Landscape and post-rurality in a European borderland. The Raia Central Ibérica

ABSTRACT

This paper formulates the necessity of developing a new territorial culture, built from the complex and dynamic concept of landscape and geared towards the formulation of strategies for development and feasibility. This approach, based on the European Landscape Convention, requires a transdisciplinary perspective, and even though it's still novel, it's not only appropriate, but can be considered essential for some European rural cross-border territories marked by important economic and demographic problems, whose viability, in a globalization context, depends on the search for developmental alternatives and the creation of new territorial networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Territorial culture
• landscape
• post-rurality
• European borderlands
• transdisciplinarity
• Raia Central Iberica

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Domingos Vaz http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2153-9542

José Luis Lalana Soto http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7400-6200

Notes

1 This paper is the result of an introspective study, transdisciplinary in its nature, in the scope of inter-university collaboration, on a territory to which both authors are connected.

2 Landscape as heritage, which is another complex matter. Lowenthal (1997) distinguishes three attributes: its materiality, its value as a repository for diverse elements and its stability.

3 The ‘dehesas’ form a cultural landscape closely bonded to the land, and are the materialisation of a traditional utilisation that exploits, jointly and simultaneously on the same space, forestry, agricultural and livestock values.

4 For instance, though the typical image of the dehesa is associated with the holm oak (Quercus Ilex), there are also, on higher areas, dehesas of oaks (Quercus Pyrenaica), even though the looks and characteristics of these two species are very different.

5 The border itself may be considered as a tourist attraction. ‘The celebration of difference within crossborder regions has also added a new dimension to the growing interest in border tourism’ (Newman, 2017, p. 12).

6 A work of this nature would also require defining internal ‘landscape units’, establishing the character of each of them, their contribution to the overall character of the territory, the evaluation of various parameters (quality, values, legibility, conservation) and the definition of particular landscape quality objectives, in accordance with the general objectives and their specific characteristics.