CONSTITUTING THE COMMONS

(Eighth Biennial IASCP Conference)

Economic Adaptation and Social Resilience to State Intervention in the Spanish

Common Forests (1855-1925)

Antonio Linares
Universidad de Extremadura

1. Introduction

Following the traditional categories of liberal economic theory, most European

historians tend to interpret the disappearance of collective lands as something truly inevitable
and historically necessary. However, in the light of more recent investigation, it seems that
the disappearance of common rights in Europe was a much more complex and less uniform
process than previously assumed. Without ignoring the advances of agrarian individualism
and the consequent diminution of spaces for common usage since the middle of the 18th
century, at present it becomes evident that the phenomenon of privatisation was far from
standard and indeed highly heterogeneous in terms of both space and time. The enclosures in
England presented very different characteristics from the partitions undertaken in Austria and
Prussia or the privatisations in France. Similarly, the repartition of commons lands in Spain
and Portugal, defended by enlightened thinkers, did not affect collective rights in the same
way as the disentailment which followed in the 19th century1.
Neither was the theoretical debate which accompanied privatisation since the middle
of the 18th century marked precisely by a uniformity of criteria. Confronted with the most
orthodox ideologists, some defenders of the liberal cause attempted to delimit the expansion
of individualism and recognised the unsettling effects of privatisation on traditional forms of
agrarian organisation2 Furthermore, in the second half of the 18th century, the theories of the
German school of forestry gained acceptance throughout Europe, spreading the idea that it
was necessary to maintain some areas of collective property under State control. The
Germans sustained that the logic of profit maximisation led individuals to overexploit
wooded areas without taking into account those protective functions which the market did not
remunerate. Now that the beneficial influence of woods on climate and water management
had been established, it became necessary to assure the conservation of forests through the
establishment of institutions which would guarantee the generation of positive externalities.
From this point of view, the public sector appeared to be the only entity capable of combining
the quest for economic profit with a concern for ecological conservation. The State should,
therefore, maintain forests of general utility in public hands and, at the same time, exert
detailed control of those other surfaces which continued in communal hands. This marked the
beginning of a European school of thought in favour of public forestry which considered
collective utilisation as incompatible with ecological conservation3.

1
See Rodrigues (1987), Thompson (1991), Corona (1996), Mayaud (1996), Neeson (1996) and Iriarte (1996b).
2
See Grossi (1986) and Gimnez (1990).
3
The debate concerning this subject is still alive and is fuelled by the polemic articles of Hardin (1968 and
1994) about the tragedy of the commons. See Thompson (1975), McCay & Acherson (1987), Berkes (1989),
Ostrom (1990), Aguilera (1991), Martnez (1992), Cobo, Cruz & Gonzlez (1992) and Sala (1995).

1
 In Spain, as in other parts of Europe, the theoretical debate concerning the future of
assets administered by municipalities (propios, arbitrios and comunes) has been driven, since
the middle of the 18th century, by a diversity of criteria4. Within the liberal fraternity, some
authors have qualified negatively the impact of competitive individualism on the rural world.
Likewise, the 19th century forestry theory developed an insistent campaign for the
nationalisation of Spanish forests which was clearly influenced by German thought. In
contrast, the sector most critical to the advance of economic liberalism not only relativised the
supposed incompatibility between collective ownership and agrarian growth, but even
advocated the extension of communalisation to the detriment of private property5
The plurality of the debate has been amply reflected in the evolution of legislative
activity. In spite of the strong encouragement given to the process of disentailment by liberal
governments, the insertion of production factors into the market was not always the only
finality of privatisation law-making. Some ministerial cabinets recognised the negative effects
of the inequality within rural communities and attempted to use legislation to guarantee the
participation of the less privileged sectors of society in the disarticulation of collective
property. The differences between the different objectives of economic policy generated a
corresponding variety of mechanisms set up by the State to privatise municipal assets. Apart
from disentailment, consisting of nationalisation and subsequent public auction to the highest
bidder, other less well known legal figures were used to pass commons to the individual: free
distribution, perpetual leaseholds and the legalisation of occupations. Furthermore, Spanish
liberal legislation succumbed to the pressure of European forestry theory and passed to the
central administration the greater part of common forest area. Not all governments of the time
considered privatisation or nationalisation as the only options for surfaces traditionally
destined to collective utilisation. If on some occasions the legal process of the redefinition of
property rights was paralysed, on others it concentrated precisely on the rescue of old
communal rights.
Not all regions reacted in the same manner to the contradictory regulatory measures of
the State6. In some places, liberal projects were strongly contested by the local communities
and had to be abandoned or, the best of cases, redefined to suit local conditions. When
privatisation could count on local support, the adopted model of agrarian growth not only
depended on the physical characteristics of the terrain, but also on the formulas employed to
adjudicate the collective surfaces in question. In those periods when nationalisation
dominated, the forestry administration had to deal with the previous beneficiaries in order to
apply forestry regulations. At times, the restriction of collective utilisation led to the
devastation of woodland by the local peasantry. For all that, liberal agrarian reform did not
always have to struggle with a rural environment characterised by the collective management
of natural resources. Improved knowledge of the privatisation process has revealed that not
only did the market precede the law on multiple occasions, but also, that in spite of it, the
communities enjoyed sufficient space for manoeuvre to interpret central directives to their
own benefit.

4
In order to make for easier reading, I employ the term municipal to refer to all rustic patrimony administered
by local corporations; comunes refers to assets of free and gratuitous utilisation, while propios denotes assets
with a limited and onerous utilisation. The term arbitrios is used for gratuitous comunes which have been
temporarily converted to onerous propios by the municipality. A more detailed analysis of these terms can be
found in Nieto (1964), Cuadrado (1980) and Mangas (1981 and 1984).
5
See, for example, Nieto (1964), Gmez (1992) and Casals (1996).
6
See, among others, Dez (1986), Araque (1990), Montiel (1990), Balboa (1990), Artiaga (1991), Moreno
(1991), Lpez (1992), Cobo, Cruz & Gonzlez (1992), Artiaga & Balboa (1992), Lana (1992), Manuel (1994),
Moreno (1994), Brunet (1996), Iriarte (1996b), Jimnez (1996), Bonales (1997), Sabio (1997) and Sala (1998).

2
 Until recently, however, Spanish academics followed, without much reserve, the
theory that identifies the penetration of the market into the rural world with the rise of the
liberal state. The correlation between these two circumstances had become so popular in
contemporary economic analysis that, even for the most critical of researchers, the
privatisation process of the means of production had ceased to have any profile of its own and
had been converted into a mere adjunct of the consolidation of liberal bourgeois reform. As a
consequence of such simplifications over the last thirty years, the liberal State has become
regarded as an autonomous entity capable of implementing a market economy by decree.
Only few academics have explicitly recognised the indisputable responsibility of society in
the face of the States changing policies or the capacity of traditional economic activity to
adapt to market forces7.This explains the apparent contradictions in Spanish literature when
interpreting the unequal progress of individualising tendencies in the rural world or the
heterogeneous evolution of resistance against decommunalisation.
In the following pages no attempt is made to resolve all the different problems posed
by the study of the redefinition of property rights in the economic history. The endeavour of
this paper is to discuss and put into perspective some of the more polemical hypotheses
through an analysis of the privatisation process in a delimited area (Extremadura) and a
defined timeframe (1855-1924). The importance of forest area directly or directly
administered by the municipalities in Extremadura in the middle of the 19th century endorses
the choice of this region to test the various interpretations put forward in the debate regarding
the economic functionality of common assets. The chronological delimitation, which the
reader will notice is not strictly respected, corresponds to the timeframe in which the presence
of liberal State, over the long and fluid process of privatisation, is most clearly felt from a
legislative point of view: the General Law of Disentailment of 1st May 1855 approved the
individual appropriation of municipal property and the Municipal Statute of 8th March 1924
finally paralysed the legal process of the individualisation of collective patrimony.

