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Consuming Space, Nature and Culture: PatrimonialDiscussions in the Hyper-Modern Era

Online Publication Date: 01 August 2007To cite this Article: Vaccaro, Ismael and Beltran, Oriol , (2007) 'Consuming Space,Nature and Culture: Patrimonial Discussions in the Hyper-Modern Era', TourismGeographies, 9:3, 254 - 274To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14616680701422715URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616680701422715

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© Taylor and Francis 2007

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Tourism GeographiesVol. 9, No. 3, 254–274, August 2007

Consuming Space, Nature and Culture:Patrimonial Discussions in theHyper-Modern Era

ISMAEL VACCARO∗ & ORIOL BELTRAN∗∗∗Department of Anthropology and McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Canada∗∗Department of Sociocultural Anthropology and History of America and Africa, University ofBarcelona, Barcelona, Spain

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on what is called the process of ‘patrimonialization’ of cultureand nature currently taking place in the Western mountainous inlands of the Spanish EasternPyrenees. Landscapes, as cultural and historical formations, are presently being commodifiedand connected to global networks of consumption dominated by urban and ‘postmaterialistic’values. Conservation policies, ski resorts and cultural museums are mushrooming in previously‘abandoned’ agricultural fields or vacated factories. This shift from agriculture, ranchingand industry, to conservation and services marks the connection of the Pyrenean valleys toglobal modernity and to the hyper-modern era. These processes of transformation have beendepicted generally as structural processes of unilateral redefinition of the urban–rural divide:redefinition that results in direct urban appropriation. Rural populations, however, are farfrom passive subjects of external influences. The analysis of local agency suggests a morecomplicated picture in which local economic and cultural choices are included as explanatoryvariables. The story of the connection of these spaces to regional and global networks is notonly a story about local dispossession, but also about local ingenuity. The globalization ofthe economy in the early 1970s disempowered and relegated these areas to the periphery ofthe economic system. The consolidation of a global modernity articulated around the needto provide leisure has opened a venue for these areas to reconnect themselves to the centralnetworks and to attract large amounts of resources from these urban-dominated economicsystems.

KEY WORDS: Spain, Pyrenees, landscape, land use, globalization, leisure economy

Numbers and Places

This article discusses the massive socio-economic and ecological transformation en-dured by the Catalan Pyrenees in north-eastern Spain during the last thirty years.In these mountains the territory has been literally taken over by a new wave of uses.Protected areas, ski resorts and cultural museums mainly compose this territorializing

Correspondence Address: Ismael Vaccaro, Department of Anthropology and McGill School of Environ-ment, McGill University, Montreal, Canada; Email: ismael.vaccaro@mcgill.ca

ISSN 1461-6688 Print/1470-1340 Online /07/03/00254–21 C© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14616680701422715

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Consuming Space, Nature and Culture 255

movement. These changes emphasize nature conservation, leisure and the preserva-tion of traditional culture. This process inevitably results in the transformation ofeconomy and identity of mountain communities with effects on the ecology of thearea. To understand this recent transformative process requires one to delve deepinto the historical record until the early nineteenth century when the conditions thatprepared this contemporary appropriation started to emerge.

The six High Pyrenean districts and the four pre-Pyrenean districts of Cataloniaencompass 965,324 hectares. In those districts there are, currently, at least 204 pro-tected areas encompassing 321,918 hectares (this includes only the areas included inthe Pla d’Espais d’Interes Natural – the Plan of Spaces with Natural Interest), whichis 33.35 percent of their territory. In the Catalan Pyrenees there are also 17 ski resorts.It is unclear how many hectares these resorts affect. It is obvious, however, that thesocial and ecological footprint of a ski resort affects much more territory than thepremises of the resorts themselves. The amount of territory and resources that everyresort needs exceeds the limits of the specific locality that sustains the runs: water,housing, roads, services and infrastructures in general.

Specifically, these numbers are even more striking in districts such as the PallarsSobira, Pallars Jussa, the Vall d’Aran or the Cerdanya. The Pallars Sobira, for in-stance, with 137,792 hectares, has 58.2 percent of its territory under some level ofenvironmental protection (Table 1). It is also affected, in one way or another, by fivealpine and cross-country ski resorts. The Val d’Aran has 50.4 percent of its land undersome type of conservation policy. The Garrotxa and the Alta Ribagorca have, respec-tively, a striking 52.1 percent and 45.7 percent of their territory under some sort ofconservation policy. Of all these districts, only the Solsones has significantly less than20 percent of its territory declared natural patrimony (interestingly enough, most ofits protected areas are also concentrated in the mountainous north of the district).

Table 1. Areas of Catalan Pyrenean districts and their conservation areas.

