Landscape, Territory, and Civil Society in Catalonia

Abstract

In recent decades intense territorial transformations in European Mediterranean countries have caused radical changes in their landscapes, with a resulting impact on the territorial identity of local societies. Faced with the risk of irreversible loss of sense of place and of local identity, as a result of nonconsensual processes almost always poorly explained by the administration, civil society has recently reacted in an increasingly indignant and organized manner, demanding a new culture of territory. This article analyzes, in the case of Catalonia, the interaction between landscape, territory, and civil society and demonstrates that this interaction, organized in a large number of associations in defence of territorial identity, has shown itself to be extraordinarily vital and dynamic. In this context, landscape has been revealed as the catalyst and unifying element of growing conflicts of a territorial and environmental nature palpable in Catalan society.