Rooted Rights Systems in Turbulent Water: The Dynamics of Collective Fishing Rights in La Albufera, Valencia, Spain

Abstract

Valencia's Albufera Lake is a wetlands area where different sociolegal systems interact. Its El Palmar community is governed by customary laws for fishing and territorial control. These exist alongside, yet in tension with, governmental laws. This article examines the dynamics of fishing rights, focusing particularly on the conflict between the desire to practice autonomous management and the incursion of outside authorities and third parties seeking to question these arrangements. Hereby, competition between multiple authorities, users, and even nonusers occurs in different arenas, characterized by conflicting normative frameworks. The article analyzes how the fishing community has defended its rooted, customary rights to regulate the Albufera Lake fisheries, against internal and external coalitions and influences that have threatened its structure and collective and individual rights. Their demands are, however, difficult to meet in an unequal power geography, especially since the community has authority over fishing management but not over the lake's water regime.

Keywords:

• common property
• fishing rights
• legal pluralism
• natural resource conflicts
• spain

Acknowledgments

We thank Mieke Hulshof, Jeroen Vos, Carles Sanchis-Ibor, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. This research forms part of the activities of the international research alliance Justicia Hídrica/Water Justice (www.justiciahidrica.org).

Notes

Historically, the lake was a brackish water inland sea. In the 18th century the area became naturally closed off from the sea and turned into a freshwater lake. It has a surface area of 2,500 ha, a mean depth of nearly 1 m, and is surrounded by rice wetlands (18,000 ha), all of which form the Natural Park (21,000 ha) (Hulshof 2012).

In-depth interviews (89) for the base study (2003–2011) were held with local/regional informants, selected for being main actors or key informants on the conflicts: El Palmar fishers (25), Valencia Municipality officials (2), government institutes’ representatives (3), research centers (4), tourism enterprises (2), rice growers (8), local industries (3), and construction companies (2); as well as El Palmar neighbors (10), Albufera municipalities’ representatives (10), cultural associations representatives in the area (6), fish vendors (4), journalists following the process (8), and Albufera Lake specialists (2).In January–August 2012, complementary field research (26 interviews; see also Hulshof 2012) was done, and in June 2013 and June–July 2014 the authors supervised two research teams to actualize and finalize the overview, totaling 35 additional interviews (respectively 10 and 25 interviews). Interviews were done in Spanish (fluently spoken by the authors). Summaries and conclusions were cross-checked with literature and field observations. During the research periods (2003–2011 and follow-up 2012, 2013, and 2014), where possible, all relevant meetings were attended, both public and private. Generally, fishing community, court, and governmental public meetings were accessible; this was different for the strongly closed/inaccessible gatherings of the Drainage Board.

In general terms, El Palmar fishing rights establish who has the right to fish; the conditions/criteria for obtaining rights; how, when, where, and how much each can fish; the obligations for maintaining the right; the penalties for infractions; members’ participation in deciding about fishing management (e.g., admission of new members; changes in regulations; agreements with third parties); participation in social/political/cultural fishing community activities; and eligibility for management positions (interviews with fishermen, 2003–2014).

Note also the fundamental difference between legalized customary laws (“attorneys’ customary law,” von Benda-Beckmann et al. 1998) and the people's customary laws, which live dynamically in the field.

1 Valencian hanegada = 831 m².