Cultivating Nature

The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape

Sarah R. Hamilton, Paul S. Sutter

• Editorial: University of Washington Press
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780295743325
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Europäische Geschichte

Winner of the 2019 Turku Book Award from the European Society for Environmental History The Albufera Natural Park, an area ten kilometers south of Valencia that is widely regarded as the birthplace of paella, has long been prized by residents and visitors alike. Since the twentieth century, the disparate visions of city dwellers, farmers, fishermen, scientists, politicians, and tourists have made this working landscape a site of ongoing conflict over environmental conservation in Europe, the future of Spain, and Valencian identity. In Cultivating Nature, Sarah Hamilton explores the Albufera's contested lands and waters, which have supported and been transformed by human activity for a millennium, in order to understand regional, national, and global social histories. She argues that efforts to preserve biological and cultural diversity must incorporate the interests of those who live within heavily modified and long-exploited ecosystems such as the Albufera de Valencia. Shifting between local struggles and global debates, this fascinating environmental history reveals how Franco's dictatorship, Spain's integration with Europe, and the crisis in European agriculture have shaped the Albufera, its users, and its inhabitants.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

Epigraph. Miguel Gual Camarena, Estudio Histórico-Geográfico sobre la Acequia Real del Júcar (Valencia: Instituto de Geografía de la Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo, 1979), 9.

1 Emilia Pardo Bazán, La cocina española antigua (Madrid: Sociedad Anónima Renacimiento, 1913), 317; Doctor Thebussen (Mariano Pardo de Figueroa), quoted in Pilar Bueno and Raimundo Ortega, “De la fonda nueva a la nueva cocina. La evolución del gusto culinario en España durante los siglos XIX y XX,” Revista de Libros 19–20 (1998): 3. See also Lara Anderson, Cooking Up the Nation: Spanish Culinary Texts and Culinary Nationalization in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2013).

2 Gregorio Marañon, “Ensayo apologético sobre la cocina española,” in El alma de España (Madrid: Herederos de D. Manuel Herrera Oria, 1951), 188.

3 Pardo Bazán, La cocina española antigua, 317–19.

4 Olivia Blair, “Jamie Oliver’s Paella Recipe Blasted by Spaniards over Inclusion of Chorizo,” The Independent, Oct. 5, 2016; Sam Jones, “Jamie Oliver’s Paella Brings Fractured Spain Together … against Him,” Guardian, Oct. 4, 2016; Vicent Marco, “La ‘paella’ de Jamie Oliver, el chef más famoso de Inglaterra,” Vicent Marco, Oct. 4, 2016, www.vicentmarco.com/2016/10/04/la-paella-de-jamie-oliver-el-chef-mas-famoso-de-inglaterra/; Ana Vega ‘Biscayenne’, “How Celebrity Chefs Destroy Classic Spanish Dishes,” El País, March 18, 2016.

5 Llimona (llim0na), “@jamieoliver Remove the chorizo. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. First warning,” Oct. 4, 2016, tweet.

6 Phobophile, “Good. Now let me tell you about my version of fish&chips. It combines beef and ravioli,” Oct. 4, 2016, 6:02 a.m., tweet; Antonio Villa-real (bajoelbillete), “My version of fish and chips combines aubergines with duck,” Oct. 4, 2016, 5:59 a.m., tweet. Paella recipes published by Pardo Bazán and other food writers from the first decades of the twentieth century include not only chorizo but blood sausage, steak, and other ingredients certain to horrify contemporary Valencians. Pardo Bazán, La cocina española antigua, 317–19; Dionisio Pérez (Post-Thebussem), La cocina clásica española: Excelencias, amenidades, historia, recetarios (Huesca: La Val de Onsera, 1936), 43.

7 Llorenç Alapont (LlorAlapont), “Paella is not just a terrible version of rice with things. Paella is culture and tradition,” Oct. 4, 2016, 3:41 p.m., tweet.

8 “Regulation 1151/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Quality Schemes for Agricultural Products and Foodstuffs,” Official Journal of the European Union L 343 (2012), Sec. 1.

9 Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, Book III, Chapter 4, trans. John Bostock (London: Taylor and Francis, 1855), available at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0137:book=3:chapter=4.

10 Strabo, Geography, Book III, Chapter 4, Section 6, trans. Horace Leonard Jones (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923), available at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/3D*.html.

11 Carles Sanchis Ibor, Regadiu i Canvi Ambiental a L’Albufera de València (Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2001).

12 The concept of Valencia’s “national duality” was introduced by Joan Fuster in his highly influential work of Valencian nationalism, Nosaltres, els Valencians (Barcelona: Ediciones 62, 1962).

13 Salvador Almenar, “La meitat dels valencians creu que el català I el valencià són llengües diferents,” Ara.cat, May 16, 2014.

14 On early modern irrigation in Spain, see Guy Lemeunier, “Hidráulica Agrícola en la España Mediterránea, S. XVI–XVIII: La Formación de los Regadíos Clásicos,” in El Agua en la Historia de España, ed. Carlos Barciela López and Joaquín Melgarejo Moreno (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000), 47–110. On irrigation and agriculture in Valencia and the Ribera Baixa in particular, see J. M. Soria and E. Vicente, “Estudio de los aportes hídricos al parque natural de la Albufera de Valencia,” Limnetica 21 (2002): 105–15.