Population(2004)

Surface(ha)

Protectedunder PEIN(2004) (ha)

%PEIN

AreasPEIN(2001)

Alt Urgell 20,315 144,748 28,671 19.8 16Alta Ribagorca 3,796 42,686 19,498 45.7 6Bergueda 39,224 118,489 35,195 29.7 36Cerdanya 16,065 54,657 20,296 37.1 20Garrotxa 50,616 73,539 38,319 52.1 23Pallars Jussa 12,712 134,308 27,040 20.1 20Pallars Sobira 6,666 137,792 80,180 58.2 24Ripolles 26,162 95,624 31,279 32.7 24Solsones 12,297 100,121 9,483 9.5 14Val d’Aran 8,832 63,360 31,957 50.4 21

Total 196,685 965,324 321,918 33.3 204

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In addition, these areas have experienced the emergence of ‘cultural museums’.Museums that describe the life, material culture of transhumant shepherds, charcoalminers, timber folk, river rafters, salt producers, textile workers and so on. This set ofconnections link these, often historically marginal, areas to the national or regionalsocieties through networks governed by very specific sets of values closely associatedwith leisure and service economies. Most of these initiatives, parks, resorts and muse-ums are arguably created for the use and contemplation of non-local visitors, touristsor ecotourists. The mountains’ natural and cultural values are deemed worth protect-ing because at some point they are declared national or human patrimony. We callthis process patrimonialization. They are patrimonialized. They are preserved becausethey are valuable not just to the local communities but the national society at large.This value shifts, however, from value of direct use to intrinsic and contemplativevalues (Valdez 2004).

Such a process necessarily has to result also in transformations in the way collectiveidentity is constructed. Sense of place is not just contextualized locally but is builtwith a complex battery of places, individuals and concepts from several social andgeographical scales (Agrawal & Sivaramakrishnan 2003). The network society hasintegrated the internal periphery of the Western urban world so that identity is theresult of both attachment and friction (Castells 1996; Tsing 2004).

This paper analyses this contemporary process of transformation of mountainousrural areas from a perspective of a postmaterialistic redefinition of natural resources(Inglehart 1997) and a redirection of the demographic, economic and ideologicalflows associated with their management. Moreover, this reorganization of space, usesand resources is, more often than not, mediated by urban values and consumption.The tourists that consume nature, leisure and culture are predominantly non-localscoming from the cities (Cross 1993; Borocz 1996).

This process of territorial appropriation and redefinition is especially interesting inan area and a type of natural resources in which common property has been and stillis the dominant property regime. In the Catalan Pyrenean mountains, the historicaltransformations of the property structure, mostly a product of state policies, have pre-ceded changes in productive practices, and have had an influence on the demographicpatterns and the collective identity of the communities.

In the following discussion the first section (‘Changing Mountains’) examines therecent history of the Catalan Pyrenees to understand the social processes that set thestage for this post-materialistic appropriation. The second section (‘Patrimonializationand Consumption’) revisits the figures provided above in order to trigger furthertheoretical analysis of the observed process. The final section (‘Hyper-modern PlaceAttachments’) connects this process with local agency. This account consciouslyemphasizes territorial and jurisdictional transformations. The goal is to highlighthow local actors have positioned themselves in relation to these new opportunitiesin order to take advantage of them. Mountaineers are far from passive subjects ofhistory.

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Consuming Space, Nature and Culture 257

This article is meant to provide a broad overview by identifying, contextualizingand explaining a specific set of social trends currently affecting the Pyrenees. Itis the result of a specific research project at the Pallars Sobira, but also draws onthe results of previous investigations elsewhere in the Pyrenees (Bergueda and Vald’Aran). The methods include a combination of intensive archival research and anarray of ethnographic field methods, such as interviews, participant observation, andthe interpretation of maps and aerial images among others.

Changing Mountains

Dramatic changes have occurred in the Catalan Pyrenees over the last two hundredyears. Each valley and each corner of the range has its own history. Every district andevery village has distinctive dynamics. Here, however, are offered some examplesto characterize a general and complex process of social, economic and ecologicaltransformation.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the Pyrenean population stillworked in agriculture and ranching. Most production was focused on subsistenceand short-range trade. There were some notable exceptions of long distance networksinvolving iron and tools in the Ripolles, wool from the Bergueda to the Pallars Sobira,and timber was rafted down the large north-western rivers, the Noguera Pallaresa andthe Noguera Ribagorcana.

Communities, however, depended more on their own production than the potentialcapital generated by trade. This mode of production, present in the area since the earlyMiddle Ages, fostered dispersed settlement patterns. The bottom of the valleys, withtheir little flat areas suitable for the practice of agriculture and higher potential forconnectivity with the lowlands, had the major settlements. The ranges, nevertheless,were packed with small villages, hamlets and isolated farms. The pre-industrializationPyrenean landscape was alive and, in relative terms, densely populated.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the final decline of many of thesecommunities began. The modern Spanish state emerged during the second decadeof the century. To achieve modern efficiency, officials in charge of restructuring theadministrative structure of the country decided to follow a series of rational andstandardized criteria, such as minimum demographic size, connectivity to marketsand economic viability. Only the communities that complied with those criteria couldreach the status of municipality. And only communities that became municipalitieswere entitled to public services. This was the first large wave of territorializationpolicies issued by the modern Spanish state (Hannah 2000; Peluso & Vandergeist2001; Braun 2002). Most little communities hanging near the top of the ranges andnear the mountain passes failed to achieve this legal status. At that point in history,trade was no longer circulating through the paths that crossed the mountain passes. Bythen, most fluxes were following the network of roads that were being built along therivers in the main valleys. Communication shifted from a transversal directionality,

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Figure 1. The Valley of Lillet: paths, churches and abandoned villages (map prepared by J.Deo and L. Zanotti)

from valley to valley, to a set of vertical axes following the main valleys flowing southto the lowlands and, ultimately, the cities. The inhabitants of the farms and villagesof the slopes were forced more than ever to go down to the valleys. As they had noaccess or rights to public services they had to go often to the larger valley villagesto buy supplies, to take children to school, to issue all kinds of legal permits, searchfor trading and marriage partners, and so on. Although there was no compulsoryrelocation, the incentives and costs were clearly there.

