Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 2 (2006), p. 360

Enric Saguer’s edited volume traces the main changes that occurred in the lives of a small group of landowning families in the Catalan province of Girona from the 1930s down to the present day. The analysis centres around a series of interviews conducted by Saguer’s mainly young research team – the Asociació d’Història Rural de les Comarques Gironins – with 35 hereus, heirs to family estates, in the districts of La Selva, l’Empordá, and La Garrotxa. Over half of their sample were over seventy years of age, whilst less than 15 per cent were under 50. Biographical profiles were constructed under the headings of education, marriage, professional activities, and mobility. Traditionally, landowners in this part of north-east Spain rented out part of their estates to sharecroppers (masovers), often on emphyteutic leases granting rights in perpetuity, while themselves occupy-ing the family farmstead (masia). From the 1950s, however, this particular form of sharecropping went into rapid decline. Many landowners sold off their estates; others chose to farm them directly. Some hereus found alternative employment in tourism or the liberal professions. The present study contains examples of all of these options although, as the contributors concede, their limited sample may not be entirely representative.

Sharecropping in Girona – a province dedicated to cereal farming, olives, and viticulture – came under threat in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, owing to competition from cheap wheat imports, industrial oils, and the spread of phylloxera across the Pyrenees. By the early twentieth century, land ownership had already lost much of its appeal, a situation that was not improved by the intense social conflict over farm leases during the early Second Republic, and the collectivization of large estates in the civil war period. From the 1950s, lease holding arrangements were complicated by declining fertility. A number of the farms surveyed were left without heirs. Later, the expansion of higher education in Spain, meant that many hereus went to university (20 out of the 35 questioned were graduates), where some of them studied law or medicine rather than agronomy. Meanwhile, not a few of the wives whom they had met during their studies in Barcelona or Madrid, were unhappy with the outmoded roles that were assigned to them.

This book builds on previous research by Rosa Congost, Llorenç Ferrer, Ramon Garrabou, Jordi Planas, Saguer, and others covering such topics as the formation of the hereu and the often antagonistic relations between landowners and masovers. One advantage of its oral history approach is that it provides readers with a wealth of hitherto unpublished details on the nature of recent changes. Between the 1960s and the early 1980s, as the relative prices of traditional crops declined, many of the hereus in the sample switched their production to more remunerative livestock farming. However, the high cost of substituting capital for labour together with the need to achieve economies of scale threatened to destroy the entire inheritance system. Many farms were abandoned at this stage. Salvation finally came – for some at least – in the guise of mass tourism to Spain’s Costa Brava. Although not everyone was in a position to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the burgeoning tourist sector, many of our hereus were tempted into converting their picturesque masias into restaurants, hotels, or second residences for city dwellers. One consequence of all these developments, as the authors inform us, was an erosion of the social and political roles of the hereu who, a century ago, had formed part of Catalonia’s hegemonic class.

This collaborative volume is the latest in a series of monographs on Catalan ethnology, supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya. With its excellent illustrative material, including some nice old photographs, it contributes greatly to our understanding of Spain’s rich and diverse agricultural history.