Institutionalized nature: natural parks and conservation policies in Catalonia

Abstract

This article analyzes nature conservation policies in Catalonia, with special attention to the figure of the natural park. The implementation, development, and management of Catalan protected areas show some specific features. On the one hand, with the intention to become a tool for territorial planning. On the other hand, they are characterized by a diversity and legislative complexity, of the administrations involved and the protection figures applied that, despite generating management problems, favors their flexibility and the involvement of multiple actors. Finally, they generate a dynamic process in which, as a result of the socioeconomic transformations that have occurred, there have been changes in the objectives and languages of conservation (scientific values have relegated aesthetic ones), the public use of protected areas (converted in tourism product) and in its forms of governance (implementing a formally more participatory management model).