Nowadays, remnants of abandoned villages, crumbling farms, closed churches,neglected paths or pastures claimed by the forests are the silent witnesses of an era inwhich every little valley, every rock could be associated with a family or a community.Figures 1 and 2 depict the Valley of Lillet (Bergueda) as an example. The first maprepresents the network of paths historically used by the transhumant shepherds. Mostof these paths are not used anymore. The map also shows several abandoned villagesthat lie at mid range. Finally, the third item included is the numerous churches ofthe area. Some, are still used, most are not. In any case, this map portrays a land-scape in which every corner of the valley and the mountains is socialized and usedintensively.

The second map illustrates the most salient social features of the landscape at the be-ginning of the twenty-first century. The scattered but omnipresent local social activity

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Figure 2. The Lillet valley: protected areas, ski resorts and museums (map prepared by J. Deoand L. Zanotti)

of the mountains has been replaced by protected areas, ski resorts and museums. Thevalley has been reconfigured to offer goods and services to visitors.

In the Pallars Sobira the disbanding of villages following the initial moderniza-tion of the municipal structure of the Spanish state is even more striking. After 1842at least thirty communities disappeared from the official censuses. This ‘mortal-ity’ can only be compared with the sixteen losses that occurred due to an accel-eration of depopulation during the 1970s. In the year 2005 the Pallars Sobira hadonly 15 municipalities (Figure 3). The historical records of the last one hundred andfifty years, thus, talk about 108 villages and hamlets disappearing from the officialcensuses.

The Bergueda and the Pallars Sobira represent the two extremes of the historicalchanges suffered by the Pyrenees. The former, or at least significant areas of it, wasintegrated into the industrial networks dominating the rest of the country. The latter,remained on the periphery, isolated, and the main changes sweeping across its valleyswere focused on significant population losses in favour of the lowlands. In the PallarsSobira, lacking its own industrialization process, these losses started during the lastyears of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The industry ofthe Bergueda slowed down the process of depopulation, in absolute terms, until the1960s. There was no industrialization in the Pallars Sobira and hydropower plants

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Figure 3. The Pallars Sobira: number of historical villages per current municipality (mapprepared by J. Vaccaro)

arrived there in a later period. The first dams were built during the 1950s. Althoughthe dams brought jobs for a short time – during the construction period – this was amirage that quickly vanished once the dams and the hydropower plants were finished(Tarraubella 1990; Boneta 2003).

Concurrently the state issued the next two waves of territorialization policies: thedisentailment campaigns (1850–1900) and the expropriation campaign led by the for-est engineer corps (1900–60) (cf. Gomez 1992; Vaccaro 2005). This is not the placefor a detailed explanation of the scope and nature of both campaigns; suffice it to say

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that they translated into large patches of territory being appropriated by the state. Inthe first case of the disentailment campaign, the expropriations attempted to intro-duce theoretically non-productive lands into the real state market. Common property,abundant at the time in the Pyrenees was especially targeted. Non-private forms ofproperty, in the eyes of nineteenth century liberals, were inefficient. In the second casethe corps of engineers was given the authority to decide about the condition of theland. It was a time in which dozens, if not hundreds, of water reservoirs were beingbuilt downstream and there was a great deal of preoccupation with deforestation anderosion affecting the efficiency of the reservoirs. Following the recommendations ofthe forest engineers, thousands of hectares were expropriated. Traditional uses of thelandscape were considered harmful and generators of erosion. The confiscated landfrom then on was enclosed, kept and managed by government institutions. The peoplethat had lived and worked on farms on the expropriated patches had to relocate, oftento the valley towns.

Gradually the slopes started to depopulate. Some villagers relocated because of theattraction of the re-emerging towns. Some relocated because the dwindling populationof the ranches did not offer a viable critical mass for a healthy community anymore.The region, in absolute terms, did not lose population. On the contrary, the valleys inthe process of industrialization received influxes of workers from the Catalan lowlandsand beyond.

The decline of the Catalan textile industry, incapable of competing with Moroccoor the Far East’s low production costs, the replacement of hydropower by oil ornuclear-generated power, the closure of the mines overpowered by South Africa’scoal and the 1970s global oil crises annihilated most of the industrial possibilities ofthe Pyrenees and large parts of the Western inlands. Globalization and its low shippingcosts nullified every single productive advantage that the mountain communities couldhave ever had.

Suddenly, the already precarious Pyrenean job market crashed. The industrializedareas of the Pyrenees joined the depopulation trend that its marginal areas had startedfifty years before. This time the migration did not stop at the towns and villages at thebottom of the valleys. People pushed forward to the urban areas. The area experiencedan acute process of depopulation and aging. Figure 4 illustrates the demographic trendsdescribed above.

These socio-economic convulsions were not inconsequential for the environmentof the Catalan mountains. Today, the old agricultural terraces still climb impossibleslopes but not much is cultivated on them. The terraces are silent evidence of an erain which these mountains were densely inhabited and where agriculture and ranchingwere the main productive activities. These terraces penetrate deep into the forest. Inother words, these forests were not present when these mountains were a functionalagrarian landscape.

