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Technonatural revolutions: The scalar politics of Franco's hydro-

social dream for Spain, 1939-1975

Article  in  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers · January 2007

DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00233.x

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Technonatural revolutions: the scalar
Blackwell Publishing Ltd

politics of Franco’s hydro-social dream for

Spain, 1939–1975
Erik Swyngedouw
In this paper, I seek to document and substantiate the notion of the production of
socio-natures by elaborating how Spain’s modernization process after the Civil War
became a deeply and very specific scalar geographical project, articulated through
the production of a specific technonatural hydraulic edifice. I shall focus on the
momentous transformation of the hydraulic environment during the Franco
period (1939–1975) and seek to reformulate Spain’s socio-hydraulic reconstruction
in the context of a double and partly contradictory ‘scalar’ politics. Two theoretically
interrelated arguments guide this endeavour. On the one hand, Franco’s
ideological-political mission was predicated upon national territorial integration,
the eradication of regionalist or autonomist aspirations, and a concerted discursive
and physical process of cultural and material national(ist) homogenization and
modernization. On the other, the production of the technonatural material
infrastructures of this modernizing programme was predicated upon re-scaling
the ‘networks of interest’ on which Franco’s power rested from a national visionary
to an internationalist geo-economic and geo-political imagination, articulated through
Spain’s integration in the US-led Western Alliance.

key words technonatures society and nature Fascism Spain hydraulic politics
historical geographical materialism

Department of Geography, School of Environment and Development, Manchester University, Manchester M13 9PL
email: erik.swyngedouw@man.ac.uk

revised manuscript received 13 September 2006

On my shoulders rests . . . the responsibility to make a
new Spain. (F. Franco, 29 April 1961)
Contested hydro-social modernization
In 2000, more than 400 000 people gathered in
Zaragoza and 250 000 in Madrid and Barcelona
protesting against the second National Hydraulic
Plan that had been approved by the conservative
government of José María Aznar’s Partido Popular.
In subsequent years, protests spread to many other
towns and cities around the country. The movement
brought together an often-uneasy alliance of
environmentalists, regionalists, socialists and
local activists. In their heterogeneous claims and
demands, they mobilized a diverse set of human
and non-human issues: the rights of fish and
fishermen, the fate of river sediments and sea
shorelines, the life of birds and plants, the
preservation of wetlands and biodiversity, the
protection of local livelihoods and regional
cultures, ecological concerns, water’s mythical
values, and nature’s or people’s rights to water
(Arrojo Agudo 2001 2004; Pons Múria 2003). The
activists’ primary target was the Pharaonic plan to
transfer large quantities of ‘surplus’ water from the
Ebro river basin to the ‘deficit’ basins of the semi-
arid Southeastern regions of the Levant on the one
hand, and to Barcelona on the other. At the other
end of the spectrum, irrigation-based farmers,
urban boosters, golf course enthusiasts and
political elites of regions that would receive the
‘new’ water raised their voices in dissent against
this protest, and manifestations in support of the

