Green shoots

The rural communes of the 1970s in Spain

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the importance of the approaches contributed by ecologism in the ideological sphere and in the practice of opposition during the Spanish transition from the framework of study offered by rural communes. To this end, the evolution of the imaginaries surrounding this communal model, deployed in two magazines of reference in the countercultural context of the late seventies, Ajoblanco and Alfalfa, as well as in some books published by leading environmental activists in the early eighties, is studied. Through this approach, the article questions the persistence of the commitment to ecological issues in the great social movements of contemporary Spain from the end of the Dictatorship onwards, while stressing the need to explore in depth episodes of recent history that allow us to enrich the narratives related to visual culture and the memory of social movements in the State from an environmentalist perspective.