Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi

Históricamente, América Latina se ha integrado en el comercio internacional como proveedora de materias primas y alimentos. Esta especialización ha tenido consecuencias para el desarrollo económico, social y ambiental suscitando un creciente interés en la literatura. En este trabajo aplicamos la metodología de los Flujos de Energía y Materiales (MEFA, por sus siglas en inglés) para analizar en profundidad las extracciones domésticas de América Latina durante la segunda globalización (1970-2019), siguiendo su evolución por subperiodos e insertándolas en el contexto internacional. Se diferencian también diferentes perfiles extractivos según países y regiones que permiten analizar la complejidad del proceso y se plantea el uso de un indicador para aproximar el peso explicativo de las exportaciones en la evolución de las extracciones. Toda esta información resulta relevante para los debates relacionados con el desarrollo económico del continente y sus consecuencias ambientales.

Utilizando como fuente principal los expedientes de depuración política custodiados en el AGA, este artículo reconstruye el caso de Enrique Mackay, ingeniero de montes de prestigio, personaje políticamente conservador, presidente del Consejo Forestal del Estado y juez depurador entre 1939 y 1940, que poco después cayó en desgracia y fue expulsado del Cuerpo tras un duro proceso de purga. Lo ocurrido con Mackay y con otros ingenieros de montes se utiliza para lanzar nuevas hipótesis sobre los procesos de depuración, que ayudan a entender mejor su complejidad y también su papel en el apuntalamiento del régimen franquista y sus políticas.

Rural electrification is closely linked one way or another to rural development, and enables the understanding of the complexity of social and economic development paths. The objective of this work is to analyse rural electrification in a European peripherical country like Spain throughout the twentieth century, contributing to the international debate on the issue. The article studies the territorial expansion of electricity in the Spanish countryside, tracing different phases and explaining the delay in the construction of a national network. It also analyses the relationship that arose in the long term between electrification and the evolution of the agricultural sector. The article concludes that, in the Spanish case, rural electrification played a modest role in agricultural change until the 1980s and was, to a great extent, the consequence, rather than the cause, of the modernisation of the sector to these years.

BOOK REVIEWS / CRÍTICA DE LIBROS / CRÍTICA DE LIVROS Paul Warde: The Invention of Sustainability: Nature and Destiny, c. 1500-1870 Simone Gingrich & Juan Infante Amate Jesús Fernández Fernández and Margarita Fernández Mier (Eds.): The Archaeology of Medieval Villages Currently Inhabited in Europe Christopher Dyer Giacomo Bonan: The State in the Forest: Contested Commons in the Nineteenth Century Venetian Alps Iñaki Iriarte Goñi Rosa Congost, Jorge Gelman and Rui Santos (Eds.): Property Rights in Land: Issues in Social, Economic and Global History Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia Alessandro Carassale, Claudio Littardi and Irma Naso (Ed.): Fichi: Storia, economia, tradizioni / Figs: History, Economy, Traditions Claudio Lorenzini Sandra Kuntz-Ficker (Ed.): The First Export Era Revisited: Reassessing its Contributions to Latin American Economies Vicente Pinilla Laurent Herment (Dir.): Histoire rurale de l’Europe, XVIe-XXe siècle Juan Pan-Montojo Édouard Lynch: Insurrections paysannes: De la terre à la rue. Usages de la violence au XXe siècle Alba Díaz-Geada Stéphane Le Bras: Le négoce des vins en Languedoc: L’emprise du marché, 1900-1970 Llorenç Ferrer-Alòs José Ignacio Cubero: Historia general de la agricultura: De los pueblos nómadas a la biotecnología Maria Antònia Martí Escayol Dale Tomich: Espacios de esclavitud: Tiempo/tiempos del capital Antonio Santamaría

Although firewood was the main energy source until recently in most parts of the world, our understanding of its consumption levels is still quite limited, even in regard to recent periods. The powerful impact of fossil energy carriers and their major effects on global ecology, economy and society have led us to underestimate the role firewood has continued to play during the energy transition. This article offers a new reconstruction of long-term firewood consumption in Spain, taking into consideration variables related to supply and demand, which are then used to reconstruct the production, appropriation and energy uses of firewood biomass. This new series distinguishes also between the origins (forest or crop firewood), and between different regional behaviors. The main findings indicate that total and per-inhabitant consumption has been greater than traditionally assumed; that there was major regional divergence, with consumption varying significantly from one area to another; that the decline in firewood consumption was gradual and later than previously thought; and that it increased or declined over time in a non-linear fashion. Moreover, the traditionally neglected estimation of the role of woody crops was found to be very significant in this process, as it represented between 20% and 70% of total consumption for the whole data series.

The authors explore the transformation of common lands in Spain in the second half of the 20th Century, when the nation experienced significant structural and political changes. If the 19th Century was defined by privatisation of common lands, the 20th Century experienced slight growth, but there were differences among the regions. Although the legal definition and classification of common lands is fixed, and was determined by the municipal entity, new formulas (such as the montes vecinales en mano común regulated in 1968) appeared to solve the tension between the state and local control. Ultimately, flexibility was the main characteristic of the regulations which allowed for adapting uses to a diversity of regional circumstances. Along with the productive and environmental regulations, the use of common lands for social purposes through the distribution of plots for cultivation was emphasised. Nevertheless, at the end of the 20th Century Spanish legislation concerning common lands was more focused on earlier norms than on the future.

This article analyzes wood consumption in Spain between 1860 and 2000, taking into account underlying forces and exploring the effects on Spanish forests. The use of wood as a source of power tended to decline in Spain after the dawn of its industrial development, but this was compensated for by the use of wood as a raw material for industrial and urban purposes. The transition between those two models of wood consumption was very slow. Until the 1960s, the consumption of firewood remained high due to the difficulties in extending modern energy networks, and this coincided with a slow but continuous growth of wood consumption as a raw material. From the 1960s on, firewood consumption collapsed, but the use of wood as a raw material grew rapidly. This article shows the links between those transformations and major changes in the economic, technological, social, and political evolution of the country. It also explores the effects of wood consumption on the Spanish forests, highlighting the complex relationship between those two variables. In the long run, the growth of wood consumption did not lead to a national deforestation, but it did significantly affect the nature and the quality of the forests in Spain.