Agricultural Landscapes of Spain: Types and Features

Agricultural Landscapes of Spain: Defining Characteristics

We define agricultural landscapes as featuring rural areas. They result from the natural combination of factors, giving an overview of the farming practiced there.

Wet Spain Agricultural Landscape

Includes the north and northwest of Spain. It has a rugged terrain, with low, flat surfaces and a wet oceanic climate. Traditionally, it has had a very large population. The population is predominantly scattered. The peasants are owners of small landholdings. Land uses are principally for farming. Agriculture occupies a slightly extended area, currently specializing in garden crops and fodder for livestock. Cattle ranching is the most important economic activity, favored by weather conditions. Small and medium family farms predominate. Most have been upgraded in size and equipment. Logging is another important activity. It is used for the furniture industry or obtaining pulp for paper.

Peninsular Interior Landscape

Includes both uplands and the depression of the Ebro. It has a rugged terrain, high altitude, and a continental Mediterranean climate with rainfall shortage and frost risk. The population has migrated, causing land abandonment in many areas. The population is concentrated in towns in the valleys of the Ebro and Duero. The property system is varied: small farms dominate in the Ebro valley. There are large, specific properties in Salamanca, Cáceres, and Castilla-La Mancha. Land uses are varied.

• Agriculture: Rainfed agriculture dominates the countryside. It is devoted to field crops featuring the so-called Mediterranean trilogy: cereals, vines, and olive trees. Irrigation allows more intensive use. It has now increased thanks to the use of stored irrigation water, which has enabled it to diversify production: industrial plants, fodder, fruits, and vegetables.
• Livestock: Sheep and cattle farming predominates, improved by crosses with foreign breeds, as well as pigs.

The characteristic landscape is the pasture; it is an agro-livestock exploitation with great achievements, but it also has a forest and had a primarily livestock grazing orientation. Currently, beef has a higher relative weight; some areas of better soils are intended for mechanized agriculture. Forest exploitation is characteristic of some areas.

Mediterranean Agricultural Landscape

It includes the Mediterranean coast and littoral, the valley of the Guadalquivir, and the Balearic Islands. The area has varied terrain (flat near the coast and mountainous in some pre-littoral zones) and is characterized by a Mediterranean climate with very little rainfall in summer.

Agrarian Structure: A large population has a tendency to take up residence in concentrated cores. The land is generally very divided.

Land Uses:

1. Agriculture: Can be irrigated or rainfed.

• Irrigated crops are devoted to horticulture outdoors, under plastic, to Mediterranean fruit, and to tropical fruit. It is located in Malaga and Granada.
• Rainfed crops are given in the plains of the Guadalquivir valley and pre-littoral in most mountainous areas. Dominated by cereals, grapes, olive, and almond trees.

2. The dominant cattle and swine in Catalonia, the sheep and goats with characteristics of the dry and many wild animals on the banks of the Guadalquivir.

Mountain Agricultural Landscape

This landscape shows a relief of high altitude, steep slopes, and a climate with cold winters and abundant precipitation.

Agrarian Structure:

• A very low population density and depopulation trend and a traditionally dispersed settlement.
• Predominantly small properties with bounded plots.

The land uses are diverse, graduated according to the different climatic conditions: agriculture in the valley bottom, forest exploitation in forests, and livestock sheds, shrubs, and grasses on the peaks. Agriculture in the mountains north of the peninsula is practiced at the bottom of the valleys and includes orchard crops, while in the warmer mountains of Levante and the south, some crops are grown on terraced slopes. There is extensive livestock grazing of cattle and sheep, and it leverages the clearings in the forests on the slopes. Logging focuses on use as fuel wood and timber species.