It is customary to consider population censuses (and statistics in general) as exclusive to the modern State, appearing in the second half of the eighteenth century but being developed and spreading in the West during the nineteenth century. Indeed, censuses help to strengthen and legitimize such states. However, in Spain, just as in Europe and the United States, the first population censuses considered modern were the result of, on the one hand, the directives and general and provincial coordination provided by the new state statistical institutions, such as the Statistics Commission or the Institute of Geography and, on the other, municipal personnel and the previous knowledge of local conditions held by the councils and other agents, such as the clergy, intellectuals, and notables. The media were also availed of for the cause. Let us recall that the municipalities were an explicit part of the state apparatus, therefore their relevance in carrying out censuses is not an indication of failure or weakness on the part of the Spanish State regarding the process of “bottom‐up nation‐building”, but rather a way to imagine the nation through which collective involvement would build the nation from the locality.

Never before the nineteenth century had Europeans, especially in the south, adopted cordons sanitaires in such great numbers or at such a fast rate. This article aims to analyse the process of the rationalisation and militarisation of the cordons sanitaires imposed in the fight against epidemics during the nineteenth century on the Mediterranean island of Majorca (Spain). These cordons should be understood as a declaration of war by the authorities on emerging epidemics. Epidemics could generate sudden and intolerably high rises in mortality that the new liberal citizenship found unacceptable. Toleration of this type of measure was the result of a general consensus, with hardly any opposition, which not only obtained the support of scientists (especially in the field of medicine) but also of most of the local and provincial political elite, and even of the population at large.

Las medidas de resguardo sanitario, y especialmente las más radicales como son los cordones sanitarios, han sido normalmente consideradas contrarias a los intereses comerciales y, en consecuencia, negativas para la economía en general. Sin embargo, los países del sur de Europa, por tradición histórica, geografía e incluso por disponibilidades presupuestarias, no tenían otra opción que adoptar medidas de cuarentena, siguiendo los criterios acordados en las conferencias sanitarias internacionales, si querían seguir participando en el sistema internacional de comercio. De hecho, estas medidas restrictivas no supusieron un freno al crecimiento comercial como el caso de Mallorca evidencia, ya que resultaron ser un arma formidable de las nuevas autoridades liberales para disciplinar a la población y atacar frontalmente el contrabando que, además de suponer una amenaza para la salud, contravenía el orden social burgués, el Estado nación e, incluso, determinados aspectos del capitalismo.

RESUMEN: El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la relación existente entre el discurso higienista en torno al ciclo del agua y las actuaciones realizadas en esta materia por los ayuntamientos de