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 32 9–28 2007

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10
water transfer schemes were organized in cities
like Almeria and Valencia. When, on 14 March
2004, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero from the
socialist PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español)
unexpectedly won the elections (a few days after
the train bombings in Madrid), one of the first
measures the new government took was to scrap
the controversial water transfers.
This conflict over the future organization of
Spain’s hydraulic landscape reflects the enduring
legacy of the radical socio-environmental transfor-
mations engineered during the long dictatorial rule
of Franco that lasted from 1939 (the end of the
Civil War) until his death in 1975. Under General
Francisco Franco Bahamonde, more than 600 dams
were built in Spain (Vallarino 1992, 67) leading to
a complete retooling of the ten river basins of
mainland Spain. Throughout the Franco years,
water infrastructures and the transformation of
the technonatural edifice of Spain would be con-
tinuously mobilized by the propaganda machinery
to such an extent that a popular nickname for
General Franco was, and still is, Paco Rana
(Frankie, the Frog). The most popularly omnipres-
ent image of Franco is he being ‘on water’, while
inaugurating yet another hydro-technical project.
By the time Franco died virtually all river basins
were exploited to the full and Spain would have
the highest number of dams per capita in the world
(29 per million). Southern river basins were used
‘to the last drop of water’ by water-intensive irriga-
tion agriculture and tourist-based development. As
Gomez De Pablos puts it,
[I]t is during the decades after the 1940 Plan when the
Spanish rivers were actually ‘created’, and the principal
hydraulic regulation structures . . . were constructed or
initiated. (1973a, 242)
So, grappling with the production of Spain’s fascist
technonatures is vital in order to situate contemporary
socio-hydrological debates, strategies and projects
(see, for example, Bakker 2002).
While the early twentieth century has already
been documented (see Swyngedouw 1999 2003a),
the study of the fascist period needs urgent atten-
tion.1 In this paper, I seek to document how Spain’s
hydrosocial modernization process after the Civil
War became a deeply and very specific scalar geo-
graphical project. I shall consider the transforming
hydraulic environment during the Franco period
(1939–1975) in the context of a double and partly
contradictory ‘scalar’ politics. On the one hand,
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 32 9–28 2007
ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2007 The Author.
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Erik Swyngedouw
Franco’s ideological-political mission was predi-
cated upon the creation of a nationally integrated
Spain, the eradication of regionalist or autonomist
aspirations (Carr 1995) and a concerted discursive
and physical process of cultural and material
national(ist) homogenization. On the other, Franco’s
modernizing programme required a re-scaling of
the ‘networks of interest’ on which his power
rested from an exclusively national(ist) visionary to
an international geo-economic and geo-political
imagination. This was articulated through Spain’s
integration in the US-led Western Alliance that
emerged during the Cold War politics of the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. I shall first
briefly situate the theoretical concerns that guide
the subsequent analysis.
Scalar revolutions: remaking
technonatural networks, producing
new geographies
I view Spain’s hydro-social development between
1939 and 1975 as a particular socio-physical
process of producing new technonatures, through
which symbolic formations are forged, social
groups enrolled, and natural processes and ‘things’
entangled and maintained (see Löwy 1994; Castree
2000 2002; Gandy 2002). Such ‘productions of
socio-nature’, largely through techno-natural
arrangements (Luke 1999; White and Wilbert
2006), are not socially or politically neutral, but
express and re-constitute physical, social, cultural,
economic or political power relations (Harvey 1996;
Castree and Braun 2001; Desfor and Keil 2004;
Swyngedouw 2004a; Heynen et al. 2006). Parts
of nature become enrolled in and reconstituted
through the ‘networks of power’ that animate this
process (Castree 2002 2003; Kirsch and Mitchell
2004). Ultimately, the ‘success’ or otherwise of such
trajectories depends on socio-political struggles
and the emergence of a ‘hegemonic’ dynamic that
permits the socio-environmental transformation
process to become concrete-in-the-world (Kaika
2005). In other words, the litmus test resides in the
mobilization of a sufficiently large and allied group
of social elites, together with particular discursive
and material enrolments of nature, around a
distinct socio-environmental project (Mitchell 1996;
Speich 2002).
This ‘production of nature’ is an integral part of
a process of ‘producing scale’ (Smith 1984; Swyn-
gedouw 2003b; Sneddon 2003; Brown and Purcell
Technonatural revolutions
2005). I argue that Spain’s hydrosocial technonatu-
ral transformation is predicated upon specific and
contradictory scalar re-arrangements. Notwith-
standing the theoretical controversies over scale
that I cannot rehearse within the context of this
paper (see, for example, Marston 2000; Uitermark
2002; McMaster and Sheppard 2003; Purcell 2003;
Heynen and Swyngedouw 2004), I start from the
view that scale is not ontologically given, but socio-
environmentally mobilized through socio-spatial
power struggles. In other words, socio-spatial
relations have a ‘scalar’ constitution as relational
networks are forged that produce spatial geometries
that are more or less long, more or less extensive. Yet,
at the same time, these relational scalar networks
articulate with produced territorial or geographical
configurations that also exhibit scalar dimensions
(Zimmerer 2000a 2000b; Natter and Zierhofer 2002;
Sneddon 2003; Swyngedouw 2004b). In the Spanish
post-war context, the remaking of Spain’s hydrosocial
landscape was part of an effort to create a socio-
culturally, politically and physically integrated
national territorial scale and to obliterate earlier
regionalist desires. Yet, this nationalistic socio-
physical remaking of Spain was predicated upon
forging networked national and, in particular,
transnational socio-political and economic scalar
arrangements.
I shall briefly document the failure of Spain’s
early twentieth-century hydraulic mission that saw
national redemption in embracing a ‘Hydraulic
Politics’. I shall then outline the fascist hydraulic
project that mobilized nature and water in a partic-
ular manner. The elite networks on which the
nationalist hydraulic vision rested, the enrolment of
nature and technology, and their place within the
networks of power will be charted, together with
the mobilization of cultural-symbolic power and
propaganda. In the final part of the paper, I shall
explore the changing geo-political and geo-economic
matrices and scalar networks that were instrumen-
tal in bringing the hydraulic project to fruition.
Paco Rana’s wet dream for Spain:
re-scaling water flows
The contradictions of failed modernization during
the early twentieth century
‘Hydraulic politics’, a term coined by Joaquin
Costa, emerged in the late nineteenth century at
a time that Spain was going through a profound
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
11
political, economic and socio-cultural crisis (see
Costa Martínez 1975 (1892); Swyngedouw 1999).
The end of Spanish colonialism with the ‘disaster
of 1898’ ‘closed definitively our ultramarine horizons
and made us return our gaze to the old lands and
to analyse their condition’ (Gonzalez Paz 1970,
983 – 4). The hydraulic ‘mission’ was originally
conceived as a strategy and integrated action plan
to ‘remedy’ the national economic and social malaise
and disintegration, to redeem and ‘re-generate’
Spain’s troubled geography. It aimed at resolving
the agricultural crisis and the proliferating social
tensions arising from an increasingly discontented,
revolting and impoverished peasantry and at
addressing the failure to ‘modernize’ agricultural
production from the part of the landed elites
(Swyngedouw 1999). Hydraulic interventions and
the mobilization of the country’s erratic waters were
conceived as a means to rationalize production, to
serve as a wedge to permit structural land reform,
and to facilitate access to land and water for the
landless peasants.
However, the early twentieth-century proposals
to implement Costa’s ‘Hydraulic politics’ failed to
make the envisaged impact. The limited achievements
of this embryonic ‘democratic’ hydro-modernization
and the resulting deepening of inequalities raised
social mobilization, and accentuated social conflict
and polarization.2 The outcome of the Civil War
(1936–1939) would turn the tide in favour of the
traditional elites. The hydraulic politics of the
Franco era would abandon the radical social reforms
that were originally part of the regeneracionist
platform and concentrate instead on the ‘engineer-
ing’ of reservoir and irrigation water.
The regeneracionist discourse of the early twen-
tieth century had opted resolutely for a state-led
development of hydraulic works. The availability
of water became articulated and experienced as a
problem of state ‘voluntarism’, rather than result-
ing from ‘natural’ scarcity. If problems of scarcity
existed, this was simply because of the incapacity
of the state to perform its functions adequately.
State management of water generated a sense of
unlimited potential availability. A ‘natural’ limit,
therefore, became interpreted and ‘scientifically’
defined as a ‘deficit’ between the regionally desired
volumes and the nationally available quantities.
Indeed, from the early twentieth century, the ‘natu-
ral’ distribution of rainfall and water availability
was increasingly decried as a ‘disequilibrium’
that required ‘rectification’ (Sánchez de Toca 1911,
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12
299 –300). And the means to achieve this was ‘to
criss-cross the country with an arterial hydraulic
system, a national network of dams and reservoirs,
and, by doing so, to create Nature’ (Costa Martínez
1975 (1892), 259; Gómez Mendoza 1992, 241). An
internal war against drought had to be fought so
that ‘idle’ rivers would provide ‘drink to the dry
lands of Spain’ by means of a ‘surgical remedy’ to
rebalance the socio-ecological matrix of the nation
(Rodríguez Ferrero 2001, 126). It is this constructed
mythology that would be effectively captured by
Franco’s regime and elevated to ‘official’ hydro-
social doctrine.
Enrolling water: rectifying nature’s injustice
In the first National Hydraulic Plan of 1932, Spain’s
hydraulic geography had already been defined as
suffering from a ‘hydrological disequilibrium’
between river basins with a water ‘deficit’ and
those with ‘excess’ water (Pardo 1999 (1933); Arrojo
Agudo 2000, 44). The regions with water shortage
suffered an ‘injustice of nature’, which demanded
that the state dealt with this ‘discrimination’ by
‘rectifying this natural disorder’, resulting from the
view that ‘Spain would never be rich as long as its
rivers flowed into the sea’ (Maluquer de Motes
1983, 96). The nationalist hydro-social project
became formulated as a ‘hydrological correction of
the national geographical problem’ (Gómez Mendoza
1992, 236) that would make ‘a hydraulic artery
system cross the whole country – a national network
of dams and irrigation channels’ (Gómez Mendoza
and Ortega Cantero 1992, 174). By the late 1930s,
this socio-physical construction of water as the
source of Spain’s precarious condition because
of its erratic temporalities and uneven spatial
distribution, which can be ‘rectified’ through
appropriate technonatural structures, was captured
effectively by Franco:
We are prepared to make sure that not a single drop
of water is lost and that not a single injustice remains.
(F. Franco 1959, 1)
The propaganda machinery effectively played on
this twin position of water, i.e. as simultaneously
the source of Spain’s problems as well as the
‘thing’ from which salvation could be wrought. For
example, R. Cavestany de Anduaga, minister of
agriculture, stated: ‘not a drop of water that we try
to get will later be lost to the sea’ (1958, 192).
Franco and his supporters continuously invoked
the image of persistent drought (‘pertinaz sequia’)
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Erik Swyngedouw
to explain away socio-economic difficulties. At the
same time, creating a new socio-nature that would
remedy this ‘persistent drought’ was staged as one
of the vital projects for realizing the fascist utopia
(see, for example, Sabio Alcutén 1994). Water issues
were constructed as the main collective challenge
facing Spain, thereby deflecting attention from issues
like social justice or land distribution. The extract
below is just one among dozens in which Franco
mobilizes water as an integral part of his politics:
Spain hurt us because of its drought, its misery, the
needs of our villages and hamlets; and all this pain of
Spain is redeemed with these grand national hydraulic
works, with this Reservoir of the Ebro and all others
that will be created in our river basins, embellishing the
landscape and producing this golden liquid that is the
basis of our independence. (F Franco, 6 August 1952 in
del Rio Cisneros 1964, 122–3)
The debate over water and its engineering became
squarely structured around the desire to construct
a nationally more equitable and just distribution of
water resources by means of a grand geographical
reorganization of its flows. Inter river basin water
transfers would become the backbone of this imagined
national grid. The skeleton of this system, the
Tajo-Segura transfer, was built during the Franco
regime. As Martínez Gil contends, the doctrinal
nucleus of the hydraulic imaginary, forged during
the long second half of the twentieth century, was:
[t]he thesis of the natural hydraulic disequilibrium in
the country, with a dry Spain and an other humid
Spain, which resulted in an age-old situation of deficit
river basins that lack the water social demand requires,
in the face of surplus river basins where the circulating
volumes of water are greater than present and future
demand. . . . Our treacherous torrential waters are the
definitive image of a country in which the Creator has
made a mistake. (1999, 110)
Rectifying this ‘error’, and restoring a national
hydraulic balance, demanded the up-scaling of the
management and planning of water resources from
the scale of the river basin to the national scale,
national integration, a centralized hydraulic admini-
stration and a strong national state that had centralized
and absolute power over the waters of the country,
a mission Franco promised to deliver.
The making of a new Spanish hydraulic world
Spain pioneered the establishment of river basin
authorities. As early as 1865, attempts were made
to establish river basin based organizations (see
Technonatural revolutions
Cano García 1992; Swyngedouw 1999). During the
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930), the
powerful Confederaciones Sindicales Hidrográficas
(River Basin Authorities) were gradually established
(The Ebro Confederation was the first to be
established on 5 March 1926; see Pardo 1930). Five
more river basin authorities were set up between
1926 and 1929, one during the Republic (1934), and
the remaining four between 1948 and 1961. The
initial structure of the Confederations was based
on four principles: the unity of the river basin as
the proper territorial scale for the management
of water resources, the water basin as integrated
planning unit, the participation of the water users
in the management of the river basin, and the
decentralization of State functions to the scale of
the river basin (Pardo 1930). However, after the
fascist victory, this perspective was replaced by a
centralist national territorial vision.
Indeed, the political significance of the ‘regional’
scale became marginalized.3 The originally intended
locally organized, democratic, participatory and
collective structure of the existing Confederations
was abolished in 1942 and replaced by a national
technocratic-bureaucratic organization in charge of
implementing technically nationally ordered public
hydraulic works (Alcarez Calvo 1994). The Con-
federations became a ‘mere technical appendage’ of
the central Dirección General de Obras Hidráulicas
(DGOH) (Pérez Picazo 1999), financed and control-
led by the national state. The final blow came in
1959 when National Water Commissioners were
instituted and put in charge of the very powerful
administration of water concessions, policing and
allocating irrigation water (Palancar Penella 1960).
‘Hydraulic Politics’ became ‘a sublimated expres-
sion of the political economy of the nation’ (Frutos
Mejias 1995, 185) that turned the hydraulic future
of Spain into a ‘national, patriotic, and trans-
political mission’ (del Moral Ituarte 1996, 181). The
DGOH became a well-funded and extraordinarily
powerful state department, highly corporatist in
ideology and closely associated with key national
economic sectors such as engineering offices, con-
struction companies, cement factories, electricity
companies, etc. (Martínez Gil 1999, 107). The ‘con-
crete and steel fever’ and the obsession to leave not
a single river ‘in freedom’ shaped the actions and
strategies of the DGOH, driven by the totalizing
vision of the need to engineer the whole of the
nation’s river basins as a single, integrated, unified,
national-territorial system. The river basin authorities
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
13
lost their judicial autonomy, their representational
organization and their integrated planning func-
tion. The ‘jumping of scale’ of the institutional and
political powers of water management from the
river basin to the national scale reinforced a
national geographical perspective at the expense of
the regional scale and contributed to the repression
of any remaining regionalist aspirations. In the pro-
cess, all manner of power relations were rekindled
and re-networked (see below).
Y hombre creó los ríos! (And man created the
rivers! Molina 2005)
In 1937, before Franco had even consolidated his
power, he had already instructed engineer Alfonso
Peña Boeuf (who would become Minister of Public
Works after 1939) to prepare a General Plan for
Public Works, a large part of which would be
dedicated to hydraulic infrastructures. His pro-
posals were officially approved in 1941, and pro-
vided the backbone for hydraulic development
during the subsequent decades (Peña Boeuf 1955,
615). The proposal re-iterated the outline of the
national plan of 1933, but re-oriented its strategy
much more decisively to a nationally programmed
system aimed at guaranteeing Spain’s self-reliant
development. The disastrous financial and political-
economic conditions of autarchy during the early
Franco reign prevented, however, the massive
hydro-social revolution that had been envisaged.
Until the mid-fifties, there literally was not enough
steel, concrete, money and machines available to
make the waters flow uphill. The only thing that
was not in short supply during the early years was
a cheap (occasionally free – see below), docile,
defeated and impoverished working class. As
Figure 1 shows, dam and reservoir construction
took off during the second half of Franco’s rule,
and Franco would indeed realize his wet dream for
Spain. Over the 35 years of his rule, the number of
dams grew from about 180 in 1939 to over 800, and
reservoir capacity expanded exponentially.
There are indeed two phases in the making of
the fascist hydro-social landscape. The first period,
between 1939 and 1955, was characterized by a
sustained rhetoric of the urgent need for dams and
irrigation, but with few major achievements. While
106 new dams were built between 1941 and 1955,
the capacity of reservoir water only rose from
about 4000 hm3 (cubic hectometres) to 8000 hm3.
The acceleration of the scalar remaking of Spain’s
hydro-social network would have to wait until a
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 32 9–28 2007
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14 Erik Swyngedouw

