The persistence of romantic ideas and the origins of the natural park policy in Spain

Abstract

The circulation of geographical ideas is interesting, not only within intellect currents, but also with regards to their transfer from the conceptual and representational to the practical plane. This article studies the influence of the romantic idea of nature and landscape in the earliest decisions regarding the declaration on National Parks. The spanish case is specially interesting because of its landscape and environmental diversity. Moreover, Spain is known to be one of the first European countries to initiate a conservation policy, rooted in the romantic "regeneracionistas" movements, and because of the role played by geographers in the early conservation development. It is argued in the text, that is the survival of the romantic ideas which partially explains the choice of the first parks and sites, more precisely, that such a process concentrated on high Atlantic mountains and forested areas while Mediterranean environments were postposed. Landscape and geologic symbolism, romanticism's heritage, predominated at this time over ecologic observance. In addition to this, identity and traditional reasons, which also favored romantic "places of choice", whereas social reasons and arguments in favor of increase of productivity prevented an earlier classification of areas with great biological resources as Doñana in the Southwest.