This widespread but low-intensity key anthropogenic influence on the ecology ofthe area was completely transformed by the eruption of industrialization. Open air

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Figure 4. Demographic evolution of the High Pyrenees. Source: 1900–1970 Sabartes (1993);1981–2001 (Inescat.net).

mines, trains and dams dumped tons of concrete and pollution in these valleys. Theimpact of human economic activities jumped to a new level.

At the same time the depopulation trend that, during the industrial era startedin the higher parts of the ranges but spread down during the deindustrialization,resulted in a reduction of human pressure on the environment. The forest started torecolonize long-abandoned fields, and charismatic species, due to natural processesor to reintroduction, returned to the mountains.

This situation prepared the stage for the next economic transformation of thesemountains. The post-industrial Pyrenees are characterized by low density commu-nities concentrated mainly in villages, mountains mainly devoid of permanent in-habitants, and exuberant and growing forests. These new characteristics attracted anew wave of territorialization policies – the fourth wave since the beginning of thenineteenth century and the emergence of the modern Spanish state: the generalizedimplementation of conservation areas. This is a region where the depopulation andconsequent reduction of productive human pressure has allowed nature to recoveror change, where the depopulation and the lack of alternatives guarantees low levelsof social resistance and where the past territorialization policies perpetrated by thestate have resulted in large pools of public land that can and have acted as territorialfoundations of these policies.

The same characteristics facilitated the arrival of ski resorts. The survival of largetracks of communal or municipal land on the slopes seems to have made possible theconsolidation of these large projects. The process of depopulation of the high valleyshas resulted also in the drastic reduction of commoners. Due to the low number ofowners, current decision-making processes in communal areas closely resemble thoseof private property. Land speculation on account of the potential and highly rewardingnew uses has become a common activity for commoners, local councils and local and

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Consuming Space, Nature and Culture 263

external investors. The extreme atomization of private property characteristic of theagricultural lowlands would have been a significant obstacle to any project requiringthe acquiescence of numerous owners.

Adventure and ski tourism have resulted in a social revival of many of these areas.The relative demographic recovery observed over the last ten years in some of thePyrenean districts can be related to this economic transformation (see Figure 4). Theservice industry generates significant revenue in terms of wages and benefits fromland speculation. It is questionable, however, if the economic benefits are distributedfairly across mountain communities and if they compensate for long-term damage tothe social and ecological fabric. Local communities are far from homogeneous in theirapproach to these particular economic opportunities. Tourism activities depend to alarge extent on alliances with external sources of funding and public institutions (Hall1994; Lindberg & Enriquez 1994; Haenn 2005). Some communities have successfullymaintained complete control of the emerging tourism industry, while urban-basedcorporations have come to dominate this form of development in other areas. Stillother valleys remain largely unexploited.

History has always been about fluxes. There is not, and there never was, an idyllicPyrenean landscape exclusively characterized by isolation, harmony and completeself-sufficiency. However, in the globalized urban era the patterns of production,marketing and consumption have emerged in tight association with the infrastructurenetworks that canalize the demographic, informational and material fluxes that feedthe cities on a daily basis.

It was the emergence of these networks that destroyed every possible competitiveadvantage of mountain industrialization. The early industrialization process did affectthe inland mountains. The relationship between mountains and cities was marked byextractive practices. The engineers of relatively new technical universities were sentall over the countryside to identify sources of natural resources susceptible to nour-ishing the progress of the industrial revolution. As mentioned earlier, the Pyreneesprovided coal and hydropower for this process. Coal extraction and hydropower re-sulted in high-impact infrastructures distorting the traditional mountainous landscape.This extractive process can also be described in terms of unilineal fluxes of matterand energy from the countryside to the cities. The essential separation, however, re-mained. The urban society constructed outposts in the higher valleys of the HighPyrenees in order to extract the energy for fuel. Citizens and factories in the lowlandsconsumed this flux of energy without entering into direct contact with the source. Theconsumption process, thus, affected raw or transformed materials transported to thelowlands.

This transformation did not leave the social fabric of mountains and valleys in-different. The construction of infrastructures, the monetization of economy and theopening of jobs, concentrated the population of the area in the towns of the valleys, ittransformed their productive identity by starting the process of proletarianization ofthe mountain populations. It created incentives for a directed demographic flux that

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Table 2. Evolution of numbers of second residences (1960–2001)

1960 1970 1981 1991 2001

Alt Urgell 87 437 1,093 1,094 2,035Alta Ribagorca 19 123 247 648 867Cerdanya 532 1,052 3,692 6,776 9,072Pallars Jussa 105 619 1,960 1,946 2,649Pallars Sobira 21 204 1,065 1,797 2,235Val d’Aran 18 347 2,676 3,980 4,345

Total 782 2,782 10,733 16,241 21,203

Source: Campillo and Font (2004).

emptied the slopes. Voided of social pressure, the forest started to claim fields andterraces.

The post-materialistic transformation of the Pyrenees that occurred in the last thirtyyears has changed this relationship between mountains and cities. The implementa-tion of protected areas and ski resorts affects space more than specific resources. Itconsequently resulted in territorial appropriation and urbanization of the landscapefor consumptive purposes. Public and private initiatives compete for the best areasof the mountains. The goal may be conservation or speculation, but in both casesterritory is set apart for new uses and local development ensues. The newly perceivedbeauty of the High Pyrenees, combined with the improvement of infrastructures andthe creation of tourist attractions, such as parks and ski resorts, has resulted in aspectacular development of the processes of urbanization of the territory (Table 2).

