Prof. Ismael Vaccaro (McGill University) presents his research about the history of Catalan Commons. The presentation is titled “The Legal Transformations of the Commons in the Catalan Pyrenees: from the Middle Ages until the twenty-first century”.

Abstract
The Pyrenean landscape is covered by a complex and patchy property mosaic where collective forms of property are still abundant. Many of these patches of land are often referred to as commons by locals, academics, and politicians alike. In truth, however, although most of these mountains were held in common until as late as the mid nineteenth century, several waves of aggressive territorializing policies implemented by the Spanish State, changed the legal status of the vast majority of these lands. Nowadays most of the old commons belong to the state via the municipalities or the regional governments, or are private land belonging to societies of owners. All along this process of ownership modification, in theory, the local communities kept some of their usufruct rights on these lands. Interestingly, where these usufruct rights have been upheld, the socioeconomic organization used by the villages has closely followed the old commons’ structure and rules. The contracts that created the societies of owners, also set up use rules that resonate with the previous communal model. In addition, in the last twenty years, some municipalities have issued regulations recuperating or mimicking some of the manners of the old commons. The goal of this article is to track down the history of the complex legal activity that has transformed the legal standing of the old commons, as well as the survival of some of its characteristics under these new legal skins.