Land consolidation, development and local resistance in rural Galiza during the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975)

ABSTRACT

Along with colonization, land consolidation was the other great instrument of Francoist socio-structural policy. Land consolidation policy began with the 1952 legislation. It addressed land fragmentation into small plots whose extension, according to the Law, was uneconomic while creating notable obstacles to the development and modernization of agriculture. Land consolidation is a restructuring of territory into fewer and larger plots that allow roads or paths between them. In contrast to the Second Republic (1931–1936) agrarian reform, it avoided the matter of large-scale land ownership and its necessary redistribution. Through a micro-historical approach, this paper aims to investigate changes in the developmental model of the dictatorship, by incorporating the local actors and their resistances in the historical interpretation. This perspective will reveal the conflict between subaltern and dominant reasons. We will rely on the analysis of documentary sources of a legislative and regulatory nature, local documentation, as well as oral interviews with peasants and agricultural technicians who worked in Galizan rural areas.

KEYWORDS:

• land consolidation
• peasant resistances
• Franco dictatorship
• Galiza

Notes

1 Interview with Miguel, Technical Topography Auxiliar of the Land Consolidation Service, from a non-Galizan area. He was born in 1956 (25/05/11). Original in Spanish language.

Both “Galiza” and “Galicia” are alternative names for the same reference.

2 This article was enriched thanks to the comments of Program in Agrarian Studies – Yale University colleagues during our postdoctoral stay there (2014–2016). This stay could be carried out thanks to the support of the public program of Axudas de apoio á etapa de formación postdoutoral nas universidades do SUG (Xunta de Galicia 2013). Previous and different versions of the article have been discussed in Rural History 2015 (Girona), Rural History 2017 (Leuven) and Rural History 2019 (Paris). Author was able to participate in these conferences with the support of the public program Ayudas Juan de la Cierva - Incorporación (MINECO 2016) and as a member of HISTAGRA Research Group http://histagra.usc.es/en

I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers, whose constructive comments have allowed me to enrich the text originally presented.

3 During the period 1950 to 2012 there was an intense deagrarianization. The population employed in agriculture fell by 93 percent, from 827,000 people to 59,000, causing its relative weight to drop from 70 to 5.5 percent (a percentage similar to the average for the European Union (Fernández Leiceaga and López Iglesias 2013, 42).

4 In the context of the fin-de-siècle agricultural crisis, interrelated processes converged to precipitate an increase in peasant land ownership and the decline of the lower nobility as a social class. Notably, the sons of average rural households migrated to the Americas en masse. Their remittances and participation in the commercialization of cattle export, along with technical innovations achieved collectively through agrarian unions, contributed to the process of foral redemption and made it possible for some households to access property (Villares 1982; Fernández Prieto 1992; Cabo Villaverde 1998).

5 On the regime of land ownership in Galiza, the various types of owners and sizes of properties by areas, see: Bouhier [1979] 2001, 1041–1067.

6 The validity of the modernization or development paradigms or, in other words, the idea of indefinite progress through advances in technical and scientific knowledge configured particularly since the 19^th century and renewed between the post-World War II period and the seventies, has been opposed by authors such as Scott (1998); for Galiza, see: Durán (1978, 28–29).

7 Gramsci's wrote during his imprisonment (1929–1935), on many theoretical matters, offering also a development of the common sense concept. His conceptualization allows us to apprehend common sense as a mechanism for integrating subaltern classes into the culture and ideology of the dominant class, the limits of hegemonic processes, and the complex, conflictive and negotiated character of both. By realizing that the dominant class is not able to achieve a complete hegemony, and various repression and consent mechanisms are needed, the capacity of the subaltern classes to dispute and reappropriate can also be understood (1999, 140).

8 We explain with greater precision the common as an object of study in (Díaz-Geada 2020). In that article, we studied the policies and projects for the agrarian world that, together with the expropriation of communal lands, required rural households to reconfigure their reproductive strategies during the Franco dictatorship. One of these policies is the land consolidation policy, on which we focus our attention in this article. The proposal of our research is not so much to show the dispossession practices that guided state rural modernization efforts, but to advance the conceptualization of the common, as a part of a communitarian common sense, and reveal its potential for confronting elements of exploitation and acculturation that were inherent to capitalist intensification of the agrarian complex. Our argument, therefore, is not based solely on the study of a specific policy. The study of land consolidation must be understood in relation to other policies and projects of the moment. It seems to us an eloquent example to illustrate our interpretative proposal and delve into the analysis of the changes that have taken place in a dimension as central as the organization of land and agricultural work.

