The Rain in Spain: Franco, the Hydraulic Paradigm, and Environmental Reality, 1939–75

Between 1939 and 1975, the policies of Francisco Franco transformed the physical, demographic, and ideological landscape of Spain. The regime’s treatment of land and water during this period embodied the faith in the ability of technology to control and reshape nature that had dominated Spanish intellectual discourse throughout the early 20th century. The Spanish “economic miracle” of the postwar period enabled the dictator to make this modernist vision a reality in the form of hundreds of immense works of steel-reinforced concrete rising above sparkling lakes and rivers; vast and highly visible reminders of the state’s power dotting the landscape from Galicia to Murcia. In so doing, however, the Franco regime subverted the rhetoric and policies of early twentieth-century progressives to serve its own centralizing, antidemocratic agenda. Its hydraulic reforms transformed the physical and demographic landscape, and deeply engrained the nation’s legislative and economic culture with a sense of peninsular water as a limitless resource. This ideology helped to create a culture of waste and a disregard for viable long-term development that would later impede Spanish efforts to gain diplomatic recognition by more environmentally-conscious states in the Western world. Despite increasing pressure on the nation’s resources, part of Franco’s legacy is the population’s continued resistance to water conservation efforts.