In terms of income per capita, Extremadura today is the most backward region in
Spain and figures in the fourth quartile of European Union regions8. With an area similar to
that of Switzerland (40,000 km), it lies in Southwestern Spain and, since 1833, is
administratively divided into two large provinces: Cceres and Badajoz (Map 1). Surrounded
by mountains in the North, the East and the South, the Extremaduran plateau gradually
descends into Portugal on its Western frontier. High summer temperatures and irregular
winter rainfall contribute to a hostile climate which situates the region among the driest in
Spain. The barrenness of the soil, added to the aridity, strongly conditions agricultural activity
in the region. Only xerophilous species, able to survive the summer aridity, can prosper in
high forest and scrubland. The different oak species, which dominate the wooded areas of the
region, give a natural protection against erosion and provide irreplaceable fodder for
livestock. Herbaceous species are practically limited to those which germinate in winter.
Vines and olive trees can compensate the waterless summers with the mild temperatures of
winter, but the risk of frost in autumn and the irregular rainfall of spring can deter
germination. On the other hand, the concentration of rain in March and October favours the
abundance of grazing during most of the year. This fact underpins the regions animal
husbandry which has dominated Extremaduran agrarian activity in the last two centuries.

7
In economic history, perspectives, however, are beginning to change. See, for example, Domnguez (1992),
Grupo de Estudios de Historia Rural (1994), Moreno (1996) and Iriarte (1996a).
8
See Villaverde (1992)

3
 Map 1
Extremadura in Europe

Europe

Extremadura

3. The common patrimony in the middle of the 19th century

3.1. Predominance and flexibility of the dehesa system

Given the imperfection of available sources, it is difficult to calculate exactly the area
covered by woodland in the patrimony of Extremaduran municipalities in the middle of the
19th century. However, a detailed analysis of the inventories made by the local authorities
between 1845 and 1855 statistically confirms the rustic wealth of the communities often
referred to by regional historical literature (Table 1). Considering exclusively woodland
surfaces, the classifications of the forties and fifties show a total area of over a million
hectares, divided between 1,923 holdings. In relative terms, the surface covered by municipal
forests in the middle of the 19th century represented more than a quarter of the regions total
extension and more than a third of its productive surface9.

9
The estimation of Extremaduras productive surface is taken from Grupo de Estudios de Historia Rural (1994:
136-140).

4
 In spite of the differences between counties, the arithmetical mean shows clearly that
the large holding predominated. They were usually properties of around 600 hectares,
generally located in the least fertile areas of each village and mostly at the confluence
between two or three municipal districts. In fact, a good part of municipal forests belonged to
the neighbours of various localities.

Table 1
Forest Area of Municipal Patrimony in Extremadura in 1855

Dominant Badajoz Province Cceres Province Extremadura (Region)

Species Hectares % Hectares % Hectares %
Holm Oak 338,238 67.2 441,822 59.6 750,060 62.8
Cork Tree 3,005 0,6 21,666 3.1 24,671 2.1
Common Oak 37,701 7.5 129,524 18.8 167,243 14.0
Pine 392 0.1 7,932 1.1 8,324 0.7
Others 498 0.1 1,981 0.3 2,479 0.2
Thicket 35,811 7.1 87,866 12.7 123,677 10.4
Without Trees 64,831 12.9 27,236 4.0 92,067 7.6
Unknown 23,195 4.5 2,622 0.4 25,817 2.2
TOTAL 503.671 100.0 690,667 100.0 1,194,338 100.0
SOURCES: Propios, Arbitrios y Comunes (1835-1855), Relacin (1846), Interrogatorio (1851), Inventario (1855),
Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1859), Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio
(1864), Direccin General de Propiedades y Derechos del Estado (1897), Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y
Comercio (1901) and Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Estados de 1925).

As to tree species, the analysis of the data from the local inventories shows the
importance of native Mediterranean forest flora. Oaks and cork trees in the high forest, and
arum, thyme, heather, broom, wild olive and lentisc in the scrubland represented almost 75%
of the forest surface of municipal property. They are xerophilous species, perfectly adapted to
the aridity and irregularity of the Mediterranean climate and to the fragility and barrenness of
the brownish southern soils, which explains why they are disseminated in almost all
Extremaduran counties. The common oak, however, in spite of its significant contribution to
the regional total, is in fact only documented in the northern and north-eastern zone of
Cceres and the southern zone of Badajoz, coinciding with the regions wettest and most
mountainous terrain. A similar distribution is found for the pine, chestnut, gall oak, alder, ash
and poplar, although none of these species by themselves account for more than 1% of the
assessed area. A larger proportion of the forestry surface is composed of areas in which tress
and bushes have been largely eliminated in favour of extensive livestock farming. This type
of terrain, characterised by a growth of cereals, pulses and some oak species, appears
throughout the region, but is more often found in those counties where plains predominate.
The importance of treeless areas in the region and the frequency with which the
authorities use the descriptions little growth or very little growth referring to municipal
woodlands is proof of mans intervention in the native woodlands of the region. By the
middle of the 19th century, a large proportion of woodland patrimony in Extremadura
consisted of areas already partly given over to pasture (dehesa). This aspect is fundamental to

5
the understanding of the special circumstances in which the privatisation process of common
woods takes place in such region.
The Extremaduran dehesa is exploited in three distinct facets: animal husbandry,
forestry and agriculture. It is above all the singular and masterful adaptation of a rural
population to the hostile conditions of its natural environment. Human intervention consists
of gaining pasture and, in due time, arable land from densely forested areas. Through periodic
burning of brushwood and felling of trees, the impenetrable woodland begins to acquire a
polyvalent and alternative use. The great virtue of the traditional dehesa is precisely that it
can offer an increased and triple exploitation, achieved with immaterial technical
modifications and without endangering the Mediterranean ecosystem10.
In spite of ploughing and deforestations on municipal land since the end of the 15th
century and, especially since the 18th century11, the system of mixed use continued to survive
by the middle of the 19th century. The grasses of autumn and winter and the spring and
summer pastures were consumed by both beasts of burden (oxen and mules) and breeding
livestock (sheep and goats). From October to January, the authorities reserved those dehesas
populated by oaks and cork trees for the pigs to feed on acorns shaken from the trees with
rods. Subsequently, the villagers would prune and trim both trees and underwood in order to
assure the production of acorn for the next season and to stock up on firewood for the next
winter. Meanwhile, in years of insufficient rainfall, goats would supplement their diet with
the tender branches of the different oak species. Between April and May, a part of the
extracted wood was transformed into charcoal. In those commons which contained fully
grown cork trees, every nine or ten years, from June to August, the bark would be stripped
from the trees. The inner part of the bark, imbued with a high content of tannin, served the
local leather industry as a tanning agent. The outer part, the cork proper, apart from domestic
uses (wall and floor covering, receptacles, decoration), served to construct beehives and was
of course sold to the bottle cork industry. On those surfaces most suited to agricultural use,
the villagers would sow winter and spring cereals (corn, barley and oats), with fallow periods
of between four and fifteen years. Once the crop had been harvested, the fields would be
cleaned by all classes of livestock, which would also graze these plots in fallow periods.
Moreover, the dehesas represented a tremendous resource in terms of wildlife to be hunted
(hares, rabbits, partridge, boar, deer, roe-deer) and fished (trout, barbels, carp, eels, salmon),
of mushrooms and medicinal plants to be gathered and of stone, sand and clay to be quarried.
The periods and duration of each of the customary rights of use was generally
regulated by local ordinance, and thanks to the strength of custom and of oral transmission,
perfectly understood by all the members of the community. The existence or more or less
formalised moral codes did, of course, not guarantee the absence of conflict within the
community, but, at the very least, it legitimised the complaints of its weakest members
against the sef-interested conduct of neighbours and strangers12. Nor did it assure the
equitable distribution of the product of the commons in a region where internal differences
had grown perceptibly since the middle of the 18th century, but it did guarantee to a certain
extent the survival of those customs which contributed most strongly to the peasantrys
income: fodder for animals of burden, small plots for cultivation, construction material, the
necessary sustenance for pigs, charcoal and firewood, and the products of fishing and hunting.
The recorded survival of these rights in the municipal woodlands of Extremadura up to the
middle of the 19th century provides an essential explanation for the lack of uniformity in the
10
Martn (1966), Elena, Bureau & Lpez (1980) and Campos (1984)
11
Rodrguez (1985), Pereira (1990) and Linares (1998)
12
This is another manifestation of the moral economy of the crowd defined by Thompson (1984: 62-134) in
his brilliant work on the English peasantry of the 18th century.