15 Antonio José de Cavanilles, Observaciones sobre la historia natural, geografía, agricultura, población y frutos del Reyno de Valencia (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1795), xi.

16 Richard Twiss, Travels through Portugal and Spain in 1772–1773 (London: Robinson, 1775), 199, 206.

17 Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787, Vol. III (London: C. Dilly, 1791), 268.

18 ACA, Consell d’Aragó, Secretria de València, llig. 657, f. 82 and ACA, Consell d’Aragó, Secretria de València, llig. 791, f. 46/1, both quoted in Xavier Quartiella and Xavier Roman, Pescadors i Llauradors—Activitats Economiques De Les Classes Populars a l’Albufera (s. XVII) (Valencia: Ajuntament de Catarroja, 1989), 206, 218.

19 Lemeunier, “Hidráulica Agrícola,” 85–86; James Simpson, Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 85; Ricardo Sanmartín Arce, La Albufera y sus Hombres (Madrid: Akal/Universitaria, 1982), 30–31; Sanchis Ibor, Regadiu i Canvi Ambiental a L’Albufera de València.

20 Francisco de Paula Martí, study published by the Sociedad Económica Matritense, 1818, Patronato Nacional de Turismo, 1929, 151.

21 Francisco de P. Momblanch y Gonzalbez, Historia de la Albufera de Valencia (Valencia: Ayuntamiento de Valencia, 1960), 150.

22 “Ordenanzas para el desagüe del Real Lago de la Albufera de Valencia y limpia y monda de sus carreras,” July 18, 1862 (Valencia: Imprenta de José Maria Ayoldi); Francisco Collado Rosigue, “Water Management at the Albufera in Valencia,” PowerPoint presentation, 2007, 4–5, 22; J. M. Soria, “Past, Present and Future of La Albufera of Valencia Natural Park,” Limnetica 25 (2006): 137.

23 Plácido Virgili Sorribes (Inginiero de Montes), Aprovechamiento Piscícola de la Albufera de Valencia y Marjales Lindantes (Madrid: Dirección General de Montes, Caza, y Pesca Fluvial, 1956), 24.

24 General overviews of the Albufera’s long history of recreational and productive use by Valencians include Sanmartín Arce, La Albufera y sus Hombres; Momblanch y Gonzalbez, Historia de la Albufera de Valencia; Ignacio Docavo Alberti, La Albufera de Valencia: Sus Peces y sus Aves (Valencia: Diputación Provincial de Valencia, 1979).

25 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). On the engagement of Leopold and other wildlife managers in agricultural landscapes, see Albert G. Way, Conserving Southern Longleaf : Herbert Stoddard and the Rise of Ecological Land Management (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 144.

26 Two global studies of this phenomenon are Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Conservation and Native Peoples (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011); Roderick P. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

27 Ian Tyrrell, “America’s National Parks: The Transnational Creation of National Space in the Progressive Era,” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 1 (Feb. 2012): 13, 10–11. With regard to national parks in particular, not all European countries prioritized cultural landscapes. Sweden, for instance, established largely human-free wilderness areas, while scientific interests drove the declaration of the Swiss National Park and the elimination of traditional economic exploitation within it. Patrick Kupper, “Science and the National Parks: A Transatlantic Perspective on the Interwar Years,” Environmental History 14, no. 1 (2009): 66.

28 Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2012); Julianne Lutz Newton, Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006); Paul S. Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 89–98.

29 The phrase “Valencia: Garden of Spain” first appeared in tourism marketing in 1928, during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, but reflected a widely held concept dating back at least a century. An extensive literature underscores the centrality of cultural landscapes in European concepts of nature and nature conservation. See, for example, Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 15; James Sievert, The Origins of Nature Conservation in Italy (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 21, 41; Raymond H. Dominick III, The Environmental Movement in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871–1971 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 27; William J. Sutherland, “A Blueprint for the Countryside,” Ibis 146, no. s2 (Nov. 2004): 231; Jens Brüggemann, “National Parks and Protected Area Management in Costa Rica and Germany: A Comparative Analysis,” in Social Change and Conservation: Environmental Politics and Impacts of National Parks and Protected Areas, ed. Krishna B. Ghimire and Michael P. Pimbert, 2nd ed., 71–96 (London: Earthscan, 2009), 79; Roberta Cevasco, “Environmental Heritage of a Past Cultural Landscape: Alder Woods in the Upper Aveto Valley of the Northwestern Apennines,” in Nature and History in Modern Italy, ed. Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 127; Dario Gaggio, The Shaping of Tuscany: Landscape and Society between Tradition and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Luigi Puccioni, “Nature Preservation and Protection in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy, 1880–1950,” in Nature and History in Modern Italy, ed. Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 253–54.

30 Dowie, Conservation Refugees, 134–40, offers examples of pastoralism, swidden agriculture, cyc...