Figure 1 Evolution of dams constructed and volume of reservoir water in Spain, 1910 – 2000
Sources: Diaz-Marta Pinilla (1997 (1969)); Dirección General de Obras Hidraulicas (1990); Toran and
Herreras (1977, 259–66); Martín Mendiluce (1996, 7–24); Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (2000b)

repositioning of the geo-political relations and their
associated political economic networking. Indeed,
flows of capital, expertise and steel would take a
radical turn after the secret Spanish–US agreements
of 1953 (see below). This moment would prove to
be a ‘watershed’ in terms of permitting the realization
of Paco Rana’s hydro-vision for Spain. Between
1955 and 1970, 276 dams were built with reservoir
capacity skyrocketing to 37 000 hm3 by 1970 and to
42 000 by 1980. Mega-dams built during this period
massively increased the regulatory, hydro-electrical
and irrigation capacity of Spain. In his speech to
commemorate the twentieth anniversary of ‘Our
Movement’ and ‘The Victory’, Franco himself insisted
how his ‘great hydraulic and irrigation works are
changing the geography of Spain’ (Franco 1959, 1).
The backbone for a nationally integrated system for
inter-river basin transfers that would permit con-
sidering the hydrosocial cycle as an integral and
unitary national cycle (Hernández 1994, 15) was
also under construction at the time of Franco’s
death (the Tajo-Segura water transfer):
If the ideas of Joaquin Costa were based on the unity of
the river basin as the framework for the implementation