An example of policy that did generate a broad open community resistance was the repopulation and massive expropriation of the communal forest. About this issue (Rico Boquete 1995; Freire 2014).

9 The great exception is an unpublished study about the first land consolidation effort in Galiza (González Vázquez 1997). See also: Fernández de Rota y Monter and Irimia 1998; and: Ribas Álvarez 2008; Crecente Maseda 1998; Miranda Barros 2001; Crecente Maseda, Paleo and López 2001; López Iglesias 1999, 2005; Consellería and Montes 1995.

10 This study starts from a larger one that constitutes my doctoral research about transformation in Galizan rural communities during the 1950s–1980s. A variety of sources related to agrarian institutions and agrarian policies, looking for dynamics, forms of resistance, adaptations, actors, and dominant or marginal perspectives has been examined. Different sources have been used to explore micro-level conflicts (Municipal, provincial, general archives; the Agrarian Extension Service and the Agrarian Unions archives; press releases from agrarian institutions, unions, and general information in the press). Documentary sources were also cross-checked with 56 oral interviews. Names have been pseudonymized. Gender: 20 women, 36 men; Age: 42-102 years old, most were 50-70; Geography: Galizan people (51/56), from Lugo province (42/56), from A Mariña (NE Lugo province) (37/56); Socioprofessional profile: peasants/farmers (30/56, 13/56 of them have taken part in various mobilizations and 12/56 of them were part of an agrarian union) and experts (technical experts from the Agrarian Extension Service, from the Land Consolidation Service and the Workers Professional Program) (13/56). This last group of interviews has been of particular importance in this exercise, as well as interviews to peasants who did or did not undergo land consolidation processes in their parishes. We also rely on legislative and regulatory documents, reports, and documentation of local funds of agrarian chambers (official agrarian organization of the dictatorial regime) available in the AHPL (Provincial Historical Archive of Lugo).

11 With the ratification of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the subsequent Autonomy Statutes, some powers were gradually transferred, and some Autonomous Communities developed their own regulations regarding land consolidation. In Galiza, a regional law was passed in 1985 (Ley 10/1985) and was completed in 1988 with a Decree regulating private consolidation processes, adding few significant changes to the law of 1973. In 2001, a new law introduced environmental conservation, but in essence policies did not change once democracy was introduced.

12 This may have several possible causes. According to Sevilla Guzmán, Castile occupied a central place in what was known as the ideology of peasant sovereignty that characterized agricultural fascism in the early decades of the dictatorship. It provided a foundation for Spanish nationality, a pillar of Catholic unity and support for the Falangist project. In Cantabria and Asturias, though not Navarre, there had been strong support for the Popular Front during the war. For Asturias, October 1934 revolution should be remembered. It was a revolution led by the Asturian mining proletariat, started by a revolutionary general strike. Although this strike extended over a large part of the State, the movement caught on in Asturias, supported by the alliance between anarchists and socialists. After two weeks of revolutionary construction, the Asturian commune was dismantled with a harsh repression by the army. In Galiza and the Cantabrian-asturian region, there were significant anti-Francoist guerrilla movements. Other agronomic reasons included greater crop diversity, northern geography, or the legal complexity that accompanied aspects of land ownership in those areas (Sevilla Guzmán 1979, 186–191; see also Bosque Maurel 1984, 176–178).

13 The Spanish Agrarian Extension Service (SEA) was created in 1955 to promote agricultural development, in the framework of the international spread of the Modernization Theory, under the initial influence of the United States extension model (Sánchez de Puerta 1996).

14 From 1981 to 1988, the volume of land consolidation decreased for political-administrative reasons, due to the institutional reorganization resulting from the establishment of the regional autonomous system. By 1989, 31% of Galizan Useful Agricultural Surface had been consolidated (as well as 4.46% in Asturias, 29.27% in Cantabria, 34.21% in Euskadi, 19.25% in Navarre, 4.35% in La Rioja, 9.91% in Aragón, 0.40% in Catalonia, 0.88% in Comunitat Valenciana, 4.62% in Murcia, 0.92% in Andalusia, 4.62% in Extremadura, 66.51% in Castile-León, 30.47% in Castile la Mancha, 10.28% in Madrid). With the support of EU financing from 1989 on, the process recovered and 135,205 hectares were consolidated in Galiza in the following decade (an average of 13,500 hectares per year). Though this was the period of greatest activity, the land consolidation process differed from prior stages due to changes in the rural economy – and in spite of the fact that Law 10/1985 maintained the initial approach and only updated the environmental element (Ribas Álvarez 2008, 28–32 from IRYDA 1992; also Maceda Rubio 2014).