6
subsequent privatisation and nationalisation process derived from the Disentailment Law of
1st May 1855.
3.2. Community and market in the history of Extremaduran municipal property

Since the end of the Middle Ages, the Extremaduran winter pastures began to be
included in the seasonal cycle of Castilian transhumance, which accounted for the early
mercantilisation of the pastures in woodland commons13. The expanding international
demand for merino wool, the progressive growth of fiscal exaction and the steady increase of
economic requirements of the corporations, centred on the natural pastures and ended by
converting them into the principal source of income of Extremaduran municipalities. The
corporations began to pact with the villagers in assembly the temporary conversion of some
of the common surface from free to onerous utilisation and concluded by approving though
decree the permanent conversion of gratuitous comunes to onerous propios, at times passing
through the legal figure of the arbitrio14.
This triple process decommunalisation, municipalisation and mercantilisation of the
common winter pastures coincided, since the 1750s, with the emergence of new interests in
the utilisation of municipal lands. As in other areas of the country, during the 18th century, the
Extremaduran population grew perceptibly faster than regional agrarian production. The
difference between supply and demand of food provoked a general increase in prices which
affected grain products far more than meat and other livestock products. The relatively
improved price position of grain against meat and wool raised the leases of arable land and
encouraged putting more pasture surfaces under the plough. The new incentives to reduce the
common areas dedicated to rearing livestock converted the municipal dehesas into a target for
small and large farmers. But they were not the only ones to claim rights of usage of the
municipal lands: added to the traditional rights of transhumant merino breeders, there arose a
new class of livestock breeder who reared merino sheep locally all year round and who now
sought access to dehesa lands15.
If the tense equilibrium between the different interests implicated in the exploitation
of the municipal dehesas was maintained until the beginning of the 19th century, without any
need to recourse to privatisation, the downfall of the ancien rgime and the crisis of the
Castilian transhumance between 1800 and 1830 caused old restrictions regarding the
definitive alienation of municipal patrimony to be forgotten and placed in the hands of the
local corporations the final decision concerning the future of those lands16. As a result, on the
one hand, thousands of hectares were sold to local landowners and, on the other, vast
stretches of dehesa pasture were put under the plough by small and medium farmers in the
first third of the last century17. The most important characteristic of this twofold process
outright property transfer and individualisation of utilisation rights was that it parted from
local initiative and preceded the establishment of the liberal rgime. Only once the process
was consummated, did the central administration attempt to sanction it by law and to
integrate it into its political programme: the consecration of private property rights and one of
many attempts to solve growing public treasury problems18.

13
For an overview of the Castilian transhumance (the seasonal migration of merino sheep herds from Castilian
plateau to the plains of Extremadura), see Klein (1936), Pastor (1973) and Ruiz & Garca (1998).
14
See Meln (1989), Pereira (1990), Rodrguez (1990), Prez (1993) and Linares (1995).
15
See, among others, Llopis (1982), Garca (1985) and Snchez (1988).
16
See Llopis (1982) and Garca (1985).
17
See Zulueta (1975), Fuentes (1993), Llopis (1985) and Linares (1998).
18
Extremadura was not an isolated case in Spain. See Alonso (1986), Fontana & Garrabou (1986), Torre (1991)
and Otaegui (1991).

7
 In spite of the consolidation of liberalism, the penetration of the market economy in
the rural world, and, more specifically, in municipal patrimony in Extremadura, did not
always follow the principles laid out by liberal agrarian reform. In fact, in the twenty year
period from around 1835, when Isabeline legislation had enabled local corporations to sell
municipal patrimony, less surface was privatised than during the Peninsular War at the
beginning of the century, when there was no legal basis for the transfer of municipal terrain19.
Provincial authorities even saw themselves obliged to intervene, repeatedly exhorting the
local corporations to draw up the registers foreseen by legislation20.
It is difficult to corroborate fully why, from 1835 to 1855, the forces supporting
privatisation did not exploit the possibilities afforded by the law. Clearly, the answer must be
closely related with the beginning of Church property disentailment and with the temporary
consensus subsisting between cattle barons and smallholders during the period. It must be
noted that between 1836 and 1855, the confiscation and ensuing alienation of Church
property resulted in 170,000 hectares entering private hands in Extremadura. The greater part
of this surface consisted, without a doubt, of pastures and arable lands21. Given the greater
profitability of this type of land compared to municipal woodland it seems reasonable to
deduce that it was much more attractive to buy Church land at market prices than common
land at political prices. Additionally, it must be remembered that the progressive
monopolisation of municipal power by the local landowners during the ancien rgime
reached its zenith in the 1830s, when electoral legislation handed control over the town halls
to the major taxpayers of each community. This authority enabled the landowners to
manipulate and even freeze municipal pasture leases which affected their production costs. As
central legislation, moreover, had set no significant deadlines for municipal privatisation, it is
quite possible that the local agrarian oligarchies used this period to invest in Church lands,
while waiting for a more opportune moment to assume ownership of municipal dehesas at an
advantageous price22.
This last assumption does not invalidate the idea of the consensus between large cattle
ranchers and small farmers. Archive sources for the period 1836-1855 show clearly that the
traditional tension between livestock owners and farmers had abated to a certain degree. To
an extent, this is related to the entry of Church lands into the market, but, in the main, it
demonstrates the capacity of the Extremaduran dehesa system to absorb the pressure of the
distinct utilisation of tillers and livestock breeders without requiring one to reduce use at the
expense of the other. Of course, there are physical limits to expansion, but these appear not to
have been reached or, much less, surpassed, in the 1830s. In reality, the archives present a
period in which the most conflictive adjudications of common rights take place pacifically:
the documents available show annual rentals of tillable land to a large number of small
farmers in return for a modest sum and of pasture to a reduced number of livestock breeders
for equally modest amounts. This social equilibrium did not exclude the needier parts of the
population: those gratuitous common rights of importance for the survival of the poorest
peasants continue to be very present. This is indicated by the comprehensive regulations
issued every year governing access of beasts of burden to their own reserved pastures, by
continuous reminders to the community to make use of the acorns rights to feed their pigs, or
19
For the province of Badajoz, see Fuentes (1993).
20
Circumstances were different in other parts of Southern Spain, as recently shown by Jimnez (1996).
21
These data are taken from Garca (1994) and Naranjo (1997).
22
It was, in fact, the major landowners who most benefited from the sale of the 170,000 hectares between 1836
and 1855. See Garca (1994) and Naranjo (1997).

8
by the multiple references to the exercise of such rights as charcoal making, hunting, fishing,
plant gathering or quarrying.
By the middle of the 19th century, therefore, before disentailment was enacted, the
situation of Extremaduran municipal patrimony does not conform with an idyllic image of
primitive communism, nor with the egotistic representation of individualism, nor with the
confrontational notion of Marxist class warfare23. The market had penetrated the traditional
common rights system in several ways: the assignation of winter pasture rights to individuals,
the outright privatisation of many entire properties and the transfer of tillage rights for
cultivable areas. The mercantilisation of an important part of municipal patrimony did,
however, not imply the disappearance of traditional, collective utilisation in both agricultural
and silvicultural terms. The physical flexibility of the dehesa system, the respect for custom
and the consensus between the users had permitted the integration of individualising and
collective tendencies without state intervention. Up to what point could this equilibrium be
maintained?

4. The redefinition of property rights (1855-1875)

4.1. From municipal property to public property

At the beginning of February 1855, the Minister of Finance, Pascual Madoz, presented
a bill to the Parliament which would later be approved, without many modifications, as the
General Law of Disentailment of 1st May 1855. The draft foresaw, on the one hand, the public
auction of those Church assets which had not yet been transferred (following the
disentailment of Church property in 1836) and, on the other hand, the sale of municipal
property.. This marked the culmination of a long and fragmented privatisation process, in
which, as pointed out earlier, the liberal State by no means always played the determining
role. It was perhaps due to this that the new project, much more radical than any presented
before, met with resistance from all sectors of Spanish society24.
In Extremadura, as in many other parts of the country, the initial protest against the
project was articulated through the municipal corporations themselves. Few weeks after
becoming aware of Pascual Madozs plan to cover the chronic deficit of Spains central
finances, numerous towns in Southwestern Spain began to send deputations to the Parliament
to lay out their own ideas of how propios, arbitrios and comunes should be contemplated in
future disentailment legislation. The more radical corporations demanded the outright
rejection of the bill, arguing that municipal patrimony represented the private property of
every community and could not, therefore, be nationalised or sold by the State. Other less
resolute municipalities chose not to indict the legal principles of privatisation, limiting
themselves to petitions for the exemption of those holdings which were necessary to support
local livestock rearing and animal husbandry. The majority of the deputations, however,
while opposing the idea of public auction, advocated the distribution of land to resident
families by means of emphyteutic leaseholds or leaseholds with a predetermined right to
acquire the freehold. Only a very reduced number of communities expressed their full support

23
See Sala (1998: 10-33)
24
For an overview of the debate provoked in Spanish society by the disentailment bill, see Jarque (1972) and
Fernndez (1986).