New residences are built and old ones are refurbished to provide secondary homesto city dwellers. These homes, used during weekends or short periods during thesummer holidays, remain empty throughout most of the year. In some cases, smallvillages become ghost communities for all but a few months of the year. For instance,Aineto, a little village of around twenty houses, has only two houses that are occupiedpermanently. Residents have moved the village party from the traditional date inSeptember to an alternative time during August, the only moment of the year whenthe village has enough people to celebrate. On the other hand, apartment buildingssurround towns such as Sort or Esterri d’Aneu. These nucleuses are developing theirown urban sprawl. The apartments, however, remain closed most of the year.

The territory was literally dumped into the market where it has to compete withother areas offering the same product: leisure. This process of commoditization de-pends on the virtual insertion of the marketed rural areas into the urban imaginarythrough publicity and media (information bytes). Values and attractiveness are con-vened through images and words in schools, TV programmes and media in general.The territory becomes, so to speak, a flow of information that connects product andpotential consumers.

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The next step is composed of seasonal flows of urban consumers temporarilyvisiting the area. The consumption of the rural space is then, the result of a doubleand opposite, flow: information and people. Although the increase in the tourismindustry has provided an increase in local jobs that have helped to keep some youth inthe area, second home owners, skiers and tourists, in general, do not contribute on aregular basis to reanimate the social vitality of the local communities. Small villagesdominated by the second residence phenomenon are empty during most of the weekor even the year. Second residence owners do not contribute to the demographicpotential or the daily social life of these villages, which are mainly characterized byempty houses and an aging population (Butler 1994).

In addition, the implementation and management of protected areas and ski resortscannot happen without the investment of large amounts of money. This money, ingeneral, does not come from local sources. So, this re-territorialization cannot startwithout significant influxes of cash. This ‘investment dependence’ results also in acertain local disempowerment.

In sum, it has always been about fluxes but the post-industrial mountains presenta differential element. This distinction is mainly about the type of relationship thatlinks lowlands and mountains. Nowadays this relationship is based on territorial ap-propriation and transformation. It is not about isolated extraction operations anymorebut about urbanization.

Patrimonialization and Consumption

Natural resources have been historically exploited at intense degrees. Nowadays,however, the differences reside on the conditions of use and the intensity and rangeof flow circulation. Space is radically reinvented to become natural patrimony orspace for leisure. These new uses translate into the symbolic, economic and juridicalre-qualification of the territory.

Interestingly enough, these new uses imply a specific type of non-local actors. Con-servation policies, generally, are declared and sustained by the state. Ski resorts, withtheir enormous initial investments, are usually out of local communities’ possibilities.Ski resorts, consequently, imply the disembarkment of some type of corporation orconsortium. Ski resorts, however, tend to search for and work in local alliances withsome sort of local elite. In both cases, then, space is appropriated by large externalinstitutions.

These appropriations are directed at securing important resources: singular natureand potential for leisure. It can be argued that the motivation behind the two typesof appropriation is radically distinct. Conservation policies are designed to protectbiodiversity, while ski resorts are designed to make money. Furthermore, ski resorts,collaterally, degrade biodiversity. They share, none the less, a few common traits:(1) they require a large amount of space; (2) they are designed and managed by externalinstitutions; (3) local traditional uses are excluded or regulated tightly; (4) they imply

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substantial alterations of the property regimes in place; (5) the potential consumers,as skiers or visitors, are mostly outsiders; (6) in both cases nature is commoditizedas a place for fun or as natural patrimony.

Conservation areas are more than ecological necessities. They are political pro-cesses of appropriation of territory and resources. And they are also scientific exper-iments of ecological engineering. In making this point it is not the intention to denythe need for conservation policies, rather to highlight its ‘other’ aspects.

The creation of a park or a reserve entails the creation of new limits, of new juris-dictional lines over the territory. The area circumscribed by these lines is transformedimmediately. The rights and duties associated with ownership are altered by the newregulations associated with the new jurisdictions. This is, then, a political process(Anderson & Grove 1987; Stonich 2000).

A protected area is a political process that either tries to protect a specific typeof environment or to restore another. Nature, however, is in permanent dynamic,unstable change (Scoones 1999; Abel & Stepp 2003). Conservation, in many cases,thus requires freezing an ecological situation or a transformation to another. In bothcases this relates to ecological engineering.

In a protected area of the Catalan Pyrenees, the management decides to exterminatethe wild goat, introduced by accident and for sport hunting thirty years ago. It maycompete with local species. The marmot (Marmota marmota), also a foreign speciesrecently settled in the Pyrenees, is allowed to thrive because it fills a theoreticallyunused niche in the area. The same management team reinforces the previous, alsoaccidental and also for hunting purposes, introduction of red deer with new releases.The explanation is simple. Historically, red deer (Cervus elaphus) was present in thearea a couple of centuries ago.

All these examples of ecosystem manipulation are real, and they are not relatedhere as aberrations. They represent legitimate choices taken by conservation policymanagers. These examples are here to illustrate the ecological malleability of anygiven landscape. It is hard, if not impossible, to agree on which is the perfect statusof a set of ecosystems. Do we want as many charismatic species as possible? Dowe want the carnivores too? Which period of the historical ecology of an area isthe most desirable to recreate? Is the most desirable period, in terms of biodiversityrichness, compatible with the current degree of human occupation and human use ofthe landscape?