15 Thus, began the preamble to the 20 December 1952 Law on Land Consolidation (Official State Bulletin - BOE 358, 23/12/1952, p. 6305).

16 Carreira Pérez and Carral Vilariño (2014) explain that the efficiency of a farm does not directly correspond to its size. Small or medium-sized farms are more efficient than large or too-large ones, due to the balance between costs and work resources. They demonstrate how efficient techniques and machinery can be compatible with the highly fragmented microplot structure, and point out the potential of historical rural infrastructures and constructions.

17 Order of 16 February 1953 that dictated norms for the procedure that must be followed for land consolidation processes, Ministerio de Agricultura (BOE, 66, 7/3/1953, pp. 1288). In addition to the legislative references, in the description of the process that we carry out in the following paragraphs, we rely on oral interviews with technicians and peasants that had been involved in the land consolidation process in our area of study: Interview with Miguel, Technical Topography Auxiliar of the Land Consolidation Service, from a non-Galizan area. He was born in 1956 (25/05/11). Original in Spanish language; Interview with Luis, peasant from Celeiro de Mariñaos. He was born in 1930 (09/08/11). Original in Galizan language.

18 Interview with a technical topography assistant from the Land Consolidation Service of a non-Galizan area. He was born in 1956 (25/05/11). Original in Spanish language.

19 Interview with Valentín, expert from the Program of Professional Training for Workers. He was born in 1954 (29/08/12). Original in Galizan language except for the “Down with civilization”! (which was in Spanish).

20 Questionnaire on interest in land consolidation, September 1963, Dossier CP, Fondo Cámaras Agrarias Foz, AHPL.

21 Memorandum from the President of HSLGs Foz to the City Hall of Foz, 1971, Dossier CP, Fondo Cámaras Agrarias Foz, AHPL.

22 Interview with Manuel, peasant from Cordido. He was born in 1928 (16/08/11). Original in Galizan language.

23 Doc. launching talks, 1971, Dossier CP, Fondo Cámaras Agrarias Foz, AHPL.

24 We can find the logic of the polyculture system as an explicit reason to protest against the land consolidation in the letters written by the small peasants: “(…) we see in the plot that has been assigned to us that in the grove that land markers are moving little by little (…) and this plot is said to have a quality it has not so we cannot accept it like that. You know we have a few properties but a bit of everything and now we have not a piece to grow cabbage for ourselves so we hope you can fix it because this is being cause of annoyance within the family and you can avoid this and if you dońt believe me you can chose a trustworthy person to check (…) we are having a lot of bad quality land and we cannot grow there beans, potatoes or grass (…)”

Plea from a small peasant, A Barcala, September 8, 1958. In González Vázquez 1997, 118.

25 At that time land consolidation was beginning in the Parish of Meirás, municipality of Valdoviño (A Coruña), which led to a significant level of conflict that went through official channels and also non-institutional protests, even when the process was virtually complete. One woman, and her son in law, pulled up for a second time the new plot markers even though they had already been punished by the Civil Governor for their first offense. They threatened violence if the technical experts of the Land Consolidation Service insisted on imposing the new plot markers (Cabana 2011, 195).

26 On the wealth and sense of this system, see: Bouhier [1979] 2001 (original in French, 1979).

27 On the historically recent establishment of the structure of land ownership for small scale farmers, see Opus. Cit.: 1068–1088. On how the small plots of land functioned, on production and profitability or performance of the minifundio system in different areas, from the late 18^th century until the 1980s, see Opus. Cit.: 1091–1114.

28 Interview with Valentín, expert from the Workers Professional Program. He was born in 1954 (29/08/12). Original in Galizan language.

29 Interview with Serafin, expert from the Land Consolidation Service. He was born in 1957 (26/05/11). Original in Galizan language.

30 An interesting research, which distinguishes the different types of claimants according to their relationship with property and market, for the case of San Martiño do Bispo, Baixo Mondego (Portugal) in Hespanha 2005, 165–167, and for the case of O Val da Barcala, A Coruña (Galiza), also introducing political elements in the analysis: González Vázquez 1997, 112–121.