9
of the bill submitted by the Minister of Finance in February 185525.

The reaction of the Extremaduran countryside to the imminent nationalisation of

municipal patrimony did not only express itself by means of direct deputations to the Cortes.
During the parliamentary debates, the members representing the region took up the local
cause and attempted to sway the chamber by a discourse founded on paternalism towards the
less privileged members of rural society. The argument that the low profitability of municipal
patrimony was directly attributable to the corporations poor management was contested by
the Extremaduran parliamentary members who counterclaimed that low monetary income
was the result of sensible moderation in charging for common rights utilisation. They argued
that, in the case of common land, it was precisely the gratuity of use which guaranteed the day
to day subsistence of the poorest peasants. In the case of onerous utilisation, the low rents
charged helped to secure the regions cattle rearing activity. From this perspective, they
reasoned, the social function of municipal patrimony should have priority over any fiscal
function linked to local income and that, in consequence, the Spanish parliament should reject
Pascual Madozs proposal26.
From my point of view, the arguments employed by the regions parliamentary
members on behalf of the local corporations were based on irrefutable realities. While I
question whether the real concern of either of the two parties was in truth the fate of the
weakest members of the Extremaduran peasantry, it has to be noted that their true motivation
was in no way detrimental to the greater mass of their constituents at that point. The interests
driving the struggle against disentailment did not necessarily coincide with those of the
community so often invoked in the arguments employed. Hence, the reduced number of
corporations which protested against the concept of disentailment itself, a not surprising
circumstance given the diverse privatisation processes in Extremaduran municipal property
which predate Madozs liberal project.
The object of parliamentary protest was, in my opinion, not so much privatisation
itself but, much rather, the model of privatisation planned by the Finance Ministry. According
to this model, the transfer of property was to be effected by means of simultaneous public
auctions held both in the locality of the property to be sold and in the nations capital:
Madrid. The bill did not foresee any preferred right of acquisition for the former users of the
property, so that the projected alienation was open to competitive bids from anywhere. This
fact probably alarmed the local Extremaduran oligarchy more than any other: the possibility
of losing control over the privatisation process to outside competitors at a time when many of
them had invested heavily in disentailed Church lands between 1836 and 1855.
The oligarchy to which I refer, consisting of large owners of land and cattle, wielded a
considerable amount of power locally, but when compared to similar groups in the rest of
Spain, represented but a middle class with fairly low level of capital and income27.
Throughout all the privatisation schemes of the first third of the 19th century, the main interest
and focus of Extremaduran landowners had been the legal recognition of a pre-emptive right
to the municipal land to be privatised for neighbours and common right users. Madozs
project, however, opened the door to the auctions to all and any interested parties, most
especially to the flourishing bourgeoisie of the nations capital. It is therefore not surprising to
find among the reasons purported by local Extremaduran institutions against the enactment of
the bill the fear that mighty capitalists and bankers will unite to exploit villages and
25
Diario de Sesiones (1880: 2,290; 2,474; 2,526; 2,605; 2,842; 3,167; 3,214; 3,242; 3,274; 3,504, 3,638; 3,781;
3,810; 3,837; 3,934 and 3,994)
26
Diario de Sesiones (1880: 3,250-3,294)
27
For a comparison to other regions, specifically Navarra, see Iriarte (1996a)

10
peasantry28.

The fact that local landowners had reason to protest against the States privatisation
scheme does by no means imply that the poorer members of society resigned themselves to its
implementation29. As some authors have shown, the inequitable use of municipal property,
derived from differences in individual wealth and the control over municipal institutions, did
not necessarily hinder a coincidence of interests between different users. The large cattle
owners were, without a doubt, the greatest beneficiaries, in absolute terms, of the production
of municipal lands, but, in relative terms, the peasants rights to the use of common pastures
were just as important30.
But it is a different matter whether this certain coincidence of interests also led to a
coincidence of action. In this sense, the Extremaduran experience of the fight against State
interference shows clearly that each of the implicated groups developed its own, particular,
form of resistance. In the first phase, corresponding to the parliamentary debate of Madozs
draft bill, the protest was mainly directed at the behest of the large landowners, by means of
deputations and parliamentary speeches. Without disagreeing with the concept of
privatisation, the protest concentrated on the States imminent intervention in the process.
Subsequently, once the bill had been enacted and the foreseen privatisation of properties
initiated, resistance took on an entirely different approach. Given that it became patent that
the large landowners were willing to play an active role in the auctions, it is the weaker
members of society who now react and take the reins of opposition. This phase is dominated
by a mixture of low-risk individual actions31 (moving of boundary markers, illegal entry of
cattle, theft of crops, laying fires, threats, rumours) and of organised collective tactics
(occupation of properties, massive ploughing, toppling of fences, insurgencies, attacks against
local authorities, threats to new owners). This type of popular action begins to play a major
part in Extremadura only after the fall of the Isabeline monarchy in 1868.
Meanwhile, Spanish forestry engineers made their influence felt for the first time and
propagate the principles of European forestry based on the theories developed by the Forestry
Academy of Tharandt (Saxony) and its founder, Heinrich von Cotta. The pioneers of forestry
in Spain more or less successfully incorporated the two main axioms of Cottas teachings into
the governments strategy in this area: the requirement for the State to assume directly the
management of the wood producing high forests and to regulate and control the exploitation
of all other woodland areas through a corps of specialised engineers32. Unexpectedly, this
combination of State intervention and conservationism quickly gained a foothold in national
politics and determined the process of redefining property rights. Moreover, from then on,
many of the debates in regard to privatisation were directly linked to the difficulty of bundling
both liberalisation and State control into the same legislative package.
Initially, the Law of 1st May 1855 attempted to solve the problem by exempting from
general disentailment those woodlands which the State did not consider appropriate for
alienation. At the same time, heeding the request of the corporations, the privatisation of
common use lands was excluded and, a few months later, the dehesas reserved for beats of
burden. These measures, added to the proposal to enact hypothecary legislation to guarantee

28
Barrantes (1875: 487)
29
Bernal (1978)
30
Sala (1997)
31
See Thompson (1975) and Scott (1985).
32
On the introduction of European Public Forestry to Spain, see Gmez (1992), Jimnez (1991) and Casals
(1996).