All the previous examples of ecological design choices and all preceding questionsdirect us to a specific point. Protected areas are examples of ecological engineering.This point does not subtract value from their existence and activities, but it identifiesone of their main characteristics. Their goal is to manage, intervene and change ifnecessary, a landscape.

To proceed to an effective management of the landscape under their jurisdictionit is necessary to make a quantification of the resources and an assessment of theirlocalization. To maintain a protected landscape is to keep it stable in a desirable

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condition. This need to freeze the ecological situation of a landscape, combined withthe obligation of parks, as public policies, to divulgate, to communicate with theirconstituency, points to the concept of ‘museization’. Protected areas guard collectivenatural patrimony and this heritage is displayed to visitors. Nature is translated intobrochures, guided hikes or exhibitions. Nature is translated into culture and communi-cated via pedagogical tools perfected in museums. Nature, in other words, is managedat several levels. Protected areas, like museums, display culture and patrimony to so-cieties (Whelan 1991; King & Steward 1996; Honey 1999). Ecotourism emerges asa developmental tool that may provide legitimacy to the conservation process (Boo1990; Bandy 1996; Haenn 2005).

These open air museums, occupying the top of the ranges, have their counterpartsat the bottom of the valleys. It is there, in the towns, where one encounters culturalmuseums. These cultural museums display the traditional and not so traditional waysof life for the visitor. Tools, clothes, housing, habits and traditions are gathered andexplained for the visitors. In general they depict an ideal image of a specific type ofindividual: herders, miners, rafters and so on (Cohen 1988; Harkin 1995). Daily lifeand tradition are integrated as patrimony into another museistic institution. A coherentand, in general, homogenizing version of the past is constructed and communicatedto tourists (Howell 1994; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998). This process of reconstruct-ing and re-enacting the past, both real and imagined, often places limits on localbehaviour and agency. Local councils, for instance, issue building regulations thatforce new construction to follow so-called traditional styles. Locals have to negotiatenew regulations that attempt to harmonize culture, nature and tourism. Villages aresupposed to look traditional and clean at the same time. This is not an easy endeav-our when the traditional economy is based on herding and agriculture. Interestinglyenough, those that practise traditional activities are more often than not at odds with‘traditionalizing’ measures, which are meant to attract tourists and are encouragedby those locals that depend on tourism, not on traditional activities. The versions ofhistory explained in local museums are also the result of political tensions and, ul-timately, a compromise between historians, anthropologists (often folklorists), localcommunities, ideals and marketing needs (Prats 1997; Dicks 1999). These versionsof history, nature and culture are the result of older and contemporary political nego-tiations between romantic views, economic rationales, local realities and institutionaland individual dynamics (Urry 1990; Brown 1995; Darby 2000; Nogue & Vicente2004). This version necessarily includes detailed explanations of the interactions be-tween traditional societies and territory. In agricultural, pastoral or extractive societieshuman activities have obvious and direct anthropogenic effects on the territory. Theenvironmental history of the Mediterranean mountains presents numerous examplesof these anthropogenic activities (McNeill 1992; Grove & Rackham 2001). The terri-tory becomes a landscape by virtue of the social inscriptions that result from humanactivities. These activities depict societies intensively attached to the local territoryand nature. This fact, in contraposition to our dehumanized and denaturalized mall

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societies, paves the way for a naturalization of traditional societies. The organic foodmovement, for instance, often relies on the purity of the old ways and its traditionalpractices to justify the superiority of their products and, ultimately, their way of life.Way of life that often mimics an idealized version of the old ways.

Nature and culture become one at several levels. First, they are unified by theirintegration as necessary halves of a whole called landscape. Secondly, both of themachieve a historical legitimacy that turns nature into part of our culture, and traditionalculture into part of our natural roots. And, thirdly, as a consequence of this historicallegitimacy, both become collective heritage and, consequently, they get protected viamuseums and conservation policies. Nature is also harnessed by the expansion of theski resorts in order to provide leisure (the culture of leisure). The three of them offer aproduct that the larger national society of consumers considers valuable and is eagerto purchase (Crandall 1980; Urry 1990).

These valleys, somehow, become leisure theme parks. Their natures and their cul-tures are integrated by this process of museization of natural and cultural values, andof naturalization of so-called traditional culture. The places themselves, the valleys,become patrimony. Let us not forget, for instance that the Valley of Boi (Alta Rib-agorca) has been declared, in its entirety, a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Whatare its values but a combination of dramatic nature, picturesque villages, impressiveRomanic churches and old traditions?

Culture, however, is hard to sell during the long, cold and snowy winter of thesemountains. Leisure and culture interchange predominance seasonally. The urbandwellers go up there, to the mountains, in winter or summer, to ski, watch ‘untamednature’, or to smell cultural history. Significant parts of the public budgets allocatedto those areas are supposed to keep access to the resorts, or the infrastructure of theparks, functional. In other words, significant parts of the budgets allocated to thoseareas maintain those elements used by the seasonal waves of visitors.

Hyper-Modern Place Attachments

This article focuses on the analysis of the restructuration of the territory and its naturalresources through public policies and private commercial initiatives. It can be argued,rightfully so, that this type of analysis emphasizes structural patterns. One must becareful, however, not to ignore or mischaracterize local agency associated with thestudied process.