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Technonatural revolutions
of hydraulic projects, Hydrologic Planning [after 1933]
extended this framework to the national scale, by advanc-
ing as one of its objectives the correction of the existing
disequilibria on the Iberian Peninsula by means of inter-
connecting the river basins. (Melgarejo Moreno 2000, 273)
The political decision to go ahead with the transfer
was taken by the council of ministers in 1955, but
the actual works did not start before 1968 (López
Bermúdez 1974). In its first phase, 600 hm3 would
be transferred annually to the reservoirs of the
Segura river basin with an eye towards irrigation
and urban supply in the provinces of Murcia and
Alicante. In a second phase, the transferred volume
would increase to 1000 hm3/year. When, in 1963,
Franco inaugurated the Centre for Hydrographical
Studies (Centro de Estudios Hidrograficos) (ROP
1963, 553; Urbistondo 1963), one of its first missions
was to undertake preliminary studies for the Tajo-
Segura and other possible water transfers. This vision
announced the end of the old concept of the hermetic
boundaries of river basins. Water was from now
onwards considered to be a national good that has to
be taken to where it is most productive and most
scarce. (Saenz Garcia 1967, 190)
On 30 July 1966, the government ordered the
preparation of a transfer project proposal (Martín
Mendiluce and Pliego 1967). On 5 February 1968,
the project was formally approved, and the Council
of Ministers approved the beginnings of the works
on 13 September of the same year (Gonzalez Paz
1970, 987). Water is pumped over a height of 300
metres and flows over a distance of 286 kilometres,
with 69 kilometres tunnelled (of which 32 through
the Sierra de Hellín, which separates the Júcar
and Segura basins, at a depth of 300 metres), 11
kilometres in aqueduct and the remainder in an
open-air canal (Gomez De Pablos 1972, 471). In
1971, the then Minister of Public Works, Gonzalo
Fernández de la Mora, invoked again the metaphor
of ‘hydraulic surgery’ to refer to these ‘most
important works in the hydraulic history of Spain’
(Fernández de la Mora 1971, 338, 339).
The Chairman of the Spanish and International
Commission on Large Dams saluted Franco, in
1971, in a speech presented to him, as
the great builder of great dams and an example, unique in
the world, of a statesman who creates the hydraulic founda-
tions for the progress of his people. (Torán 1971, 314)
Paco Rana had indeed directed and overseen the
complete socio-hydraulic revolution of his fatherland.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
15
Of course, this achievement depended crucially on
the loyal support of a series of powerful interlocked
national and international ‘networks of interests’
and coalitions (Melgarejo Moreno 1995, 7). They often
overlapped partially, were occasionally antagonistic
and required careful massaging and ‘managing’
within an overall ‘Falangist’ programme and ideology.
I shall now turn to these national networks of
interests that supported and consolidated the
Franco regime, and together with the mobilization
of water, produced the assemblages that would
render the socio-hydraulic edifice possible and, in a
Latourian sense (Latour 1996), permit it to stand
and endure.
Producing ‘networks of interest’
The socio-economic and religious alliances that
Franco forged generated a maze of power relations
that supported the regime and secured its lon-
gevity. After his victory, Franco eliminated through
execution, imprisonment or exile the most activist
parts of the oppositional movements, while secur-
ing the loyalty of many royalists, nationalists, the
church hierarchy, the military and significant
parts of the national industrial bourgeoisie. The
Falange became the only legal political party and
the conduit for Franco’s political support.4 The
strong state–economy linkages would cement a
corporatist state structure that could count on an
endogenous capitalist sector, whose success and
profit was closely tied up with the state’s investment
flows. The importance of some of these regime-
supporting networks has been well documented.5
However, in the context of this paper, I shall
concentrate on those networks that have been
neglected in the literature, yet were vital for
revolutionizing Spain’s hydro-social geography.
These were networks of key ideologues and
practitioners that provided the technical, scientific
and discursive support that would build and
maintain, both materially and symbolically, the
expanding national and integrated networks of
dams, pipes, hydro-machinery and irrigation
systems in a unified and fascist Spain. These
groups are the large landowners, the electricians,
the engineers and the media.
Water for the latifundistas
While the rise of popular movements early in the
twentieth century raised the problem of peasant
labourers and their right to land and water, the
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16
outcome of the Civil War solidified the interests of
the large landowners (latifundistas), particularly,
but not exclusively, in southern Spain (Bernal 1990;
Ortí 1994, 243). While there was a technocratic-
engineering continuity, the socially reformist
republican agenda was radically altered. In parti-
cular, the defeat of the Left in the Civil War had
broken the relationship between social reform and
hydraulic infrastructure development (del Moral
Ituarte 1991, 508; 1994), thereby restoring the
hegemony of the landowners (del Moral Ituarte
1999, 186–7). Major land redistribution programmes
stopped. The Instituto de Colonización (INC), set
up originally to provide land to landless peasants,
became a great propagandistic tool, but realized
relatively little. Ultimately, the INC acquired only
149 358 hectares of irrigated land and settled 24 047
colonists on these lands between 1939 and 1975.
Another 323 385 hectares of non-irrigated land
were acquired, which were offered to a total of
23 773 peasants (Ortega 1975, 240).
Yet, an estimated total of 1635 million hectares of
newly or improved irrigated lands were serviced
by the state during the Franco era (Ortega 1975, 223).
Indeed, the earlier socially motivated hydraulic
regeneracionism was transformed into an ultra-
protectionism of the latifundistas (Acosta Bono et al.
2004, 112; Ortí 1984). As Sánchez-Albornoz maintains,
the land owners received the double gain of both an
increase in production from irrigated lands as well as the
revalorization of their land, without much counterpart
other than to support the regime, something they
unfailingly offered. (2004, xxv)
Indeed, the state covered the cost of infrastructure,
while the landowners reaped the benefits, with an
estimated 1200–2000 per cent improvement of their
economic return (Bernal 2004, xxxvi). It is hardly
surprising that large landowners became one of the
social pillars on which Franco’s political and socio-
cultural edifice would rest. While internal colonia-
lism (Ortega 1975) and the ‘social land problem’ would
still be rhetorically mobilized, Franco’s hydro-politics
has to be characterized as an agricultural ‘counter-
reform’ that guaranteed the long-term stability of
the latifundia system (Martinez Alier 1968). However,
while large landowners would be able to expand
their irrigated land, rhetorical attention paid to the
social ‘mission’ of the state’s hydraulic project6
served primarily as part of the propaganda
machinery mobilized to legitimize grand hydraulic
infrastructures (Díaz-Marta Pinilla 1997, 73).
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Irrigating the south, hydro-electrifying the north
However, a closer analysis suggests that the
emphasis on irrigation was actually only one aspect
of a much larger and arguably more important
project, the hydro-electrification of Spain (Gomez
De Pablos 1973b, 338; Simpson 1995, 261). Indeed,
between 1940 and 1963, 322 dams were constructed,
of which only 132 had irrigation as their principal
goal (Melgarejo Moreno 2000, 302; Barciela López
and López Ortiz 2003, 65). Until the late 1950s,
more than 75 per cent of the energy needs of Spain
were generated through hydro-electrical power.
Between 1939 and 1957, installed hydro-electric
capacity increased from 1400 MW to 5200 MW,
generating a total production of 2844 million kWh
in 1939, expanding to 18 790 million kWh in 1957.
The bulk of the expansion took place after the
mid-1950s, representing a total value of approxi-
mately US$458 million (in 1957 parity terms)
(Garrido Moyron 1957). After 1964, the relationship
between irrigation and hydraulic works was further
severed in favour of hydro-electrical developments.
Only 96 (38.2%) of the dams constructed between
1964 and 1977 were destined for irrigation purposes,
while 57.6 per cent of the created capacity was
earmarked for energy generation. In addition, 29
hyper-dams were constructed, many of which were
also vital for the regulation of electricity production
(Vera Rebollo 1995, 313). By the end of Franco’s
rule, total energy capacity was over 25 000 MW and
production had reached 82 000 GWh (Antolín Fargas
1997, 202). Although the contribution of hydro-
electricity had fallen from 78 per cent in 1949 to a
still significant 46.9 per cent in 1975, hydro-energy
was absolutely vital for Spain’s modernization
(see Figure 2). Moreover, the industrialization of
the north, in particular in the Basque country and
Catalonia, required substantial energy inputs. This
development, in turn, fostered migration from the
rest of Spain to the north and diluted further the
remaining anti-fascist regionalist cultures in these
two regions.
The electricity production sector was closely
allied with the ‘network of interests’ that produced
the fascist polity (Núñez 2003). The immediate post
civil war period saw an intense process of vertical
and horizontal integration of electricity companies
and an interlacing of the state with the oligopolisti-
cally organized companies (Buesa 1986; Antolín
1999). The geographical integration of capital and
organizational structures was paralleled by a
national territorial physical integration of the
Technonatural revolutions 17

