Learning from the past: Oral histories of biocultural diversity and human-nature connectedness
Insights from social-ecological fieldwork in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range and related protected areas in Spain
After a long delay due to the pandemic, I was very enthusiastic about restarting fieldwork in the Spanish Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range during autumn 2021. During a stay of two months, I recorded oral histories with elderly inhabitants and landscape managers on their memories and knowledge regarding practices of natural resource use in the landscape — from forestry via agriculture and livestock keeping to foraging.
How have these changing practices shaped ecosystems and biodiversity over time? And how are such changes related to shifts in the ways people feel, relate, see or experience nature?
The landscape of Sierra de Guadarrama: a legacy from centuries of human-nature interactions
At the foothills of the Sierra, between 900 and 1200 m altitude, we can find mountain settlements comprising more than 30 municipalities. Here is where most of the inhabitants of the Sierra de Guadarrama — called Serranos — live. The autumn landscape is beautiful like a postcard: the contrasting colors between deciduous and perennial trees really touch me.
Gradually, woodland pastures of holm oak give way to another kind of vegetation: This one is more adapted to the higher altitudes and mountain valleys; it includes Pyrenean-oak forests, valley pastures and ash grooves. Traditionally, these areas around the villages have mostly been used for purposes related to community subsistence. But human-nature connections do not end here: Above these areas, the Scots pine forest, traditionally used for timber and firewood, begins to take center stage. Finally, once in the higher areas, at around 2000 m, the trees begin to disappear and the landscape is dominated by the vegetation of broom and high altitude pastures.
At the Sierra’s foothills: Dehesas Boyales
Close to the settlements, centuries of human-nature interaction have resulted in the special cultural landscapes of Dehesas Boyales — temporarily irrigated woodland pastures, surrounded by pollarded tree vegetation. These wood pastures have a special meaning for local communities: Until recently, they were used as communal pastures where small-size family cattle could graze in specific periods. Pollarded trees allowed the collection of leaves as fodder, offered shadow and kept the pastures fresh and green in the torturous summer days.
Such an impressive wood pasture with ancient trees is found in La Revenga settlement, belonging to the Segovia municipality at the northern face of the mountain range. In past years, most families used to own a couple of cows of the regional landrace Avileña-Negra Iberica here, which is well-adapted to the harsh local conditions, as well as one horse or donkey, which were held for agricultural purposes and for transporting firewood from the nearby Scott-pine forest.
Thus, instead of owning private pastures, local community members actively used and maintained this communal system, for example by pollarding the trees for the renewal of tree branches or distributing droppings through the pastures. Nowadays, some older adults comment about the entirely different semblance of some of these places:
Resident of Lozoya municipality (female), 94: ‘You would walk into a wood pasture and it was a pleasure. Spring came, you went to the field and you saw the stalks so fresh, so good, all the soil so clean. Now, if you go down a road you can’t get through because the brambles get in the way. I can’t explain why it’s like that nowadays.’
Water, a source of life
Most of the Dehesas boyales, as well as private pastures and traditional vegetable orchards close to the villages depended on the Caceras — semi-natural surface water channels coming from the mountain and adjacent rivers, which together form a human-modified ancient irrigation system providing water to local agro-ecosystems.
The water users had specific ancient customary rights, still existing in most municipalities, which allowed them to use water regularly. These local water governments are rooted in medieval Muslim and Christian times. Today, it is still possible to find historical documents such as the minutes and ordinances of the water boards, e.g. the ‘Ordenanza de la Cacera de Navalcaz 1515' — Provincial Historical Archives, Segovia.
