Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 165

The Albufera Lake south of the Spanish city of Valencia was recently awarded the title ‘Threatened Lake of the Year 2020’ by the international foundation, Global Nature Fund. Even though this information was not available at the time of Cultivating Nature’s publication, the book provides a historically well-founded explanation of how the degradation of this ecosystem occurred and why social and cultural factors have been of crucial importance in its demise.

Based on the revised version of the author’s doctoral dissertation, Cultivating Nature presents the history of the Albufera de Valencia chronologically, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The introduction takes the reader quickly through the local setting and international entanglements of the place, a coastal lagoon with surrounding dunes, fields and forests (known in Valencian as la Devesa). Hamilton offers a longue durée look at the history of Valencia and the Albufera from Roman times, through the period of Muslim rule, to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Besides introducing the main actors – including landowners, rice farmers, fishermen, hunters, city dwellers, politicians and scientists – she also provides information on the ecological importance of the wetland, for example, as a refuge for migratory birds, and highlights the historical link between the landscape and Valencian identity. Furthermore, speaking from an environmental perspective, she shows how many developments in modern Spanish history ran parallel to those in other Western European countries, such as the enthusiasm for nature in the early twentieth century that emerged from Romanticism, the consequences of agricultural intensification and the role of health and the environment in urban communities during the 1970s.

Contrary to the ideas of modernization based on the exploitation of natural resources that have prevailed since the monarchist restoration in 1874, Hamilton explains in the first chapter how a new discourse emerged that emphasized the protection of nature as an integral component of a modern state. She explains convincingly that in this process ‘acrimonious relationships across the Western world between those seeking to protect valuable landscapes and those seeking to live within them’ (p. 58) arose. This becomes clear in the Albufera, where rice farmers committed to agricultural modernization felt threatened by conservationists and recreation-seeking urbanites when the city of Valencia purchased the Albufera and its Devesa from the Spanish Ministry of Finance in 1911.

During Franco’s dictatorship, the central government’s modernization agenda continued and parts of the landscape around the Albufera were eventually destroyed for the development of tourist infrastructure, as Hamilton examines in chapter two. Particularly during the first phase of the regime, in which the country’s self-sufficiency was emphasized, some scientists were successful in pointing out the importance of ecological health for economic productivity. Hamilton argues that, unlike socialists and other obvious opponents of the regime, conservationists were not seen as a threat by the dictatorship and they managed to establish ‘early precedents for a perception of scientific arguments in favour of conservation and sustainable use as apolitical and nonthreatening, thereby providing an avenue for certain types of low-level dissent’ (p. 66). A subchapter also deals with the case of the Doñana National Park, which shows successful international cooperation between conservationists, and the regime’s concession in favour of Spain’s growing reputation in international relations with Western democracies.

A separate chapter is devoted to the final phase of the dictatorship (1970–74). One of Hamilton’s central arguments in this part is that under the guise of nature conservation, a deeper criticism of the Franco regime arose which was supported by neighbourhood associations and environmentalists, among others. They united ‘human welfare and social justice with the condition of the spaces in which people lived, worked, and played’ (p. 96). Closely related to this was a ‘neovalencianism’ which gained momentum in the struggle for the public space of the Albufera from the 1960s onwards, contributing to an eco-nationalism and expressing itself, for example, in the fact that the Devesa was regarded ‘as a Valencian commons’ (p. 106). Under pressure from these groups and due to numerous critical newspaper articles about the condition of the Albufera, the city tried in vain to curb the criticism and protests by revising the expansion plan, which no longer revolved solely around the Albufera but also questioned the entire regime.

The last two chapters of the book cover the period of Spain’s democratization and integration into the European Community. In order to halt the ongoing degradation of the Albufera, environmentalists, together with the city and the Generalitat Valenciana, set up the Albufera Natural Park in 1986. As in the early twentieth century, rice farmers were largely left out of the planning process and new regulations were imposed, an approach which, according to Hamilton, demonstrates ‘a profoundly political preference for urban, progressive interests over rural, economic ones’ (p. 145). Despite the ensuing strong protests by farmers, the ongoing ecological problems of the lake, which also affected agricultural activities, as well as the new marketing (‘Protected designation of origin’) and agri-environmental programs introduced by the European MacSharry reform in 1992, have led to a convergence between farmers and scientists and to a new awareness of many farmers as ecosystem conservators. Nevertheless, Hamilton stresses that there have been further conflicts in the aftermath, and that ‘this quid-pro-quo conservation is not culturally sustainable’ (p. 185), as it is often still perceived by farmers as an imposition and restriction.

By the conclusion, it becomes apparent that Hamilton’s book is a passionate plea for the consideration and involvement of the local population, especially farmers, in nature conservation issues. Cultivating Nature shows in an impressive way how much contemporary history can benefit from oral history. Chapters 3 to 5 especially have drawn a lot of information from the more than twenty interviews conducted by the author. In addition, the book is mainly based on archive sources, articles from newspapers and magazines, legal texts and a solid base of secondary literature.

Needless to say, in covering nearly 140 years of history in 200 pages, the book cannot answer all questions. For example, the reader learns quite a lot about individual scientists and conservationists, while the experiences and fates of individual farmers remain somewhat in the background. One could also ask whether they were really such a uniformly acting group as is suggested over long stretches of the book. And what role have Valencian actors played in organic farming since the 1990s? Overall, Cultivating Nature is a work written in a clear, engaging language, which is not only excellently suited for academic introductory courses on the agricultural and conservation history of Spain in the twentieth century, but also provides a good introduction for a readership outside the academic world that is generally interested in nature conservation.