Figure 2 Evolution of installed electricity generation capacity and production in Spain, 1915 –1975
Sources: García Alonso and Iranzo Martín (1988, 344 – 5); Vallarino Cánovas del Castillo and
Cuesta Diego (1999, 200); Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (2000a, 311)

electricity network through the production of a
national high-voltage grid (Puente Diaz 1949). The
acute energy shortages during the autarchic period
of ‘development’ did not stop the electricity com-
panies (and their banking allies) to be among the
most profitable businesses in the country. The
state’s policies and interventions generated a
significant transfer of state capital from the public
to the private sector, either indirectly through
constructing hydraulic capacity that permitted
continuous production, or through subsidies, cheap
loans and cross-capitalizations (Antolín Fargas 1997).
Although the private companies did invest in the
construction of dams and electricity generation
under concession from the state, this contribution
covered only a small part of the total cost of regu-
lating the flow of water. For example, massive
regulatory dams were constructed by the state that
permitted the electricity companies to build their
own infrastructures downstream. Some of the larg-
est energy oligopolies were created in Spain during
this period, with the public works and industrial
policy administrations as their main protagonists
(Núñez 1995). A symbiotic relationship developed
between the state and the energy producers,
something openly presented as a mutually bene-
ficial undertaking (see Vicens Gomez-Tortosa 1961,
438 –9).
While much of the rhetoric concerning hydraulic
works centred on the irrigation needs of the south,
in practice, as Table I suggests, the largest number
of dams during the 1950s and 1960s were con-
structed in the north, which had the greatest
hydro-electrical potential. The ‘regeneracionist’
discourse of ‘agricultural modernization’ through
irrigation played a powerful ideological role to

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18
Table I Dams constructed, by river basin
River basin <1940 1941–1955
Norte 11 22
Duero 9 15
Tajo 37 21
Guadiana 27 3 15
Guadalquivir 15 11
Sur 8 0
Segura 8 1
Jucar 13 9 16
Ebro 59 24
Total 187 106
Source: Dirección General de Obras Hidraulicas (1990, 33–4)
legitimize large-scale hydraulic engineering, yet a
significant share of the actual works were directly
related to increasing energy production.
A Faustian pact: the Corps of Engineers’
‘hydraulic sensitivity’
The civil engineers would of course become key
protagonists of the preparation and implementation
of the regime’s hydro-political agenda (Gil Olcina
2003, 56). The quest for a newly manufactured
national hydraulic geography by means of the
‘rebirth of public works and the success of an
efficient hydraulic politics’ (Sánchez Rey 2003, 26)
propelled the engineering fraternity (they were all
men) to the forefront of Spain’s fascist moderniza-
tion. The pages of the Revista de Obras Publicas
(ROP), the mouthpiece of the Corps of Civil
Engineers, reflected the views and visions of the
Corps in relationship to the social, political and
engineering themes of the time (see Songel
González 2003, 83).
Right from the beginning of the twentieth century,
the civil engineers embraced the need for a hydrau-
lic renewal and actively defended a modernizing
politics that would replace the old traditional order,
its corrupt elites, and their conservative longing to
recover a transcended past (ROP 2003a). However,
they were hostile to the radical and revolutionary
movements that swept through Spain in the 1920s
and the 1930s. During these two decades of revolu-
tionary zeal and reactionary counter-currents, the
editors of the ROP would regularly voice political
opinion, while insisting on technocratic neutrality
and administrative service to the state. They cau-
tiously welcomed the dictatorship of Miguel Primo
de Rivera in 1923 (ROP 1923), but in an editorial
to mark the end of the dictatorship in 1929, they
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Erik Swyngedouw
1956–1970 1971–1980 1981–1986 Total
67 25 11 136
29 5 3 64
51 52 20 184
28 15 85
28 16 3 86
2 8 7 25
7 7 1 24
4 0 42
61 8 16 168
276 169 76 814
celebrated the accomplishments of the dictatorship
and the grand works undertaken by its minister of
development, de Conde de Guadalhorce (ROP 1930).
With the inauguration of the Republic in 1931, the
Revista published a formal and not excessively
enthusiastic endorsement of the newly established
democratic regime (ROP 1931). The Popular Front
government of 1936 ‘was welcomed with even less
enthusiasm’ (Sáenz Ridruejo 2003, 11).
The engineers, as much as any other segment
of society, were politically divided during the
Civil War. After the beginning of the Civil War, the
engineering school and its associated Revista was
taken over briefly by members of the left Union of
Architecture and Engineering. In an editorial of
15 August 1936 (ROP 1936), entitled ‘Establishing
positions’, they called for closing ranks in fighting
off the fascist enemy and for building a modern and
civilized Spain (ROP 1936, 1). Under their editorship
only six, reduced in size and badly distributed,
issues of the Revista appeared in 1936. However,
when ‘official’ publication resumed on 1 March 1940,
ranks had closed hermetically around the fascist
triumph. Indeed, by early 1940, the engineering
profession had rallied solidly around the new
regime. Never before had the Spanish engineers
endorsed and unequivocally supported a political
regime with such unmitigated enthusiasm. A
special issue, dedicated to the ‘Spanish Crusade –
1936–1939’, was published, with a portrait of
General Franco on its front page, subtitled
‘FRANCO! FRANCO! FRANCO!’ The articles paid
homage to colleagues that had fought and died
during the ‘brilliant campaign of liberation’ on the
side of the Generalisimo (ROP 1940a 2003b, 53),
celebrated the new regime, and pledged uncondi-
tional support to the nationalist cause. The issue also
Technonatural revolutions 19
Table II The nine dam construction companies and their workforce in Spain, 1961

Manual
Active Other Administrative workers
Name of company since Engineers technical staff staff (average) Total

Agroman Empresa 1927 101 300 394 10 207 11 002

Constructora S.A.
Termac Empresa 1943 12 51 78 2072 2213
Constructora, S.A.
Cimentaciones Especiales S.A. 1936 16 33 47 888 984
Agrupación para Estudios y 1953 60 267 716 6335 7378
Proyectos de Obras
Dragados y Construcciones 1941 80 169 379 10 944 11 572
Empresa Auxiliar de la 1945 52 187 117 7300 7656
Industria S.A. (AUXINI)
Obras y Construcciones 1942 15 45 60 3952 4072
Industriales S.A.
San Roman S.A. 1943 4 12 29 197 242
Helma S.A. Empresa 1952 18 100 92 2780 2990
Constructora
Total 358 1164 1912 44 675 48 109

Source: NN (1961)

