The bases of Environmental Geography in Spain: An approach to the birth, development and consolidation of the Geographic Society of Madrid

Abstract

Throughout this research I approach the reality of the preliminaries of the Geographical Society of Madrid (reference point of the current Royal Geographical Society), assessing for this purpose, the historical, legal, political, and administrative relevance of a collective entity that, like the one studied, is from its origins directly dependent on a Territorial and Institutional Political Model such as the Spanish one, in which it has had to be integrated. This integration process that the Royal Geographical Society has experienced, in turn, breaks down into two perfectly differentiated stages: on the one hand, the integration of the geographical entity into a politically organized social organization, that is, into the State; and on the other hand, an integration referring to the legal system, which by chance or on the contrary as a result of this circumstance, at the historical moment in which the original Geographic Society of Madrid was established, began its journey. On the other hand, the social institutionalization of Geography would become a key process as strategic knowledge to provide a decisive response to eventualities such as the growth of the Spanish and European population, and its progressive relocation through emigration to the colonial territories of the States.