Ecology in Transition: Fernando González Bernáldez, Scientific Modernisation and Environmental Advocacy in Late Francoist Spain, 1960–1980

Abstract

The final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the subsequent transition to a democracy saw the unfolding of parallel processes of economic and scientific modernisation in Spanish society. An unexpected interference between both processes occurred in the fields of ecology and the environmental sciences, when environmentally minded scientists defended threatened ecosystems, rural landscapes and traditional land-use systems. At the time, prevailing discourses and policies considered these ecosystems and landscapes backward remnants of an undeveloped Spain, ready to be transformed by irrigation plans, afforestation schemes and urban development. From the early 1970s onwards, ecologist Fernando González Bernáldez consciously chose to take on a dual role, combining and mutually reinforcing two distinct yet associated personae: a highly respected scientist and an outspoken defender of the environment. This paper examines González Bernáldez’s various strategies to strike the right balance between both identities, and how his aims were challenged by the changing political context at the time.