11
the private property rights of the new owners, officially inaugurated the beginning of the
redefinition of property rights in Spain. For the next ten years, the liberal governments
legislative activity concentrated on defining the criteria which any property, originally
excluded from the provisions of the Disentailment Act, had to fulfil.
With respect to lands of common use, the act charged the corporations with the
drawing up of exemptions, instructing the provincial delegations of the Finance Ministry to
approve the same. The corporations had to present property titles of those estates they wished
to exempt and, furthermore, prove that their utilisation had been gratuitous since 1835. These
requirements often became insurmountable obstacles for many Extremaduran communities:
firstly, because as in many parts of the world, very few villages in the region were able to
prove property through more than custom; secondly, because, as documented above, the
multiple produce of dehesa land had allowed the corporations to particularise some of the
uses while keeping others common and gratuitous. The difficulty, therefore, of adhering
strictly to the acts demands gave the Ministry ample opportunity to reject many of the
petitions for exemption presented by Extremaduran villages.
It was a little easier, in theory, to obtain the exemption for pastures for beasts of
burden as, in this case, the villages were not required to prove title nor the gratuity of use. The
only evidence required was that of the need for the requested lands, which was obtained
through a census of animals. This allowed villages to obtain exemption for land previously
leased out, even though the limit of demonstrated need still applied. In reality, many of the
problems associated with the exemptions for this type of exploitations were founded on the
difference in criteria between the corporations and the provincial Finance Ministry delegates
concerning the amount of land need to maintain the villagers animals.
As to the woodlands the government wished to exclude from the general
disentailment, the criteria applied for exemption were not uniform in the years following the
enactment. The first attempts at classification were based on the consideration of the
beneficial influence of forest surfaces on the environment. It would have been appropriate to
determine the protective function of each individual wooded surface, but, under the pressure
of time and circumstances, the forestry engineers resorted to a more generic and indirect
classification by dominant species. This procedure was based on the not entirely correct
assumption that the protective function of a forest was conditioned by altitude and that
altitude itself determined the species that could grow there. Following these tenets, the
experts initially classified three types of woodland: to be exempted (fir, pine, Spanish fir,
juniper, lime, beech, chestnut, hazel, birch, alder, holly, common oak, gall oak and
viburnum); possibly to be alienated (holm oak, cork tree, and kermes oak); and woodlands to
be privatised (ash, poplar, knotgrass, wild olive, terebinth, lentisc, broom, heather, arum,
thyme and boxtree). According with this cataloguing there was hope for the Mediterranean
ecosystem and, therefore, for Extremaduran dehesa. In fact, the General Classification of
Public Forests of 1859 exempted a substantial percentage of the municipal surface populated
by holm oak, cork trees, broom, arum and thyme from disentailment33.
Very soon, however, the budgetary necessities of the State substantially curtailed the
conservationist tendencies of Spanish forestry engineers. To satisfy the demands of the
Treasury, the government disposed in 1862 that only forest property of more than 100
hectares, populated with pine, common oak, or beech would be exempt from disentailment.
This new twist implied a blow for Mediterranean vegetation and a notable reduction in the
woodland resources of Extremaduran villages. It suffices to mention that, according to the
Catalogue of Public Forests Excluded from Disentailment of 1864, the surface legally exempt

33
Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1859)

12
from alienation according to the new criteria (minimum extension + dominant species) only
represented 7.1% of Extremaduras municipal patrimony of 185534.

The restrictions imposed on the protective function of woods in the mid sixties
inaugurated the legal process of the redefinition of property rights. Following the
Disentailment Act, and under the influence of liberal doctrine, the propios, arbitrios and
comunes began to be defined and treated in legal practice as public or state property. This
conceptual volte-face legitimised the States intervention in those municipal assets which had
been exempted from disentailment. Legislation had established two distinct categories for the
latter: forests exempted for ecological reasons (more than 100 hectare surface with pine,
common oak, or beech) and forests exempted for socio-economic reasons (common use lands
and dehesas reserved for beasts of burden). While the corporations retained administrative
competence over one and the other, technical competence (conservation and utilisation) was
assigned to the forest engineers of the Development Ministry. For lands of common
utilisation and the dehesas reserved for beats of burden, however, the Finance Ministry was
responsible for the approval of exemption proposals. Those municipal lands which had not
been exempted for ecological or socio-economic reasons proceeded to be considered as
public assets which could be alienated. Once auctioned off to the highest bidder, these lands
had to be inscribed by the purchaser in the Register of Property, newly established by the
Hypothecary Law of 2nd February 1861. Initially, the technical control of such properties,
similarly to the exempted municipal woods, was to exercised by the Development Ministrys
engineers, a solution which led to numerous conflict of competence in the last third of the 19th
century in all of Spain.

4.2. From indiscriminate privatisation to widespread resistance (1865-1875)

A Royal Decree of 17 May 1865 approved the regulations for the supervision of
exploitations in Spanish public woodlands. It disposed that the Development Ministry
engineers posted in each province should conscientiously study the exploitation proposals
presented by each municipality and, based on them, produce a provisional utilisation plan
which included the following years targeted production and the previous years real output.
The underlying objective was not only to adapt the traditional uses of woodlands to the
rationality of scientific forestry, but also to convert the free and gratuitous uses into restricted
and onerous rights by means of auction. Equally, the State attempted through this technical
ordinance to impose, for the first time, the collection of taxes on the production of public
woods in order to pay the costs of the forestry administration itself. However, it was unclear
whether the villages were prepared to simply renounce their customary rights of utilisation,
especially when, around 1865, the sales of former municipal patrimony had reached very
substantial volumes.
For some authors, the period following the regulation of forestry uses was one of the
most terrible in ecological terms in the history of Spanish forestry. The triumph of the
predators coincided with the democratic upheaval and the penury of the public treasury,
opening the way for a process of over-exploitation in which Spanish public woodland was
seen exclusively as a source of income35. The Extremaduran region was no exception to this

34
Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1864)
35
See, among others, Bauer (1980), Sanz (1986a) and Jimnez (1991)

13
destructive process as can be seen in the comments of the engineers stationed in the region in
the provisional utilisation plans. According to them, the provincial Finance Ministry delegates
ignored both the forestry engineers recommendations as well as the legal dispositions of
disentailment and sold off numerous forest properties which had been legally exempted36.
But the Finance Ministrys greed was not alone responsible for diminishing
Extremaduras municipal forest wealth. On the one hand, it has to be noted , that in order to
sell a property, once it had been nationalised, an individual had to formally petition for an
auction to be held. In this sense, the provincial finance delegations sometimes acted as
instruments of privatisation supporters in the rural communities. On the other hand, the
aggressive acquisitions of disentailed lands by the regions country oligarchy were
corresponded by actions undertaken against exempted municipal property by the poorest
strata of peasant society which were qualified as criminal by liberal legislation and the
forestry corps. Some of this behaviour can be qualified as simple resistance in the defence of
traditional rights. In other cases, however, the abolishment of collective usage, coupled with
the outright sale of lands, put such pressure on the remaining properties of common use that
their very sustainability was put in question. This is well documented by the reports of
uncontrolled felling, laying of fire, illegal ploughing and overgrazing so often found in
forestry statistics of the period37.
It appears clear that the common interest of poor and rich in defence of common usage
rights began to dissolve between 1865 and 1875. No doubt this was fuelled by the fact that
the local oligarchies, who had protested Pascual Madozs bill in 1855, were subsequently the
first to petition the auction of nationalised woods once the bill had been enacted. The
respective positions became more radicalised in the climate of civil liberties produced by the
triumph of the revolution of 1868 and proclamation of the First Republic in 1873. As a result,
alongside popular actions against exempted lands, there appeared a new manifestation of the
peasantrys dissatisfaction: attacks, whether collective or individual, against privatised
properties, their new owners and against the official organisms which had brought about the
change. Documentary evidence of the time speaks of actions which are unusual for the region
in their savagery not only do we find the more usual forms of protest such as setting fire to
common pastures, felling of trees, massive theft of produce, putting cattle to pasture in
privatised lands, threats to the new landowners, destruction of fences and invasions of
property, but we also see more political actions such as the distribution of former municipal
land to the poorest villagers. This period coincided with the beginnings of a strong movement
in Extremadura associated to the I International38.
The widespread participation of the dispossessed in the unrest obviously represented
the more dramatic facet of the struggle against disentailment, but, meanwhile the legal effort
continued. As before, Extremaduran corporations sent deputations to the Cortes and were
defended in parliamentary debate by their local members. In both cases, the objective was the
invalidation of previous alienations, the partial or total termination of the privatisation
process and the gratuitous adjudication of free utilisation in the former propios, arbitrios and
comunes. The principal focus for all parties involved, though, was the favourable resolution
of petitions by the Extremaduran communities for exemption from the privatisation process
of properties for free use and for pasture of working animals39
Judging by the research available, many Extremaduran corporations requested
36
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Memorias de 1873, 1874, 1875 and 1876)
37
Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1866-1887) and Zapata (1986)
38
See Garca, Snchez & Merinero (1985) and Snchez (1992).
39
Diario de Sesiones (1870: 566; 816; 817; 1,553; 2,534; 1,440; 3,420; 3,757; 5,083; 6,116; 7,216 and 8,248)
and Diario de Sesiones (1874: 391; 561; 562; 575; 668; 682; 796; 943; 1,023; 1,106; 1,109; 1,949 and 2,011).

