from the Department of Environ- were incomplete (Bauer 1980). ment of the Generalitat of Catalunya that approved Although the current administration of the the initial delimitation for the Natural Interest Spaces park still follows the directives established in its Plans of the Montgrony Range and the Catllaràs foundational documents, the managers of the park Range in specific and explicit accordance with the understand and accept traditional ranching activi- Catalan Law of 1985 and the 1992 Decree. ties inside the park borders, not only to permit local The 1983 decree stresses the inherent natural economic development but also to maintain the sub- value of the areas and the anthropogenic threats sistence patterns that supposedly created the current that menace them. State officials feel that they must “natural” habitat. Nevertheless, the protective focus respond to these disturbances and maintain or im- remains centered on mountain ecosystems. Due to prove the natural status quo of the area. rural depopulation and other factors, a traditional agricultural landscape is in rapid decline, and with it Art. 1.1. This area represents the high mountain the high levels of human-nurtured biodiversity that enclave closest to the populous area of Catalonia. Consequently this area suffers strong human accompany it. Ecological mosaics with transitional pressure through urban development, tourism patches between forest and traditional agricultural infrastructures, industries and mining exploitations. fields harbor more biodiversity that any situation in 16 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 9 2005 which the ecological matrix is homogeneously domi- of resources to protect watersheds and forests, re- nated by either mountain or agricultural ecosystems sulting in direct state expropriation and appropriation on its own (Foreman and Godron 1986). This rich- of territory; and (4) reterritorialization of resources ness is disappearing under the advance of the forest, through conservation policies to protect and restore but its preservation is not on the park’s agenda. ecosystems. The external imposition of a protected area and Spanish reterritorialization then, at least in this its associated set of regulations are usually perceived part of the Pyrenees, seems to be structured in three by local populations as an erosion of rights, dignity historical phases of resource appropriation with later and possibilities for making a living (Neumann 1998; redistribution or direct management. The first redis- Rangarajan 1996). Answers, however, depend on tributive phase is characterized by the expropriations the impact that the park has on individuals’ lives. of mid-19th century, aimed at integrating large parts Although the park has not resulted in the total of the Spanish geography into a productive market prohibition of ranching activities, it has become a and gathering monetary resources for the state. The significant player with which local people need to second phase is principally designed to take direct negotiate. Some residents, however, have recognized control of sensitive resources, mainly hydraulic and the potential that the park and environmental protec- forest resources. Finally, the third phase restructures tion has to foster local development. Ecotourism is the territories previously affected by merging them emerging as an important economic sector. Tourism, into protected areas. however, is an inherently seasonal activity devoted To some degree, the currently protected and to cover the needs of an external population. The dramatic mountain wilderness landscape was created Valley of Lillet was once a powerful place, heavily by the very hand of the state. The new uses and industrialized, but it also had large herds and was practices currently being deployed over the land- covered with agricultural terraces. Its inhabitants do scape—conservation policies, ecotourism, second not necessarily like this productive shift. residence or ski resorts, just to mention a few—are primarily answering the needs of the overwhelming Conclusion majority of the Catalan population, those who live In this article I demonstrate the inherent con- in cities. These needs are, in general, connected to nection between the contemporary landscape of momentary or seasonal leisure, not to permanent the mountains of the northeast Berguedà—the de- interaction with the rural or natural landscapes. In mographic, biological and property regimes of this sum, although the implementation of a park opens a area—and the historical actions of the Spanish mod- new set of developmental possibilities for local com- ern state. My main argument is that to understand munities, it implies a redirection of the local economy the current features of this landscape—its forests, its and, with it, a redefinition of the local identity. This parks and its ruins—a fundamental step is to examine new socially empty landscape owes to a series of the process of expansion and implementation of the public policies implemented by the modern Spanish state across the nation’s territory; this is not to say state during the last two hundred years. that state-making is the only element affecting the social processes of these valleys. Ismael Vaccaro, Department of Anthropology, In this part of the Pyrenees, the historically di- University of Washington rect influence of the state via spatial policies can be summarized in four phases: (1) territorialization of the nation’s territory through rational administrative Notes 1 reorganization; (2) reterritorialization of resources Between 1960 and 2000 la Pobla de Lillet lost 51 percent of its population. La Pobla, with less than 2,000 inhabit- through nation-wide disentailment campaigns to sell ants, lost 140 inhabitants from 1990 until 1995, and 268 land, resulting in territorial redistribution amongst inhabitants between 1995 and 2000. public and private stakeholders; (3) reterritorialization

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol9/iss1/1 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2162-4593.9.1.1 Vol. 9 2005 Vaccaro / Property Mosaic and State-making 17

2 This does not mean that it is the exclusive form of 6 Castellar had a fiscal deficit, and Sant Jaume was simply property. Although predominant, it coexists with sev- too small and scattered. eral forms of collective property. 7 Territorial reorganization was legally formalized between 3 2,462 ha. 1848 and 1850. 4 The village has 5,132 ha, 3,131 ha of which are privately 8 Due to the lack of a better term, here I translated the owned. At least 1,982 ha are owned by ten individuals, Spanish word desamortización to ‘disentailment.’ which is 39 percent of the municipality and 63 percent 9 This was the first government official who promoted it. of the private land of the village. 10 Institute for the Conservation of Nature. 5 th 1814 Direct Contribution tax records, divided into 11 The price depended on the category of the prey: size of territorial, industrial and trade, show decent levels of the horns and symmetry. economic activity in all of these villages.

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