In many municipalities, the users themselves are in charge of the Caceras’ maintenance until today. On specific days they get together to perform communal cleaning work, followed by celebrations. However, due to nowadays’ demographic and lifestyle changes, fewer and fewer people are able to take care of this work and many other in the countryside. Old people, still in charge of the irrigation system maintenance, warn about difficulties finding new hands to help:
Vicente Ruiz López, Resident of Navafría , 72, ex-forest worker and one of the last maintainers of the ancient water irrigation system: ‘The day will come when those of us who do it will be absent, then ‘Las Caceras’ will be lost. (…) People are more independent now. I’m not saying they are selfish, but they are more independent, they come and go. Everyone is on their own. People don’t want anyone to know where they’re coming from or where they’re going. And that’s how it is now, more individualistic. (…) At the moment, if things don’t change, it’s going to be very difficult to find people to work in the countryside. But very badly, because nobody wants to work in the countryside outdoors. (…) Before, the forestry engineer used to come, he knew everyone and talked to everyone. Now nobody knows him. (…) Rangers used to live here, now they don’t live in the small villages.’
The forest of Pyrenean Oak: Melojar or Matas
One of the main types of forests in the Sierra Guadarrama is the Pyrenean Oak forest called Rebollo or (locally) Mata. This forest is close to human settlements at 800 to 1500 m altitude. Earlier, the Pyrenean oak was widely used in the charcoal production and trade called Carbonero or Fabriquero, but this activity disappeared in the mid-20th century. Due to its profitability, it seems that the use of oak was historically reserved for the monarchy, while local people’s collection of dead firewood was confined to pines.
One of the characteristics of the Pyrenean oak is its ability to resprout in the lower parts after cutting, so current specimens are mostly coppiced. Due to the heavy exploitation for charcoal, centenary specimens are rare today; large, majestic specimens can only be found where Pyrenean-oak forest was used as forest pasture.
Two local people active in the nature conservation sector told me more about the changes in biodiversity over the decades:
Carlos de Miguel, 59, local nature guide, CENEAM: ‘The impact of charcoal making must have been strong in the forest of oaks near the villages. For example, in the areal photographs of the 70s the area closest to the populations was much more deforested. (…) In terms of forest-related biodiversity, there has been a clear increase during last decades. However, agriculture-related biodiversity — near the settlements — has decreased.’
Judit Maroto, 38, forest engineer of the protected area: ‘Here, as long as we have been human beings, we have made use of the Sierra de Guadarrama for multiple uses. So what we call rewilding is, in the end, an almost homogenization of the landscape. We loose that richness of the mosaic of meadows bordering fences with their surrounding hedges, their pollarded oaks, their open wetlands, which otherwise is just colonized by shrub or tree species’
The iconic forest of Scots pine and the Gabarrero
The Scots pine stands in the Sierra de Guadarrama represent one of the southernmost native forests of this species in Europe. Nowadays, a vast area of 90.000 hectares spreads over the two slopes of the sierra between 1500 and 1900m above sea level. For centuries, the Scots pine has been highly valued for its provision of firewood and wood for the production of e.g. ship masts, telegraph poles, beams.
As early as 1727, the Spanish monarch Felipe V. installed the Glass Factory of the Royal Site of San Ildefonso in the shade of the Scots pine forest of Valsain, for it to provide wood to heat the furnaces. Since ancient times, these pine forests have been a precious good and preserved and managed by strict regulations: In the woods of Valsain, hunting was already banned in 1579. In 1761 the forest was finally bought by the monarchy and rested in their ownership until 1982, when it was transferred to the Spanish Institute for Nature Conservation. However, wood logging is continuously been performed in these forests under systematic regulation until today.
For years, the Sierra de Guadarrama inhabitants have collected firewood, mainly from the pine forest, for domestic use and export to the small industries and workshops around the Sierra, but also to the big city. Some of the older inhabitants told me about their memories of the practice of collecting firewood, the so-called Gabarrero — a tough job that has been practiced without technical support until well into the 20th century. In the municipality of La Granja-Valsaín, during the hard times of the post-war period, up to 200 horses or donkeys would go out into the forest every day to collect firewood.
