Narratives Around Water in the Construction of an Industrialized Spain | Isabel Rodríguez De La Rosa

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, various fascist states in Europe embraced a type of industrial autarky based on the exploitation of natural resources. In these cases, autarky and raw material became two strongly linked concepts. In Spain, from 1939 onward and under the Francoist slogan “produce, produce, and produce,” a major autarkic industrialization process was developed defining vast territorial structures. From raw to elaborated materials, the implementation of autarkic policies gave rise to a process of signification of matter based on an anthropocentric vision of nature. In a first stage, this paper analyzes the relationship between the concepts of autarky and raw material, to apply it to the case of the Spanish autarkic industrialization process. In a second stage, the paper observes the case of the use of water as a raw material considered essential for industrialization. For this purpose, it presents two case studies: the first from a perspective based on a territorial analysis, and the second one from a perspective based on the analysis of several aesthetic conditions. Through these cases, the paper examines the connection between the construction of new anthropogenic landscapes and the cultural meanings, both projected and non-projected, associated with the process.

Modern autarky is a political economy model that pursues the self-sufficiency of a state through the intensive and optimized use of its own resources.[i] During the first half of the twentieth century, several European fascist states dreamed at some point about achieving full autarky: Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Greece, France, Portugal, and Spain pursued a model of autarkic economy with varying vigor and success.[ii] The Spanish case is particularly relevant because this period of pursuing self-sufficiency lasted for nearly two decades during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In fact, contemporary historiography has termed the first period of Franco’s regime, between 1939 and 1959, as the autarkic period.[iii]

In its quest for self-sufficiency, the Spanish regime embraced a form of industrial autarky founded on the exploitation of the country’s natural resources and relying on its economic and human capital.[iv] Through the localization, exploitation and transformation of its raw materials, the territory became a kind of laboratory so it could be redesigned for the optimum use of the resources it contained.[v] In this process, the physical, environmental, aesthetic, and cultural transformation of the territory built up new production landscapes, transforming the previous ones—also anthropogenic in nature—that were linked to agriculture and livestock farming.

[i] Regarding the concept of autarky, see Santiago Gorostiza, “Problematising Self-Sufficiency: A Historical Exploration of the ‘Autarky’ Concept,” in Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth, ed. Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson, and Stefania Barca (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 209–24. Regarding the debate between autarky and autarchy, and their etymological roots autárkeia and autarchía, seeTiago Saraiva and M. Norton Wise, “Autarky/Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40, no. 4 (2010): 424–25.

[ii] Saraiva and Wise, “Autarky/Autarchy,’” 419–24.

[iii] Lino Camprubí, Los ingenieros de Franco: Ciencia, catolicismo y Guerra Fría en el estado franquista (Barcelona: Crítica, 2017), 19. Numerous academic research studies have focused on this period. The different approaches can be structured—although with crossings between them—from the field of political-socioeconomic history (see, e.g., Carlos Barciela, ed.. Autarquía y mercado negro: El fracaso económico del primer franquismo, 1939–1959 [Barcelona: Crítica, 2003]; Pablo Martín Aceña and Francisco Comín, INI: 50 años de industrialización en España [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1991]); from the field of the history of science (see, e.g., Camprubí, Los ingenieros de Franco; Amparo Gómez Rodríguez and Antonio Francisco Canales Serrano, eds., Ciencia y fascismos: La ciencia de posguerra española [Barcelona: Laertes, 2009]); from the field of architectural and urban development (see, e.g., María González Pendás, “Architecture, Technocracy, and Silence: Building Discourse in Franquista Spain” (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2016); Gabriel Ureña, Arquitectura y urbanística civil y militar en el periodo de la autarquía [1936–1945]: Análisis, cronología y textos [Madrid: Istmo, 1979]); and in the field of the territorial and landscape construction and the emergence of its associated cultural meanings—in which this contribution is inserted (see, e.g., Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco and Santiago Gorostiza, “‘Facing the Sun’: Nature and Nation in Franco’s New Spain [1936–51],” Journal of Historical Geography 71 [2021]: 73–82; Zira Box, “Paisaje y nacionalismo en el primer franquismo,” Hispanic Research Journal 17, no. 2 [2016]: 123–40; Manuel Rodrigo de la O Cabrera, “Complexities of Cultural Significance: Images of Industrial Landscapes of Coal from the Spanish Autarky,” Change Over Time 7, no. 1 [2017]: 134–57).

[iv] Regarding the autarkic model adopted by the Franco regime, see Antonio de Miguel Martín, Autarquía: Conferencia pronunciada por el Excelentísimo Sr. D. Antonio de Miguel Martín (Madrid: Diana Artes Gráficas, 1941).

[v] The overall context of this situation is not limited to the case of Spain. The large-scale development of productive activities is characteristic of the Great Acceleration process undergone in developed Western countries. Without precedent in terms of pace, intensity, magnitude, and irreversibility of actions, these countries reached during the twentieth century the starting points and exponential growth of many of their human activities related to the large-scale exploitation of the physical environment. See Will Steffen, Angelina Sanderson, Peter Tyson, Jill Jäger, Pamela Matson, Berrien Moore III, Frank Oldfield, Katherine Richardson, H. John Schellnhuber, B. L. Turner II, et al., Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004), 131–41.

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