Locals are far from passive subjects of history; they resisted, fostered and tookadvantage of each one of the changes that affected valleys and mountains of thePyrenees across history. Their actions and activities can be read in terms of strategies.It is from this perspective that one needs to understand the local imbrications ofthese political and economic processes. After the industrial collapse, while enduringan atrocious demographic crisis, most local elites understood the new position ofthe Pyrenees in the national and global economic system. Locals, especially local

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politicians, realized that they had been displaced to the interior periphery and that,in order to recover significance, they had to reinvent themselves (Anderson, 1991).The goal was to identify new products attractive enough to the urban market to pullits attention, once again, to the mountains.

Parks, resorts and museums are the result of a complex and multi-layered processsimultaneously fostered by external and local initiatives. The mountain communitiesare not homogeneous entities. They also have high internal diversity. Inside the vil-lages at least two models of development can be perceived, cohabitating in precariousequilibrium. On the one hand there are those who foster urbanization and territorialspeculation based on mass tourism and ski resorts. On the other hand, there are othergroups attempting to create sustainable processes of development based on small-scale cultural and ecological tourism. These two trends have split entire communitiesand, interestingly enough, they have branched out of the communities when thesegroups, to establish regional alliances, have positioned themselves in different campsof the national political parties’ divide.

Both camps have something in common. Their strategies are directed at connectingwith wider networks and eventually to tap resources from them. The commoditizationof nature for leisure purposes is an obvious instance of this strategy. The patrimoni-alization of traditions such as food, ceremonies, or markets is a more subtle example.Museization is often considered an appropriation and manipulation of a local identity.In many cases, however, this museization is fostered from local grounds to generateyet another tourist attraction (Prats 1997; Frigole 2005). Local culinary products,such as cheeses, various types of treated meats, alcohol, fruits and vegetables, havealso been recovered, and these items are featured prominently in restaurants, hotelsand grocery shops all over the area. Their value as ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ productstranslates into higher selling prices. These small-scale industries are mainly local,and they take advantage of this contemporary taste for non-industrialized foods. Foodbecomes an identity marker with significant economic consequences, as well as anelement that connects these localities with globalized values (Heller 2006).

The discussion about local agency has also to include another important element.All the economic transformations described above have not resulted in the total erad-ication of economic activities from previous productive modes. In other words, thesemountains are still crossed by dozens, if not hundreds, of transhumant herds. Manyhydropower plants and its dams are still in operation. There are still, here and there,a few factories and a few mines functioning.

In most cases the survival of these activities is not due to a ‘revival obsession’.Sheepherders, for instance, are still roaming around these mountains because at somelevel it still makes economic sense. Agrarian censuses seem to point out less nu-merous but larger herds. Local strategies have been influenced by economic gainsand availability of ecological and social possibilities. The patrimonialization is afact, which does not mean, however, that it has wiped out every other economicactivity.

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Patrimonialization depends on carefully constructed idealizations of the naturaland cultural past. Ironically, farmers and ranchers, with genealogies of century-oldoccupation, do not necessarily share these imaginaries. They, more often than not,disagree with the reintroduction of species. They do not like ungulates because theyinterfere with the seasonal grazing circulation. But they especially do not like thereintroduction of predators, such as bears or wolves: species their grandparents helpedto remove. Contemporary herders do not necessarily fit either with the image built ofthem in museums.

The new economic paradigm is designed to provide services to visitors. Obviously,while doing so it generates jobs and revenues for locals, but a fact remains: thecollective productive identity depends on the influx of waves of seasonal strangers.

In anthropology, traditionally, attachment to place has been explained by explor-ing the deep ties between communities and their environments (Feld & Basso 1996;Strang 1997). This approach, with old precedents in the social sciences, has beeninstrumental in the description of detailed and accurate ways of understanding, clas-sifying and using the environment. Cultural ecologists, ethnobiologists and landscapeanalysts have contributed greatly to the documentation of this locally contextualizedform of knowledge. In the hyper-modern era, place attachment cannot be understoodwithout multi-scalar analysis (Appadurai 1996; Paulson & Gezon 2005). Althoughpeople from the Pyrenees do have a deep knowledge of their territory and a profoundconnection with the environment, it is important not to essentialize local communities.Massive waves of emigration have left many communities in a weakened demographicstate, with aging populations and little productive capacity. In addition, generationalfractures are also highly evident in these communities. New occupations require newknowledge and skills not necessarily associated with a deep understanding of theenvironment. In other words, an intense sense of place did not stop the communityfrom disaggregating under economic pressures.

In these mountains connectivity has been an important factor, at least, since theMiddle Ages. Caravans charging wool connected their local markets with those ofthe towns in the Languedoc and central Catalonia (Le Roy Ladurie 1979). Industri-alization connected them with the industrialized cities and a new way of life. Theindustrial collapse connected, in an intangible way, the Catalan mountains with Mo-rocco, South Africa and so on. Globalization, thus, turned these mountains into justanother node of a global economic system. Consequently, in the name of efficiencyand profitability, the economic grid became rearranged and the Western mountainswere dropped into a peripheral state.

The development of a new set of commodities, covering a new set of needs relo-cated, once again, these mountains in the global network. Leisure, nature and cultureresituated this region in a more central position in the collective imaginary and theeconomic and demographic fluxes of contemporary Spanish society.

