Patrias primitivas. Discursos e imágenes de la naturaleza en el primer conservacionismo español

The origins of National Parks and other protected areas provide a historiographical window to investigate scientific, cultural, and ideological processes in early-twentiethcentury Spain. On the one hand, nature conservation, in Spain as in other Western countries, was intimately related to turnof- the-century concerns about national and social decadence, especially with regard to the perceived threats posed by industrialization and urbanization processes. On the other hand, while the ideological climate of Spanish regeneracionismo supported a broad movement of modernization and reform, ways to reinvigorate national identity were also sought. Therefore the establishment and first stages of National Parks, Nature Reserves and other conservation schemes were closely linked to the development of ideological discourses and cultural images around Spanish Parks, landscapes, and fauna, seen as powerful repositories of civic virtues and national symbols.