14
exemptions for communal property, but the provincial finance delegations very seldom
granted either the extension or the properties they had originally demanded. While the
corporations based their case on the necessity of feeding beasts of burden and on the gratuity
of usage, since time immemorial, of the specified properties, the fiscal authorities almost
always found weighty reasons, based on current legislation, to at least partially reject the
petitions: often the principal justification advanced to limit or reject a proposal was that the
extension requested was not commensurate with the number of local cattle; in other instances,
the grounds for rejection were that the specified extension had already been exempted on
ecological grounds (minimum extension + dominant species). But the most common pretexts
used by the fiscal administrators to reject petitions for exemption were the lack of valid title
to prove communal property and the fact that the solicited terrain had not been freely utilised
since 1835 (one of the prerequisites mandated by legislation)40.
As explained above, it was difficult for the Extremaduran villagers to provide
documentary evidence for collectively utilised lands. Use and immemorial custom were the
only titles which had guaranteed collective possession until liberal legislation invented the
register of property. And what was the point of demonstrating a condition which was
promptly negated by the disentailment law on converting propios, arbitrios and comunes into
transferable or, at best, public property? Moreover, Spanish government policy of the time
was highly contradictory as, aside from the question of title, it also imposed proven gratuitous
use (both since 1835 and henceforth) as a sine qua non condition. Contradictory, because it
expected the municipality to finance its own public services (administration, education,
healthcare, public works) without endowing it with the necessary budgets, and at the same
time, denying it, for the moment, the possibility of collecting rents for the use of its terrain41.
As in many other regions of the country, the Extremaduran villages rose to the
challenge and discovered means to avoid the alienation of some woodlands of common use.
Given the ample extension of the area and the dearth of personnel charged with forestry
supervision in the provinces of Badajoz and Cceres, it was not too difficult to hide the very
existence of certain properties from the representatives of the central administration. This is
attested by the engineers stationed in Extremadura in the last third of the 19th century when
they remark on the insertion of certain hitherto unmentioned woods into the yearly forestry
production plan42. This represented, without doubt, another form of extra-legal resistance, in
which the local corporations played a crucial role. But note that not all Extremaduran
corporations consistently maintained such a combative attitude against the dissolution of
traditional practices. Some town halls, after having requested and obtained the legal
exemption of common use properties, promptly requested the provincial finance delegation to
auction off those properties43. In this sense, I reiterate that the institutions charged with the
execution of the disentailment process were not so much autonomous entities capable of
imposing privatisation as instruments which channelled the various tendencies (individualist
and collective) already extant in the rural world.

5. State intervention in Extremaduran woodlands (1875-1924)

5.1. Forestry science and popular resilience

40
See Garca (1986).
41
Concerning this subject, see Garca & Comn (1995).
42
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925)
43
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Memorias de 1874, 1875 and 1876)

15
 From around 1875, the privatisation process initiated by the Disentailment Act of 1st
May 1855 acquired a new direction. Alienation of property decreased, and State intervention
increasingly concentrated on the technical aspects of normalising woodland production on
municipal property. The restoration of the monarchy and the consolidation of an oligarchic
rgime (caciquism), characterised by control of electoral system and the contention of dissent,
assured the local land-owning classes secure tenure of the disentailed lands and command
over the local labour markets. Popular protest and unrest was quelled by the deployment, in
1876, of the governmental guardia civil, a billeted rural police force ascribed to the army, for
both regular countryside and forest guard duty, to supplement the existing guardera rural,
the civilian corps maintained by each community. The various workers movements, which
had sprung up during the democratic period of 1868-73, survived undercover for some time,
but the rgimes repression and control led to a political demobilisation and, consequently, no
further workers associations emerged. In their absence, the protest against disentailment
measures was largely effected by individuals and focused on the forest lands controlled by the
State engineers.
In Extremadura, one of the Spanish regions where caciquism was most widespread, a
decline in alienation of municipal property from 1875 onwards was accompanied by a sharp
increase in the sale of wood and felling rights, in spite of the constant reproach of the
Development Ministry engineers noted in the forestry production plans for Badajoz and
Cceres. Generally, this refers to the consolidation of different usage rights, which had, up to
then, been shared between the neighbours of one or more villages and various individuals.
The engineers reacted to these incidents, many of them technically illegal, by blaming the
Extremaduran villages for their passivity. In their opinion, the local corporations did not
denounce the partitioning of municipal property, at times because of mistrust of the judicial
system and, at others, because they were directed by the oligarchies, interested in buying at a
low price through well known procedures which have become notorious44.
While not differing with the analysis of the forestry engineers, I would doubt that
passivity accurately characterises the Extremaduran villages attitude of the time. On the
contrary, as in many other parts of the country, the reaction to the engineers attempt to
rationalise the forestry production of the former propios, arbitrios and comunes continually
met, in spite of tendencies towards privatisation, with the spirited resistance of those
unwilling to lose entirely the communal rights acquired through the ages. The fact that this
resistance was no longer violent or marked by civil unrest as in former years did not signify
that the rural communities had finally submitted to the privatisation process45.
One of the most frequent practices employed by Extremaduran villagers to avoid
submission to the control of the district forestry engineers was not to send them their annual
exploitation proposal as stipulated by the 1865 directive. The indifference and neglect toward
official requirements by the corporations is one of the most frequently cited reasons offered
by the engineers to explain the difference between forecast and real woodland production
(Table 4). Firstly because, given the supposed apathy of the municipalities, the production
plans, especially until the beginning of the 20th century, did not represent more than wish
lists based on forestry theory. Secondly, because even when the villages handed in their
proposals, the local execution of them hardly ever conformed to the principles and conditions
dictated by the engineers.
Another manifestation of resistance against State intervention was the refusal of the

44
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Memorias de 1880-1890)
45
For others Spanish regions, see Sabio (1992), Manuel (1994), Sala (1994) and Bonales (1997).

16
villagers to pay the taxes imposed by the central administration on the use of that land which
had not been disentailed. From 1877, 10% of the total production value of Spanish public
woods was destined to pay for reforestation and improvements. In principle, nobody could
engage in land utilisation without a certificate accrediting the payment of this tax to the local
forestry administration. The policing organs (guardia rural and guardia civil) were supposed
to impede the exercise of any usage right without the corresponding certification and to
heavily fine any infraction detected. The forestry budgets, however, confirm that not only did
hardly anybody pay tax, but also that very few fines were ever levied. Only in the 1890s does
the payment of the annual 10% tax become more regular, although it remains unclear whether
this is due to improved enforcement methods or because owners of usage rights began to view
the possession of the correct accreditation as a guarantee to exclude unauthorised users.

Table 2
Forest Area of Municipal Patrimony in Extremadura in 1900

Dominant Badajoz Province Cceres Province Extremadura (Region)

Species Hectares % Hectares % Hectares %
Holm Oak 72,694 62.7 43,632 28.4 116,326 43.1
Cork Tree 335 0.3 4,907 3.2 5,242 1.9
Common Oak 32,711 28.2 53,087 34.5 85,798 31.8
Pine 0 0.0 5,332 3.5 5,332 2.0
Others 0 0.0 457 0.3 457 0.2
Thicket 5,946 5.1 39,654 25.8 45,600 16.9
Without Trees 4,008 3.5 5,107 3.3 9,115 3.4
Unknown 250 0.2 1,544 1.0 1,794 0.7
Total 115,944 100.0 153,720 100.0 269,664 100.0
SOURCES: Direccin General de Propiedades y Derechos del Estado (1897), Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y
Comercio (1901) and Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Estados de 1925).

