When the enemy is the state: common lands management in northwest Spain (1850–1936)

Abstract

Abstract:In the 19th century, the Spanish government, led by a liberal political project, put up for sale the common properties of villages, and deprived local village authorities of their capacities, powers and laws to manage common woodlands, which were passed to the Forestry Service. This paper, based on Ostrom's hypothesis that state intervention can have negative consequences for the conservation of common resources, is a case study of what happened in the province of León. It is shown that, although the conservation of common resources was endangered because those who were more directly concerned with protecting them were deprived of the means to do so, peasant communities staunchly defended the commons by maintaining traditional practices and uses in their commons.

The communities and the comuni: The implementation of administrative reforms in the Fiemme Valley (Trentino, Italy) during the first half of the 19th century

“…However, the Community institutions, although heavily modified, survived. This element seems to confirm the hypothesis advanced by Daniel Curtis and reaffirmed by José Serrano Alvarez that the survival of the common pool institutions did not presuppose the presence of a tolerant state (De Moor 2008;Curtis 2013;Serrano Alvarez 2014). However, if we move our attention from legislation and official regulations to their practical application at the local level, something different emerges: the incapacity of State authorities to impose the end of these ancient customs or, rather, the capacity of the local population to take advantage of the room to act granted by the new Austrian legislation and to constantly negotiate the applications of the new rules and regulations at the local level.…”

“…More recently, the relationships between states and common institutions have been the subject of debate between Tine de Moor, who considered the presence of a 'tolerant state' as a necessary condition to make collective action possible, and Daniel Curtis and José Serrano Alvarez, who contradict this hypothesis (De Moor 2008;Curtis 2013;Serrano Alvarez 2014). Regarding the role of the state in the resilience of common institutions, one should be aware that commoners did not form a homogeneous group (De Moor 2010).…”

Forestry conflict in Spain: Rethinking peasant protest and resistance

“…In sum, and as we have seen, without offering anything in return, the forestry authorities proposed a radical change in the use of the common lands. Given that these lands played a key role in the peasants' economic reproduction throughout the entire NW of the Iberian Peninsula, it is only to be expected that the rural population mobilized itself in its defence, using all the means at its disposal, both legal and “illegal” (GEHR, , ; Hervés et al, ; Serrano‐Álvarez, ). First, therefore, forestry infractions need to be understood as the peasants' outright refusal to see themselves stripped of a right considered to be inalienable, namely, deciding for themselves when and how they would exploit the commons, as they had always done.…”

“…As in other times and places (Agrawal, , p. 11), it appears that peasants in León turned to the authorities when matters became serious or could not be resolved locally, or in the case of persistent reoffending, when there was no “other” way of putting matters right. Nonetheless, the state authorities were also used to settle disputes over the use of the commons; with several examples to be found during the Second Republic (1931–1936), livestock farmers went to the Institute of Agrarian Reform to protest against unregulated ploughing, as well as to report the seizure and misappropriation of common lands by the rich and powerful (Serrano‐Álvarez, ).…”

Did the Commons Make Medieval and Early Modern Rural Societies More Equitable? A Survey of Evidence from acrossWesternEurope, 1300–1800

“…In fact, such was the passionate defence of communities' rights to common resources, and their fear of ‘outsider’ expropriation and interference, that commoners often resorted to violent suppression of non‐entitled ‘foreigners’ (Canellas López , 35, 63, 90–2). By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as governmental revolutionary legislation all across Europe was calling for the dismantlement of the commons, village communities were standing up in defiance to these threats (Jones ; Vivier ; Serrano Alvarez ).…”