reproduced a speech delivered by Civil Engineer
Tomás García-Diego de la Huerga on 17 October
1937 as emblem of the ideological principles to be
followed. He stated the need to:
recuperate the imperial vocation of Spain. . . . Against
the false dogmas of the rotten democracies, the mottos
of our Golden Age, now embodied by the Generalissimo.
Against freedom, service. Against equality, hierarchy.
. . . a brotherhood which presupposes the common
paternity of God. (ROP 1940a, 51)
The first official issue of the revamped engineering
journal of 1940 also opened with a portrait of
the Chief of State and confirmed the Corps of
Engineers’ support of the falangist cause in
‘restoring the eternal Spanish tradition’ (ROP
1940b, 1). Those amongst the engineering fraternity
who were not exiled, jailed or killed would put
their collective efforts in modernizing the country
within the collective national enterprise shaped by
the new regime. Public Works became one of the
pillars of the regime – in Franco’s words – ‘an
excellent means of protection and a stimulator of
its prosperity’ (ROP 1940b, 2). Indeed, ‘the Corps
of Engineers constituted consequently one of the
most solid supports of the policies of the new
regime’ (Songel González 2003, 84). During the
following 45 years, no explicit political statements
were made by the Corps of Engineers, but their
journal filled many of its pages with celebratory
articles extolling the virtues of dam constructions,
recounting the technical details and achievements of
newly built dams, providing annual summaries
of dam constructions and progress in the execution
of grand hydraulic projects, and providing detailed
celebratory and hagiographic reports of Franco
or other government dignitaries visiting and
inaugurating major water projects.
In the issue of June 1961, for example, in a self-
congratulatory hymn to the virtues of the Spanish
hydraulic engineers, José Luis Mendoza Gimeno
offered a poetic evocation of how the Spanish
hydraulic engineers, serving the national(ist) cause,
possessed a
hydraulic sensitivity, a sort of sixth sense, that permits
to intuit the comportment of water and its movements
. . . to be a good hydraulic engineer one has to know,
see, hear, touch the water with the eyes, the ears, the
hands . . . To all those, those who have passed and
those that today continue their work so brilliantly, the
gratitude of Spain is theirs. (1961, 364–7)
The same issue included a catalogue of all dams
constructed, together with a list of all the
companies that had contracted hydraulic works
(see Table II). All but one of these companies was
established during the dictatorship and they
worked almost exclusively for state-funded Public
Works programmes. In addition to providing a
detailed list of the companies’ technical capacities,

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20
the data also show the importance of hydraulic
works for employment. Nine companies provided
jobs for 358 engineers and a total of more than
48 000. The sector made an important contribution
to the economy, particularly during the early
period, when jobs were a scarce commodity.
In 1971, the chairman of the Spanish Committee
for Large Dams, saluted, in front of Franco, the
engineering contribution
of raising the flag, the Spanish flag of grand dams,
sustained by 20 years of glorious history, and adorned
by the ribbons of 360 battles [i.e. newly constructed
dams] that your Excellency succeeded in winning.
(Torán 1971, 315)
This self-congratulatory, state-centred and Franco-
adoring style of the Revista continued for another
17 years, together with the uncritical defence of
major public works programmes and the relentless
support for the further consolidation of the
hydraulic project for Spain.7 Only from 1992
onwards would a more critical and socially
engaging style gradually begin to emerge (Nárdiz
Ortiz 2003, 104), although the ‘steel and concrete
fever’, fed by the drive to restore Spain’s hydraulic
equilibrium by constructing more, remained an
obsessive theme.
Galvanizing the nation: propaganda and
hydraulic works
As in Germany and Italy (see Caprotti 2004), in
Franco’s Spain too, sophisticated propaganda
machinery was quickly put in place after the fascist
victory. The tried tactic of controlling and censoring
the press was implemented swiftly, together with
the establishment of NO-DO (Noticiario Español
Cinematográfico), an official state institute for
documentary film-making. Grafted on the popular
cultural success of cinema, NO-DO produced ‘news’
and general interest film reels that were
obligatorily screened in the country’s cinemas.
Highly subsidized, this propaganda instrument
served to celebrate the regime personalized by
Franco, galvanize the enthusiasm of the people for
the regime’s efforts, extol the virtues of Spanish
traditional cultural values, and mythologize the
‘crusade’ for a new, re-invigorated, conservative
and catholic Spain (Rodríguez 1999). Between 1943
and 1981, when NO-DO was finally abolished,
about 3925 documentary reels were produced.
Until 1956 (when television entered the scene), it
was the main cinematographic information source
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Erik Swyngedouw
available to the wider public. In his analysis of the
content of NO-DO’s reels, Rodríguez (1999, 223– 4)
points out that above all, inaugurations filled the
screens. A symbiotic relationship was systematically
instilled between Franco and the great national
public hydro-electrical and irrigation mission.
NO-DO publicized widely Franco’s procession of
inaugurations and the spectacle was also covered
in great hagiographic detail in magazines, newspapers,
and in the specialist engineering and professional
journals. On each occasion, Franco was presented
as ‘the victorious Caudillo of Spain’, welcomed by
the ‘grateful and admiring masses’ that celebrated
the ‘enormous social works’ and the ‘great techn-
ical achievements’ of the country. The following
off-screen text from the reel of 8 March 1943 (reel
Number 10) is symptomatic of such exaggerated
exaltation:
The Caudillo of Spain, who during the hours of the war
led our troops to Victory, is also the soul of this labour
of reconstruction, with which Spain heals its wounded,
saving Spain from all the difficulties that the current
international circumstances pose against her.
Inaugurations, the deployment of the regime’s
activities and the support of the people fused
together in NO-DO’s reels, which resembled a
monographic documentary, a festival of laudatory
images and commentaries. Inaugurated dams
became the most iconic image associated with
Franco (hence the nickname Paco Rana), who
oversaw the new hydraulic landscape, listened to
the adulations of his entourage and received
graciously the ovations of the grateful masses.
Franco’s frequent public appearances suggested a
leader close to the pulse of the nation and attentive
to the transformations taking place in the country
(Tranche and Sánchez-Biosca 2002, 215). NO-DO’s
newsreels conveyed an image of inauguration
sites and rites as geographical symbols of and
material referents to the unmitigated success of
the fascist project, embodiments of a technocratic
developmentalism8 and emblems of the beauty,
unity and tradition of the Spanish landscape. The
newsreel images celebrated the solidaristic, spir-
itual and moral values of traditional Spain, the tenacity
of its workers, the power of the regime and the
virtues of technical modernization (see Tranche and
Sánchez-Biosca 2002).
Newspapers and other print media were equally
marshalled to espouse the virtues of the regime
and its achievements. On a daily basis, the press
Technonatural revolutions
would report ecstatically about yet another great
speech from the Caudillo as yet another sublime
achievement was inaugurated. The quote below
offers a sample from a typical speech by Franco
given on 1 July 1959, inaugurating yet another
‘transcendental grand hydraulic project’:
We have come to visit your province, to inaugurate
various important works . . . and with this to satisfy the
thirst of your fields, to regulate your irrigations, which
shall increase your welfare and multiply production . . .
The whole of Spain has to be redeemed, sealing the
brotherhood between the land and the men of Spain.
(F. Franco, inauguration of the hydraulic works in
Lérida, Diario ABC, 1 July 1959, 1)
The reproduction of Franco’s speeches in the
newspaper was invariable accompanied by equally
exalted, triumphant and jubilant commentary by
journalists:
[W]e are tightening the siege against the misery and the
thirst of Spanish men and lands, because against the
old sterility of the rivers, Franco’s program built walls
of steel to bring light, and veins of concrete to canalise
the water and to take it to fulfil its irrigation mission,
redeeming the old peasant thirst. And the peasants, full
of joy, offer Franco today the expression of their
unlimited gratitude and their unconditional allegiance.
(Del Corral 1959, 1–2)
This heroic mission, thus visualized and narrated,
was spread throughout the country through print
media and cinema, galvanizing the hearts and
minds of the Spanish people and urging them to
embrace the remaking of the Fatherland and thus
widen the networks of interests that would solidify
and maintain the fabric of the fascist modernizing
cause.
Reworking the nation, re-scaling the
networks of interests
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since a great
and brave nation begun, under the leadership of a
soldier-statesman, its heroic and successful campaign to
repel for ever all the roots of communism. I am
referring to Spain, our friend and ally, and its leader
and Chief of State, Generalissimo Franco. (US Senator
Studes Bridges, Diario ABC, 18 July 1959, 35)
Autarchy and geographical integration: blood,
sweat and tears in the pursuit of a wet dream
Enrolling the flow of water within a new
technonatural hydrostructure that would achieve
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
21
the restoration of a great Spain required more than
just a determined dictator, popular appeal, engineering
plans, corporate support and ‘God’s will’. Concrete,
steel, machinery, capital and specialist know-how
were equally vital for securing success. However,
the early Franco era was economically one of relative
paralysis, enduring shortages, untold misery for
many and sluggish accumulation. As Figures 1 and
2 show, up until the mid-1950s, very little of what
was promised was actually implemented. This
changed dramatically after 1953. This shift coincided
with a profound re-scaling of the political-economic
networks on which the stability of Franco’s regime
rested.
The political-economic vision of the political
elites around Franco was one that centred on
national autarchic development by means of the
mobilization of endogenous resources. The rhetoric
and practice of a nationally integrated develop-
ment became incorporated in ‘the permanent ideal
of autarchy’ (Carr 2001, 156). A strictly regulated
market, frozen wages and the control of the labour
force were the response to Spain’s imposed inter-
national isolation because of Franco’s war-time
support for the Axis powers. The regime turned
this isolationism into virtue. Self-reliant develop-
ment and international trade restrictions were seen
as the way to restore Spain’s lost grandeur. In the
context of this autarchic vision of development,
rapidly increasing irrigation and mobilizing Spain’s
national hydropower potential were considered to
be absolutely vital (Sudría 1997). However, absence
of materials, energy, equipment and, above all,
capital made progress in constructing the desired
autarchic landscape excruciatingly slow. Electricity
blackouts were rampant until the mid-1950s (Pérez
1999, 649). Madrid suffered from a disastrous
water shortage in 1948– 9. Irrigation progressed
slowly (Barciela López and López Ortiz 2000, 362).
The speed of new dam constructions was far below
expectations, food was rationed, peasants became
even poorer and migrated (Reher 2003). The aver-
age income per capita fell from index 100 in 1935 to
82 in 1950 (Gallo 1974, 192–3).
The only commodity not in short supply was
labour power. Salaries were only a fraction of what
they had been before the war and any kind of pro-
test was quickly smothered by ruthless repression.
Tens of thousands of socialists, communists, anar-
chists and assorted other undesirables were held
as political prisoners in concentration camps and
forcibly put to work, primarily in Public Works
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Table III Documented use of political prisoners for the construction of hydraulic works (selection) (1936 –1962)

