Abstract
What makes the Lower Segura River (southeast of Spain) unique is the existence of a densely populated and entropized territory around a smallholder agricultural activity that for centuries has shaped the so-called “Segura Orchard.” In recent years, there has been widespread occupation due to the construction of secondary residences, which has clearly changed the rural appearance, sometimes creating an image more typical of disorderly residential urbanization than of an inhabited agricultural territory. The objective of this paper is to determine the attitude and position of the resident population regarding the situation and future prospects that are envisioned for this area. In this paper, we have conducted a personal and open interview as a technique to collect the information. If we are not capable of generating sustainable socio-economic activity, we will not be able to preserve, protect and transcend what we still know as an orchard. This spatial structure is undoubtedly singular and complex, and after a process of loss of identity and alteration of traditional uses, it requires an intervention that tends to organize it and protect the important territorial heritage that it still preserves.
Highlights
The present study shows the impressions stated by the inhabitants about the reality of this natural region, located in the Southeast of Spain
With the second group of questions we try to find out the degree of relationship that they have with the Orchard, as well as whether they are aware of the current situation in which this agrarian space is found
We urge you to answer the following questions: Do you reside in the Orchard or urban nucleus? How much time do you dedicate to agricultural work? What does the Orchard mean to you? What are the factors that have caused the important loss of this agrarian landscape? iii
Summary
The present study shows the impressions stated by the inhabitants about the reality of this natural region, located in the Southeast of Spain. The structuring bases of this approach are epistemologically based on (i) understanding and (ii) interpreting; through the first, reflection and contextualisation are exercised, the practice of which constitutes an act of hermeneutical knowledge that brings together the observer and the observed; on the second, in the process of analysis, the field material, its peculiarity and specificity, is valued, respectfully looking at the truth of the narrator that cannot be underestimated, but needs to be contrasted These exercises require the following substantives: (i) experience (use that the narrator makes of the territory, shaped by culture and other multiple reasons; a person generates personal criteria resulting from what is learned and experienced socially); (ii) common sense (expressed as the accumulation of knowledge and the intellectual typifications generated collectively); (iii) action (behaviour or way of relating in a consensual way in society); (iv) significance (potentially interpreting what is perceived and developing a capacity to produce criticism); and (v) intentionality (existential and non-rational behaviour in which consciousness intervenes)
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