Activismo medioambiental en la época tardofranquista. el caso de el Saler

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the evolution of environmental ideas and discourse during the final decades of the Franco regime, between 1950 and 1975. Throughout this period, a group of naturalists and natural scientists worked in collaboration with regime officials and an international network of conservationists to protect discrete spaces with special ecological value. By the late 1960s, as the regime weakened and social unrest increased, a new group of activists emerged who understood environmental protection as inextricably linked to issues of social justice. Through an analysis of an anti-development campaign carried out in the area surrounding the Albufera de Valencia, this article examines the tensions between these currents in the origins of the Spanish environmental movement, and the role of environmental activism in the erosion of the dictatorship’s political legitimacy.