The 1890s also mark the beginning of regular auctions of utilisation rights of public
forest land. Up to that point, the engineers had not really overcome, with any lasting success,
the Extremaduran villagers innumerable displays of opposition. Liberal governments had,
since 1865, gradually tried to increase the value of auctioned exploitation and decrease the
value of products from free rights of use, in order to augment the cash income from public
woodlands and increase tax generation from forest produce. But, in practice, it was not easy
to impose the free market. However far the forest engineers lowered the reserve prices at
auctions in order to find bidders, the villagers would agree among themselves not to bid at all
so that they could continue exploiting the property according to their own rules. The absence
of bidders at the annual auctions to adjudicate grazing or produce rights is frequently
mentioned in the forest engineers dispatches. Only when, in the last decade of the century,
Development Ministry officials combined the rights invernadero (winter pasture) and
montanera (acorns for fodder) and also proceeded to award them to the highest bidders for
longer periods of three or four years, did the auctions begin to gain a certain level of

17
acceptance with the local population46.
But still, the system of adjudication to the highest bidder rarely guaranteed that the
tenant would submit to the conditions established by the forestry engineers at the time of
auction. Futile, for example, were the engineers attempts to limit the number of cattle
entering municipal woods the villagers consistently introduced more than had been agreed
at auction. This resistance against the principles of forestry science was especially relevant in
the case of goats, which were seen as declared enemy of the forest by engineers of the time.
The Extremaduran villages paid no heed to the recommendations of the Development
Ministry officials and continually increased the number of goats held on still non-disentailed
propios, arbitrios and comunes woodland. In this case the market proved much stronger than
the State. The reason could lie in the fact that the traditional communities were perhaps more
averse to the interference of the State than to the system of demand and supply itself.
The force of custom became apparent to the engineers stationed in Extremadura
shortly after the forestry service became functional. Educated in the tenets of German forestry
tradition at the Escuela Especial de Montes47 and clearly influenced by direct contact with
Central European forest exploitation, the newly stationed engineers had to first overcome
their disappointment on being faced with the totally different Mediterranean biotope. As they
researched their new surroundings, they grew aware that the traditional multiple usage
practices of the Extremaduran dehesa showed up the disparity between their own rationality
based on science and the local rationality based on experience. Over time, the engineers,
without renouncing the teachings of the Escuela Especial de Montes, began to bow to the
weight of evidence regarding local practices, among them, for example, the possibility of
tilling part of the forest surface. While, initially, the locally stationed engineers strongly
objected to this custom, they concluded by defending the convenience of the custom to the
countrys forestry authorities. In this manner, the cleaning and ploughing of the dehesas
ceased to be considered atrocities and became improvements48.
Similar changes of attitude can be observed with regard to game and firewood. In both
cases, the engineers in Badajoz and Cceres attempted to impose a system of public auction
for these rights. But, in spite of the central administrations demands, they finally recognised
the impossibility of regulating these rights of use. They had always been free for the local
inhabitants and continued to be so after the arrival of the engineers. This typified the need to
reconcile the ambitions of forestry and the interests of the rural community. Faced with the
impossibility of abolishing certain local practices, the Development Ministry engineers had
no option but to accept them in order to gain a minimal acceptance in the villages, and, above
all, to avoid indiscriminate attacks on woodland property as retaliation to prohibitions49.
The creeping convergence between engineers and villagers in the last third of the 19th
century does not, however, signify, that the villagers managed to neutralise the privatisation
schemes and interventionist tendencies of the State: firstly, because the forestry
administration did succeed in establishing the auction system for some usage rights which had
previously been gratuitous; secondly, because the villagers, at times, gave more heed to the
demands of market than to the requirements of the State; and, finally, because, apart from

46
For some historians, the imposition of the auction system to adjudicate forest utilisation rights was
fundamental for the penetration and expansion of the market economy into the rural world. See Sanz (1986b)
and Jimnez (1991).
47
Founded in 1848 as a national forestry school and located in Villaviciosa de Odn (Madrid). The Escuelas
teachings were so heavily based on German principles that German language study formed a compulsory part of
the curriculum.
48
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Memorias de 1875-1880)
49
See, for example, Manuel (1994).

18
technical intervention in public forests, the woodland surface traditionally reserved for
collective use was drastically reduced as a consequence of the disentailment process.
According to my calculations, the woodland properties transferred to private owners between
1855 and 1900 represented no less than 75% of the wooded surface in municipal hands at the
middle of the century (Table 2). All in all, therefore, one cannot speak of a victory of the
peasantry against the State, but much rather note the rural communities ability to adapt, with
great flexibility, their reaction to the circumstances imposed by the central administration.
5.2. Other facets of the Extremaduran dehesa (1900-1924)

At the end of the 19th century, the government introduced a substantial modification to
the criteria for exemption from the Disentailment Act. The budget of 1896, apart from
confirming the familiar exemptions for properties of common use and dehesas for beasts of
burden, additionally considered exempt from disentailment a new class of woodland property:
the Montes de Utilidad Pblica (forests of public worth or value). Into this class fell those
surfaces, which, because of their physical characteristics, should be protected or reforested in
order to guarantee public health, water regulation, soil fixation and fertility. The restricted
principle applied till then (minimum extension + dominant species) to determine legally
which woods could not be alienated, was substituted by much more ample criteria which not
only explicitly recognised the protective function of woodland surfaces but also the need to
protect reforestable areas50. The newly catalogued forests of public worth passed under the
control of the Development Ministrys engineers. All other woodland surfaces (lands of
common use, dehesas for beast of burden and disentailed but still unsold properties) were
placed under the authority of a new corps of engineers dependent on the Finance Ministry51
In essence, the technical experts of either ministry continued to depend on yearly plans
as the instrument with which to exercise their technical supervision of the woods in their
charge. Unfortunately, the reports written by the newly created Finance Ministry engineers in
the first two decades of this century remain lost or mislaid. The only sources for the period to
which we can turn are the Official Bulletins of the Provinces, which faithfully reflect the
annual production forecast, but not the conditions or circumstances regarding the execution of
those plans. These details would be crucial to ascertain the extent to which production plans
were applied and to determine the evolution of privatisation in the last phase of disentailment,
as, according to my calculations, between 1900 and 1925, the woodland surface of
Extremaduran municipal patrimony had decreased by somewhat less than 16,000 hectares
(Table 3). It is clear that the impetus to buy had waned since the mid 1870s, among other
reasons, because the best forests had already been sold during the first decades after the
Disentailment Act of 1855. Nevertheless, the few data available allow to conclude that, at the
beginning of this century, individuals still continued to exercise their legal right to acquire
former propios, arbitrios and comunes52.
This right was dealt a deathblow in 1917 when the government began to elaborate new
regulations for the administration of municipal finances, suspending, on that account, the
provisions of the Disentailment Act. In 1921, all woodland surfaces dependent on the Finance
Ministry passed back to the Ministry of Development, but not for long. Three years later, the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera returned the management of all forest surfaces, exempt or
not, to the local corporations. This was formalised by the Municipal Statute of 8th March 1924
which put an end to the process of property transfer opened by the General Law of
50
See Jimnez (1991) and Manuel (1994).
51
The Development Ministrys forests are listed in Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio
(1901) and those of the Finance Ministry in Direccin General de Propiedades y Derechos del Estado (1897).
52
Similar patterns are observed in other parts of the country according to Jimnez (1991: 260).

19
Disentailment of 1st May 1855 by rescinding the disentailment measures and confirming the
authority of the municipal owners with regard to the administration of the former propios,
arbitrios and comunes woodlands. Thus were abolished the two mechanisms the State had
applied to intervene in municipal patrimony: sale by public auction and technical supervision
of production.

Table 3
Forest Area of Municipal Patrimony in Extremadura in 1925

Dominant Badajoz Province Cceres Province Extremadura (Region)

Species Hectares % Hectares % Hectares %
Holm Oak 69,633 65.9 40,795 27.6 110,428 43.5
Cork Tree 335 0.3 4,907 3.3 5,242 2.1
Common Oak 26,488 25.1 51,888 35.0 78,376 30.8
Pine 0 0.0 4,978 3.4 4,978 2.0
Others 0 0.0 457 0.3 457 0.2
Thicket 5,763 5.4 39,654 26.8 45,417 17.9
Without Trees 3,279 3.1 4,657 3.1 7,936 3.1
Unknown 250 0.2 764 0.5 1,014 0.4
TOTAL 105,748 100.0 148,100 100.0 253,848 100.0
SOURCES: Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Estados de 1925).