The hyper-mobility dominating the current global economic system forces us tosee place attachment as a succession of connections at different geographical and

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cultural scales that have an impact on the construction of individual and collectiveidentity.

Identity, as a consequence, is not exclusively the result of local arrangements.The position of these communities in relation to the larger national and internationalsocieties is as important as their own internal dynamics. In this hyper-modern erathese villages are providing nature, leisure and tradition. Therefore, the expectationsof tradition generated by the historically peripheral position of these communities inthe global society have an impact on how their inhabitants construct themselves, andhow they present themselves.

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Notes on Contributor

Ismael Vaccaro is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies atMcGill University, Montreal. His research focuses on the interactions of conservation

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policies and local communities. He is currently conducting research in the CatalanPyrenees and Mexico.Oriol Beltran is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universitat de Barcelona.His focus is on cultural technologies, ecological anthropology, cultural patrimony andpolitical ecology. He is currently conducting research in the Catalan Pyrenees and theCentral Andes.

Resume: Consommer l’espace, la nature et la culture: discussions sur le patri-

moine en l’ere hypermoderne.

Dans cet article, nous nous penchons sur ce que nous appelons un processus de transformation enpatrimoine de la culture et de la nature qui prend place dans les montagnes de l’interieur occi-dental des Pyrenees orientales espagnoles. Aujourd’hui, les paysages sont transformes en produitscommerciaux comme formations culturelles et historiques et lies a des reseaux de consommationinternationaux soumis a des valeurs urbaines post materialistes. La preservation de lieux verts, desstations de ski et des musees culturels surgissent dans des champs agricoles abandonnes ou dans desusines videes. Ce remplacement d’activites agricoles et d’elevage par la preservation et les servicessouligne le lien etroit entre les vallees pyreneennes et la modernite globale en cette epoque hyper-moderne. On a generalement decrit cette transformation comme le resultat de processus structurauxqui ont redefini la separation entre l’urbain et le rural de facon unilaterale: redefinition qui resulted’une appropriation dirigee par l’urbain. Les populations rurales sont, cependant, loin d’etre assu-jetties a des influences externes. Une analyse d’action locale suggere une image plus complexe deschoix economiques et culturels locaux comme explications. L’histoire des liens de ces espaces avecdes reseaux globaux ne raconte pas uniquement la depossession des populations locales mais aussileur ingenuite. L’internationalisation de l’economie dans les annees 1970 avait fauche leur aveniret relegue ces zones vers la peripherie du systeme economique. La consolidation d’une moderniteglobale qui s’articule autour du besoin d’offrir des loisirs fournit a ces endroits l’occasion de serattacher aux reseaux du centre et d’attirer des ressources importantes de ces systemes economiquesdomines par l’urbain.

Mots-cles: Espagne, Pyrenees, paysage, occupation des sols, internationalisation, economie des loisirs

Zusammenfassung: Der Verbrauch von Raum, Natur und Kultur: Altvaterliche

Diskussionen in einer hypermodernen Zeit

In diesem Beitrag reflektieren wir dasjenige, was wir den Prozess der ‘Patrimonialisierung’von Kultur und Natur nennen, der gegenwartig in den westlichen Gebirgshinterlandern derspanischen Ostpyrenaen stattfindet. Landschaften als kulturelle und historische Bebilde wer-den derzeit als Rohstoffe den globalen Konsumnetzwerken erschlossen, die von urbanen und‘postmaterialistischen’ Werten beherrscht werden. Erhaltungsrichtlinien, Ski-Resorts und Kul-turmuseen schießen in zuvor ‘aufgegebenen’ landwirtschaftlichen Gebieten oder verlassenen Fab-riken wie Pilze aus dem Boden. Diese Verschiebung von Landwirtschaft, Viehzucht und Indus-trie zu Denkmalschutz und Dienstleistungen kennzeichnet den Anschluss der Pyrenaentaler andie globale Modernitat und die hyper-moderne Ara. Diese Transformationsprozesse wurden allge-mein als einseitige Neudefinierung der Strukturwandlungsprozesse des stadtisch-landlichen Gegen-satzes dargestellt: Neudefinierung mit dem Ergebnis einer unmittelbaren stadtischen Aneignung.Landliche Bevolkerungen sind jedoch weit davon entfernt, bloß passive Subjekte außerer Einflussezu sein. Die Analyse des lokalen Handelns legt ein viel differenzierteres Bild nahe, in dem lokaleokonomische und kulturelle Wahlmoglichkeiten als erklarende Variablen eingeschlossen sind. DieGeschichte des Anschlusses dieser Raume an regionale und globale Netzwerke ist nicht nur eine

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Geschichte lokaler Enteignung, sondern auch uber lokalen Erfindungsreichtum. Die Globalisierungder Wirtschaft in den fruhen 1970er Jahren schwachte und relegierte diese Gebiete hin zur Pe-ripherie des Wirtschaftssystems. Die Konsolidierung einer globalen Modernitat artikulierte um dieNotwendigkeit der Zurverfugungstellung von Freizeit und hat damit eine Buhne geschaffen, auf dersich jene Gebiete wieder den zentralen Netzwerken anschließen und große Ressourcenmengen ausden stadtisch beherrschten Wirtschaftssystemen anziehen konnten.

Stichworter: Spanien, Pyrenaen, Landschaft, Landnutzung, Globalisierung, Freizeitwirtschaft