Number of
workers and
Documented (year of
Location period reference) Controlling organization Type of work

Villatoya (Albecete) 1944– 140 (1944) Cimentatiaciones y Obras Construction of bridge

San Adrián del Besós 1944– 70 (1944) Cimentatiociones y Obras Construction of bridge
Celis (Cantabria) 1949–1950 54 (1949) – Hydro-electrical
138 (1950)
Celucos (Cantatbria) 1949– ? Dragados y Construcciones Hydro-electrical
Pálmaces de Jadraque 1942–1946 50 (1942) Private: ECIA Dam construction
(Guadalajara) 50 (1945)
Irún (Guipúzcoa) 1944– 134 (1944) Ferrocarriles y Construciones ABC Canal
Barasona (Huesca) 1946–1949 180 (1948) Dam construction
Guara (Huesca) 1962– 20 (1962) Cimentaciones y Obras Dam construction
Madiano (Huesca) 1943–1955 50 (1943) Vías y Riego; Dragados Dam construction
68 (1954)
Barrios de Luna (Léon) 1952–1955 40 (1954) Herederos de Ginés Navarro Tunnel for
dam hydro-electricity
Buitrago del Lozoya (Madrid) 1944–1952 250 (1945) State Dam construction
123 (1949)
Escorial, El (Madrid) 1944 50 (1944) Private: San Román Water supply
Patones (Madrid) 1957–1960 62 (1958) Construcción AMSA Water supply
94 (1961)
Cenajo, El (Murcia) 1952–1957 30 (1952) Construcciones Civiles, SA Dam construction
70 (1955)
Orense 1952–1953 400 (1952) Dragados y Construcciones Dam construction
Reinoso de Cerrato (Palencia) 1944– 50 (1944) Cimentaciones y Obras Bridge over river
Anguiano (La Rioja) n/a 170 (1944) Construcciones ABC Dam construction
Mansilla (La Rioja) 1949–1958 65 (1949) Ingeniería y Construcciones Dam construction
50 (1955) Marcor, SA
Ortigosa de Cameros (La Rioja) 1953–1962 60 (1956) Ereño y Cia., SA Dam construction
555 (1958)
88 (1961)
Arroyo (Santander) 1943–1949 258 (1943) Vías y Riegos Dam construction
Revenga (Santander) 1947–1950 100 (1949) State Dam construction
Segovia ? ? ? Dams and irrigation
Puebla del Rio (Sevilla) 1952–1955 105 (1953) State and Private Agricultural transformation
Castillejo (Toledo) −1954 42 (1954) Cimentataciones y Obras Bridge over Tajo
Puerto del Rey (Toledo) 1944– 50 (1944) Hnos. Nicolás Gómez Canalization
Talavera de la Reina (Toledo) 1942– 342 (1942) Hnos. Nicolás Gómez Dam construction
Chelva (Valencia) 1941– 300 (1941) Portolés y Cia. Dam construction
Valladolid ? ? Dam and irrigation canals
Rentería (Vizcaya) 1944– 135 (1944) Construcciones ABC Canalization
Freson de la Rivera (Zamora) 1945–1946 95 (1945) Don Ramón Echave Irrigation
Tauste (Zaragoza) 1956–1959 11 (1959) Bernal Pareja SA Irrigation

Source: Based on Acosta Bono et al. (2004, 65–75)

(Lafuente 2002; Molinero et al. 2003). For example,
for the construction of the Canal del Bajo Guad-
alquivir in Andalucia, over 2520 political prisoners
were mobilized between 1940 and 1962 (Acosta
Bono et al. 2004), very often under inhuman condi-
tions. Prisoners were not only used by the state,
but also put at the disposition of large farmers and
private public works companies. Some of the great
construction companies (see Table II) established
during the Franco period also used political prison-
ers. Table III summarizes the available information
(which is only now gradually emerging) on the
mobilization of political prisoners in the realization
of Franco’s wet dream for Spain. However, Spain’s
autarchic political-economic model did not generate
enough capital and equipment to move the earth