The information available from the forestry districts managed by the Development
Ministry shows that, since the beginning of the century, the engineers scientific principles
had become increasingly compatible with the interest of the Extremaduran villagers. For one,
the difference between forecast and real production no longer differed as dramatically as in
previous decades (Table 4). For the other, in spite of the growing number of rights of use sold
by auction (ordinary) compared to free rights (communal), the engineers reports show a
marked decrease in conflicts regarding woodland use during the first quarter of this century.
This was partly due, without doubt, to the engineers adaptation to regional reality and the
subsequent development of a new woodland economy based on the recognition of the
traditional resources of the Mediterranean forest53. Not only the engineers accommodated
themselves to local reality; the villagers, too, gave up some of the principles passed from
gene-ration to generation in order to gain exclusive rights to woodland access within the new
order.
The main focus of the Development Ministry engineers adjustment to local reality
was the acceptance of productive practices hitherto condemned by forestry science: the
increase of cattle grazing and the expansion of tillable surfaces. With regard to grazing, the
engineers stationed in Badajoz and Cceres recognised the importance of smaller cattle in the
local economy and began to ignore the unvarying central directives to reduce the grazing of
sheep and goats on public woodland and, gradually and surreptitiously, over the years,
expanded the surfaces open to this activity. Some technicians event went so far as to openly
promote more widespread pasture rights for goats, the traditional btes noires of forestry

53
See Gmez (1992).

20
 science. In the case of crop cultivation, the impulse to increase the cultivated surface of the
dehesas, at times, even came from the central authorities themselves. So, for instance, the
Finance Ministry in 1915 instructed its technicians to study, on a regular basis, which forest
surfaces could be cleaned, ploughed and sown. This instruction remained in force until 1921.
While the Development Ministry was clearly not of this persuasion, its engineers also
subscribed to this view, as can be seen from the frequent inclusion of new areas for
cultivation in the production plans, acceding, thus, to the local villagers petitions54.
Table 4
Forecast and Real Production in Municipal Woodlands in Extremadura
(Constant Pesetas of 1913)

Three Planned Real Production Difference Percentage

Years Production (I) (II) (I-II) (I-II/I) 100

1875-1877 1,122,968 324,042 798,926 71.1

1895-1897 1,547,747 1,278,298 269,449 17.4

1923-1925 1,106,214 1,073,391 32,823 2.9

SOURCES: Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1926) and Direccin General de Agricultura y Montes (1926-1928)

The significance that such petitions acquired in the first two decades of the century
was in consonance with the state of agriculture in Extremadura, following the agricultural
crisis of the end of the century. As in the rest of Europe, the expansion of the global market
for agricultural produce caused a decline of the sector in Spain which affected each region
differently55. In Extremadura, the reaction to the crisis expressed itself by a notable increment
in cultivated surface dedicated to cereals and pulses, but not, as in other regions, by a
substantial modification in soil use. But the increase in cultivated surface did not suppose a
reduction in cattle rearing. In fact, the Extremadurans took advantage of the growing national
and international demand for meat products, resulting from higher standards of living, to
expand their secular animal husbandry. In relative terms, the production from sheep, goat and
pig rearing grew faster than crop production in the first quarter of the twentieth century. This
expansion was not the result of any important technical innovation in Extremaduran
agriculture, but rather the consequence of realising the potential of the dehesa system to the
limit. After all, the expansion of arable land in the dehesa was not achieved at the expense of
pasture land but through the careful cleaning and elimination of impenetrable brushwood,
which, in turn, benefited pasture quality56.
In this process of expansion without innovation, based on the dehesa system, the
woods sold through the disentailment process played a fundamental part. But there are also
indications to think that the non-disentailed surface was equally affected by the dynamic
development of the dehesa in the first quarter of the century57. It is this capacity and potential
for development which was ultimately recognised by the forestry engineers stationed in
Extremadura when they ceased to enforece strict Germanic forestry principles, which were
difficult to apply to the Mediterranean woodlands of the Spanish Southwest, and attempted to

54
Planes de Aprovechamientos Forestales (1873-1925: Estados de 1900-1925)
55
See Garrabou (1985 y 1988).
56
For an in-depth analysis of the evolution of the agricultural sector in Extremadura in the first decades of the
20th century, see Zapata (1985).
57
Zapata (1985)

21
conjugate the increase of cultivation with a simultaneous expansion of cattle rearing. The fact
that they finally ignored instructions to increase the production of wood and firewood from
municipal lands and abandoned their previous disapproval of activities such as hunting, plant
gathering or quarrying, brought supervisors and the rural communities closer together. In
return, the forestry administration managed to impose some of its other criteria with success,
such as the regular payment of tax on the production of disentailed, but still unsold property,
and the reduction of gratuitous use in favour of a system of public auction of temporary rights
(Table 5).
Table 5
Forest Uses in Public Woodlands in Extremadura
(Three Year Averages)

Constant Thousand Pesetas Percentage of Each Periods Total

Period (1913 Prices)
Ordinary Communal Extraordinary Ordinary Communal Extraordinary

1878-1880 113 247 11 30,5 66,6 2,9

1923-1925 603 465 4 56,3 43,4 0,3

SOURCES: Direccin General de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1866-1880) and Direccin General de Agricultura y
Montes (1926-1928).

Not all Extremaduran villages accepted the fiscalisation of the product from municipal
patrimony or the auction system for usage rights straight away, but it is certain that, between
1900 and 1924, the generalised resistance of the local corporations against the engineers
diminished substantially. The sources consulted do not allow to draw clear conclusions
regarding the reasons underlying the increased acceptance of state intervention in municipal
patrimony. While the increased presence of the guardia civil in rural areas contributed to
assuring a greater observation of legal regulations, it was not so pervasive as to be able to
crush the corporations resolve. Much rather, it seems that the corporations changed their
attitude to State intervention of their own volition. Much of this new attitude probably sprang
from the fiscal needs of the corporations themselves, since liberal governments had not only
sold the villages principal sources of income, the propios, without compensation, but had, at
the same time, made them responsible for the financing of most municipal services58. No
wonder, then, that in view of the lack of compensation, those responsible for local finances
concentrated their efforts on obtaining income from the properties which had not been
disentailed and, consequently, accepted the imposition of the auction system for usage rights.
The other factor contributing to local acceptance of the new rules were the growing
complaints of those individuals who had not been able to accede fully to disentailed property.
For this group, the auction system for usage rights represented the only method to accede at
least partially to the resources of the woodlands. The importance of this safety valve increased
as the rural world began to suffer the social consequences of the disentailment process.
Among the consequences was the proletarisation of the peasantry, which was
particularly strong in the Spanish Southwest. Contributing to this was the dehesa system
itself, characterised by its adaptability to the environment, but also by the low productivity of
its soils, by the concentration of property and the low capacity to absorb labour. Under these
conditions, market forces came to control labour relations at a very early stage59. While the
58
See Garca & Comn (1995).
59
Llopis & Zapata (1998)

22
traditional systems of collective use of property were still functioning, the country workers
wage could always be complemented by produce derived from common usage rights. But as
these surfaces and their gratuitous use for community members dis-appeared, so the
dependence of peasant families on wages for survival grew. The desire not to depend on
exclusively on wages had always formed a strong component of the various forms of
resistance displayed by the poorer members of Extremaduran society against the advance of
agrarian individualisation. But it took until the beginning of this century for the defence of
workers rights to take over temporarily from the secular defence of communal rights.
The definitive rise of a workers movement in the first years of the 20th century was
marked in the Southwest of Spain by a substantial increase in conflict, as workers
associations sprang up. As a first reaction, the conservative government of the time tried to
contain this social mobilisation through both repression and the attempt to steer it towards
Catholic trade unionism, but neither measure could avoid the drift of the Extremaduran
peasantry towards the left. Moreover, after the First World War, coinciding with the fall in
salaries provoked by post-war inflation and with the crisis of the political system of the
restored monarchy, Extremadura grew into one of the most active Socialist regions of the
country. The workers associations mobilised rural workers to defend salary raises, shorter
working days, the abolition of journey-work and the introduction of minimum wages. The old
forms of individual and collective subversion (aggression against property and property
owners) were thus reinforced and partly even replaced by a new strategy of struggle, whose
most distinguishing characteristic was, without a doubt, the strike60.
With the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the reinforcement of authority in the
countryside and the tightening of legislation concerning political activity once again managed
to paralyse the strength of the regional workers movement. Organised activity in defence of
workers rights died down but did not disappear entirely. More importantly, the protest
against the disappearance of a substantial part of municipal resources remained etched into
collective memory neither the agrarian oligarchy, nor the liberal State, nor the forestry
administration, nor the property register, nor the guardia civil had managed to erase the
memory of collective rights of use. With the advent of the Second Republic, these were not
only recuperated, but even extended.

60
See Garca, Snchez & Merinero (1985) and Baumeister (1996).

23
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