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Spain The Andalusians
The Andalusians cannot be considered an ethnically
distinct
people because they lack two of the most important markers
of
distinctiveness: an awareness of a common, distant
mythological
origin, and their own language. Nevertheless, it is clear
that
they do constitute a culturally distinct people, or
region, that
has become increasingly important in an industrial and
democratic
society.
The Andalusians live in Spain's eight southernmost
provinces:
Almeria, Cadiz, Cordoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaen, Malaga,
and
Seville. In 1986 their total population stood at 6.9
million. In
general, it had grown more slowly than had the country's
total
population, and the region continued to be sparsely
populated.
Since 1960, the region's share of total population had
declined,
despite birth rates ranging from 20 to 25 per 1,000, about
40
percent higher than the Spanish average. The causes of the
depopulation of the region can be found in the distinctive
characteristics of its culture and economy: the large,
poorly
utilized estates and the agro-towns; rural poverty and
landlessness; a rigid class structure and sharp class
conflict;
and emigration to Spain's industrial cities and to other
parts of
Europe. Most descriptions of Andalusia begin with the
landownership system, for the most powerful forces in the
region
have for centuries been the owners of the large,
economically
backward estates, called latifundios
(see Hispania
, ch.
1). These
wide expanses of land held by relatively few owners had
their
origins in landowning patterns that stretch back to Roman
times;
in grants of land made to the nobility, to the military
orders,
and to the church during the Reconquest (Reconquista); and
in
laws of the nineteenth century by which church and common
lands
were sold in large tracts to the urban middle class. The
latifundio system is noted for two regressive
characteristics:
unproductive use of the land (agricultural production per
capita
in Andalusia was only 70 percent of that in Spain as a
whole
during the late 1980s) and unequal and absentee
landownership
patterns (1 percent of the agricultural population owned
more
than half of the land; the landed aristocracy made up no
more
than 0.3 percent of the population). The workers of this
land,
called jornaleros, were themselves landless; they
did not
even live on the land. Instead, they resided in what
Spaniards
refer to as pueblos, but with populations ranging
as high
as 30,000, these population centers were far too large to
be
considered "villages" or "towns." Anthropologists have
coined the
term "agro-towns" to describe such urban areas, because
they
served almost solely as a habitat for agricultural
day-workers
and had themselves declined in economic, cultural, and
political
significance.
This economic and cultural system produced a
distinctive
outlook, or perspective, that involved class consciousness
and
class conflicts as well as significant out-migration. In
contrast
to the much smaller farm towns and villages of northern
Spain,
where the land was worked by its owners, where parcels
were of
more nearly equal size, and where class differentiations
were
softened, class distinctions in the agro-towns of
Andalusia stood
out with glaring clarity. Devices used in other parts of
rural
Spain to diffuse class conflict, such as kinship and
religious
rituals, were of little value here
(see Social Stratification
, this ch.). The families of the landless farmers lived at,
or
near, the poverty level, and their relations with the
landed
gentry were marked by conflict, aggression, and hostility.
The
two main forces that kept Andalusia's rural society from
flying
apart were external to the region. The first was the
coercive
power of the state, the political power emanating from
Madrid, as
exemplified by Spain's rural constabulary, the Civil Guard
(Guardia Civil--see
The Police System
, ch. 5). The second
was the
safety valve offered by the opportunities to migrate to
other
parts of Spain, or to other countries in Western Europe.
This
freedom resulted in the remaining facet of Andalusian
culture:
the will to leave the region behind. Much of this
migration was
seasonal; in 1982, for example, 80,000 Spaniards, mostly
Andalusians, migrated to France for the wine harvest. Much
of the
migration, however, consisted of entire families who
intended to
remain in their new home for long periods, or perhaps
forever.
This is why Andalusia during the 1960s lost some 14
percent of
its population, perhaps the greatest European exodus in
peacetime
in this century.
Data as of December 1988
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