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Technonatural revolutions
and enrol the powers of its waters. While many
hands dug canals and built dams, lack of capital
proved a major stumbling block. For that, the
regime had to turn elsewhere and re-arrange the
coordinates of its geo-political spatial imagination,
its networks of interests and its scalar articulation.
Yankee dollars: weapons and dams
By the early 1950s, the rhetoric of national autarchy
sounded increasingly hollow as the country’s
socio-economic conditions continued to deteriorate
(Catalan 2003; Miranda Encarnación 2003). Spain’s
political and economic elites realized that ‘opening
up’ new spatial links and pursuing the geo-political
insertion of Spain into the Western Alliance was
vital in order to secure not only the modernization
of Spain, but also the longer-term sustainability of
the dictatorial regime. Strategically re-scaling the
‘networks of interests’ on which the regime rested
was pivotal to pursue the project envisaged for Spain.
The modernizing economic elites grasped the potential
for Spain of the consolidating geo-political order
choreographed by Cold War strategies and looked
towards the US, whose geo-political gaze also
gradually turned to Spain as a possible ally in their
geo-political strategizing.
Indeed, between 1950 and 1953, the institutional-
ization of the Cold War permitted a rapprochement
between the US and Spain. The US chose to forget
its earlier hostility towards fascism, and conserva-
tive forces within the US gradually began to play
the role of Spain’s ambassador in international
forums. In 1952, Spain scored its first international
diplomatic victory when she was admitted to
UNESCO. In December 1955, Spain entered the UN.
The most significant moment was undoubtedly the
signing of the secret ‘Pact of Madrid’ in September
1953 by Alberto Martín Artajo, Spanish Minister of
Foreign Affairs and James Dunn, US ambassador,
in which Spain agreed to let the US use parts of
Spain’s territory for military bases in exchange for
economic, military and technical aid (Viñas 1981;
Guirao 1998; Liedtke 1998). After that, US financial
aid and investment started to flow into Spain. This
pact secured the financial bedrock for the years of
rapid growth and modernization of the late 1950s
and the 1960s (Niño 2003). Indeed, while primary
materials and industrial equipment used to be
scarce, the inflow of US aid permitted the rapid
development of infrastructure after the mid-1950s.
Dam construction also skyrocketed. The end of
Spain’s geo-political isolation and its insertion into
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
23
a new scalar gestalt of Atlantic geo-political and
geo-economic networks contributed thus to the
territorial rescaling of the country’s hydraulic
cartography.
The financial support of the US was earmarked
as follows: 10 per cent for administrative expenses,
60 per cent for military bases and 30 per cent for
financial aid. From 1958 onwards, 90 per cent of
the funds would take the form of financial aid
(Fernández 1984, 72– 3). Between 1951 and 1963,
more than 1.3 billion aid dollars were granted to
Spain (Calvo 2001). The assistance of the US per-
mitted to modernize the country militarily, opened
up the economy and consolidated the regime while
demoralizing and further marginalizing internal
opposition and the international anti-fascist move-
ments (Niño 2003, 26– 7). From the mid-1950s
onwards, modernizing and internationalizing elites,
often recruited from Spain’s conservative, mainly
Opus Dei led, catholic universities, would gradually
take over the commanding heights in the state
apparatus. Liberal economic doctrine would fuse
seamlessly with Franco’s authoritarian rule (Preston
1995; Termis Soto 2005). For the US, the economic
stabilization of Spain would further entrench
the power of Franco and ensure the continuing
anti-communist stance of Spain.
A significant share of the financial aid went to
agricultural machinery, steel, electrical equipment
and infrastructure, while most of the Spanish counter-
part funding was directed to agricultural irrigation
projects, railroads and hydraulic works (Fernández
de Valderrama 1964; Puig 2003, 114). Americans
and Spaniards ‘wove and strengthened social net-
works with local, national and international reach’
(Puig 2003, 117). The scalar extension of Spain’s
political and financial networks facilitated and
nurtured the hydrosocial transformation of Spain’s
physical and socio-economic geography. Spain
modernized quickly during the 1960s and early
1970s, a process that further ensured the longevity
of the regime. Franco’s death in 1975 announced
the end of what was one of the most repressive and
lasting dictatorial-fascist regimes Europe has known.
Conclusions: surviving Franco and
re-networking Spain’s technonature
This paper attempted to bring together two
theoretical perspectives that have been largely
treated separately in the literature. It mobilized
relational and territorial notions of scale in the
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24
context of an analysis of the socio-natural
production of nature. The historical-geographical
reconstruction of the production of specific fascist
technonatural assemblages that fuses the mobilization
of nature and technology together with the social
networks of power that shaped and maintained
Franco’s reign showed not only how every political
project is also an environmental project, but also
how such socio-environmental projects are predic-
ated upon scalar tactics and strategies. The political
and the technical, the social and the natural, become
mobilized through socio-spatial arrangements
that shape distinct geographies and landscapes;
landscapes that celebrate the visions of the elite
networks, reveal the scars suffered by the dis-
empowered and nurture the possibilities and dreams
for alternative visions.
The revolutionary geographical re-ordering of
Spain, articulated through the remaking of its
hydraulic technonatural landscape, mobilized
discursive, symbolic and material processes and
enrolled H2O in a specific manner. This process
was made possible and held together through
producing particular national and international
social networks. The networks of landowners, large
industrialists, engineers and media produced a
unitary national territorial complex, and eliminated
dissenting political voices, regionalist impulses and
alternative configurations. The extension of these
scalar arrangements after 1953 secured the capital
flows that would sustain rapid hydro-modernization.
These national and international scalar configurations
would both implode and explode after Franco’s
death, although his legacy proved resilient to
change as vested interests and existing elites
tried to hold on to their powers. The hydraulic
engineers and bureaucracy, and the agricultural
and southern elites wished to perfect the system
initiated by Franco, but, of course, the voices,
scales and actors around the hydrosocial nexus
began to multiply as democracy took root after
1978. The voices of regionalists, the actions of envi-
ronmentalists, the financial might and regulatory
order of the European Union (rather than the US)
are increasingly entangled with newly enrolled
actants such as birds, wetlands, sediments and
local cultural rights, demanding new and different
scalar organizations and forcing new networked
arrangements, around which radically different
socio-environmental and technonatural projects
crystallize (see, for example, Fundación Nueva
Cultura del Agua 2005).
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Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007
Erik Swyngedouw
Spain’s hydrosocial and technonatural land-
scapes that produce many of the strawberries,
tomatoes or salads we consume in the rest of
Europe and sustain the landscapes of recreation on
the Spanish Costas are simultaneously heroic
achievements of a modernizing desire, new geo-
political arrangements and products of the legacy
of a brutal authoritarian regime. It is on this edifice
that contemporary socio-ecological movements,
innovative political visions, new scalar arrange-
ments and alternative socio-technical projects are
debated and framed. But this is another story.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the British Academy for
funding the research on which this paper is based.
My Spanish friends and colleagues have provided
invaluable help and support. In particular, I would
like to thank Leandro del Moral, Juan Martinez Alier
and David Saurí for their hospitality and advice.
Esteban Castro, Michael Ekers, Maria Kaika, Sarah
Gonzalez, Josep Garí, Federico Caprotti, Nik Heynen,
Alex Loftus and Ame Ramos Castillo commented
on earlier versions of the paper and helped to
shape the argument. Of course, they are not to blame
for any remaining errors of fact or reasoning.
These are mine only.
Notes
1 In Swyngedouw (1999) I argued that the political inco-
herence and turmoil during the first decades of the
twentieth century stalled Spain’s hydromodernization.
Franco’s political project succeeded in bringing together
disparate political, cultural and socio-economic forces,
producing a hegemonic vision and galvanizing a mod-
ernizing project that permitted the realization of the
grand hydromodern dream. In this sense, this paper
implicitly argues against Wittfogel’s thesis (1957) that
assumes a necessary relationship between grand hydrau-
lic infrastructures and despotic rule. The Spanish case,
although apparently fitting the Wittfogelian thesis,
suggests the central importance of political struggle
rather than a necessary link between despotism and
large-scale hydromodernization. The paper is therefore
also intended as a critical engagement with Worster’s
magnificent work on US hydropolitics (Worster 1985).
2 For a detailed analysis, see Swyngedouw (1999).
3 For a more detailed discussion of the politics of scale
around the provincial, river basin and national scale,
see Swyngedouw (2003b).
4 The Falange (Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las
JONS) was the unified (by Franco) and unitary party
Technonatural revolutions
consisting of the fascist parties, traditionalist and
ultra-catholic carlist movements.
5 For detailed analysis of these alliances and consolidating
networks, see among others the magisterial books by
Preston (1995), Preston and Lannon (1990), Carr (1995
2001), Fusi and Palafox (1989), Gallo (1974).
6 Most of the literature on hydraulic policies during
Franco focuses on irrigation and internal colonization.
Expanding those was indeed the refrain endlessly
repeated by state officials and Franco himself. For
reviews, see, among others Ortega (1975), Gil Olcina
and Morales Gil (1992), Barciela López and López
Ortiz (2000), Rodríguez Ferrero (2001), Melgarejo
Moreno (1995 2000).
7 See, for example, Martín Mendiluce (1996).
8 See, for example, Kaika (2006) on Greece, or Caprotti
(2004) on Italy.
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