Similarly, in villages such as San Rafael, up to 80 % of the families were directly involved in activities of forest exploitation —so told me Poli, one of the villagers and firewood collectors who still brings firewood carried on the back of his horses in the traditional way:
Hipólito Herranz, called ‘Poli’, 74, San Rafael: ‘The same people used to go to mow meadows to lower areas with scythe mower in June. (…) Besides, foresters had a group of workers doing works like clearing and burning, planting small pines, or doing firewalls. (…) But this is over with the new policies [since the 1980s]. Nobody has been really doing anything of these activities for 40 years. (…) The forest was much more clean before. (…) Now there is much more danger of fires and pests (…).’
Poli also described the changing human relationships in the community:
‘Everyone’s relationships there were like family. With all the neighbors we had, everyone got on well. It was more of a family thing; it’s not like now, it’s not the same (…). People were perfectly happy. I don’t think people were as selfish as they are today.’
Interconnected activities within a social-ecological system
In the past decades, people’s use of the Sierra de Guadarrama landscape comprised manifold activities that connected ecosystems, landscapes and people. For instance, herds of sheep — mostly Merina and Castellana races — were grazing in the upper parts of the mountain range at up to 2000m altitude during the summer period, when the pastures were rich and fresh. Before getting there, most of them had to finish a long transhumance of up to 300km on foot from Extremadura or Castilla-La Mancha, where they spent the winters. Some shepherds used to burn the vegetation patches of Pyrenean broom on the mountain plateau to facilitate the regrowth of fresh pastures.
Cows grazing in pastures near the village during winter and early spring were also brought to the upper parts, and sometimes local people collected animal droppings here to enrich their vegetable orchards with nutrients. Around the villages, cereal fields of rye, mostly vanished today, were used to feed domestic animals in harsh winters. Firewood needed to heat the houses and for humble local industries was brought from the nearby forest, carried by donkeys and horses.
Felipe Garcia, 77, local herdsman: ‘In the summer, as a student, I would come here with my parents, because I helped them with the work on the threshing floor. And then later, when the threshing floor work was finished, the work I had to do was to take two donkeys or two mules and go up to the top of the Sierras, to the plateaus. These upper parts I know very well. I used to go up to collect the sheep’s dung. Because all those mountains were full of sheep in the summer in the past.’
José Martin Trilla, 58, local writer and brother of a firewood collector: ‘El Bodón de Benito’ , here in Valsaín, was where the local butcher cleaned all the guts, next to the river. The trouts loved it. Of course, they ate leftover blood. If instead of having one butcher’s shop there were twenty, it probably wouldn’t be possible because it would pollute the river. But, in this case, it didn’t pollute, it fed the trout.’
José tells us more about the past lifestyles, human-nature connection and happiness of local people:
‘When we were young, we used to catch little birds and sell them to local restaurants in Valsaín, you got money for them. It was an instinct for adventure, for play. And it was a way of life. It used to be a luxury food. I’m talking about the early 70s. Then everything started to change, the standard of living improved, etc. For example, in the case of birds, they started to disappear, probably because of the use of pesticides, all those things killed the insects and the birds too. (…) The fact that [local people] worked a lot in the past did not mean they were not happy. They had happiness. I don’t think you get it simply by having a lot of money. They were people who were very integrated in their environment.’
These findings reveal that what we see in Sierra de Guadarrama today is still a cultural landscape — or social-ecological system — , resulting from centuries of human-nature interactions.
However, the drivers that led to the current inherited landscapes have substantially changed during recent decades, together with the associated human dimensions.
The elderly people I talked to have worked with natural resources for decades. Thus, they have the long-term perspective: They have developed local knowledge and encountered changes in the landscape over time. How can their memories and experiences help us conserve landscapes and the values they provide? Insights on this will be shared in a follow-up post.
Further information
This work is part of the research project ENVISION, investigating socially inclusive conservation in protected areas: https://inclusive-conservation.org
The Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range is located in central Spain as part of the Central System. Sierra de Guadarrama expands along 80 km and holds a multitude of peaks above 2000m high. The region entails multiple overlapping protected areas, including the recently created National Park.
More information about the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park and decision-making tools developed in the context of ENVISION:
