Affiliate researcher José-Miguel Lana Berasain, Professor of Economic History and Institutions in Public University of Navarre, has published a paper where he dives into the transformations of common lands in Spain during the 19th century.

‘Between a rock and a hard place: the privatization or preservation of the commons in Spain in the 19th century’ was published in the Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie. The study reveals the complexity of the processes of change in property rights and the need to approach property rights as a bundle of rights and powers that could be vested in different players.

Abstract
This text reviews the transformations of the commons in Spain in the long 19th century based on the notion of “bundles of rights”. The contention is that the process of change was prompted by the clashes between alternative models, beginning with privatization or preservation and culminating in a complex landscape of property rights. In terms of privatization, several alternatives were advocated and eventually implemented, depending on the social groups that promoted them and their balance of power. In stylized form, two options that while not necessarily incompatible stand in opposition: on the one hand, privatization in the form of large property units with the land concentrated in the hands of an elite of creditors and investors, and on the other, small plots involving broader social participation and greater access. In turn, the preservation of communal lands did not rule out the privatization of their use, in some cases in favor of large industrial companies in the timber, resin, and cork sectors, and on other occasions in the service of social inclusion policies through the distribution of plots for their cultivation by the rural
proletariat.