Mieres Reborn: The Reinvention of a Catalan Community

Chapter 5: New Livelihoods

5 new Livelihoods the ideal of the self-sufficient family farm is deeply rooted in Catalan memory and in the traditions of autonomy that inspire nationalism. It survives in the dreams of the young “neorurals” who have struggled to make organic gardens on the abandoned terraces above the valley, but the old, intensive polyculture is mostly gone, replaced by agroindustrial production of livestock with little demand for local labor. However, self-sufficiency has never implied isolation, and while every Catalan valley is reputed for its idiosyncrasies, good communications have always been essential to its livelihood, a movement not just of goods, services, and information but of people in search of mates and opportunities in the wider world. the spinning mill in Mieres, a relic of the industrial transformation of Catalonia in the eighteenth century , is an apt metaphor for the way Mieres today reaches out into the wider world, connecting old artisanal capacities with new commercial demands. new forms of transport and communications have also made it possible for a rising generation of commuters to set up home in Mieres, attracted by the old rural ethos that they are, nevertheless, transforming by their own presence. For those who spent their lives keeping the arable fields, pastures, orchards, and woodlands in good heart, the degeneration of Mieres is writ large in the landscape.the disappearance of the old meadows and fields of grain and the deterioration of woodland into choked scrub evoke the mood of aching , regretful yearning for which Catalan has a special word: enyorança. In her accounts of her childhood, Maria F. vacillates between the trials of the misèria and dear memories of walking through the woods in summer amid the flowers and the clanging of the cowbells. new Livelihoods / 105 With a certain grim pride,Catalans like to say of themselves that they “get bread out of stones”:they see themselves as congenitally industrious, opportunistic , and businesslike, unlike people in certain other regions of spain.1 the broad base of the valley is fertile and well watered, a place where the Catalan ideal of polyculture has in its time supported a large and relatively healthy population. toward the end of the nineteenth century, Mieres had an active and diverse agricultural economy. the sown land (sembrats) in the valley produced wheat, oats, rye, and barley.the meadows (prats) raised fodder for local cattle and winter grazing for animals driven down seasonally from the mountains. there were grapes for the wine trade until they were wiped out by phylloxera, and orchards ( fruiters) were sufficiently important to be accounted separately in the records:hazelnuts, olives, apples, and pears, often grown as carefully maintained boundaries to the terraces, fields, and meadows. the ideal of self-sufficiency, the farm that produced “a little of everything” (“una mica de tot”),did not diminish market opportunism:cash crops have come and gone in response to regional and international demand. Mieres was once well known for the production of hemp (cànem), but local knowledge of this crop is now mysteriously vague, although the tall plants still pop up here and there around the valley.2 An 1884 agricultural survey book provides interesting benchmarks for changing land use in Mieres:3 Percent Sown crops (sembrats) 11.5 Sown crops + vines (ceps) 7.5 Sown crops + fruit, etc. 16.5 Olives 1.4 Meadow + unused (prat i erm) 2.3 Fallow/unused (erm) 2.3 Woodland + unused (bosc i erm) 58.2 Built land, streets, etc. 0.3 the “mixed” categories characteristic of polyculture and the flexible identity of fallow land (erm) do not make for accurate comparisons from one period to another, but the reduction in arable land around the turn of the century is striking. by 1904 the proportion of sown and interplanted land had been reduced by more than half, to about 15 percent of the total, while meadow, woodland, and unused land increased from 63 percent to 81 percent .Vines, olives, and other tree crops mixed with the grains had decreased sharply. by 1981 the category of sown crops was still around 15 percent, but 106 / Chapter 5 this now consisted largely of fodder crops for the expanding production of cattle.Woodland had reclaimed the upper terraces and much of the pasture, while the area recorded as “urban” (houses, roads, etc.) now accounted for 7.5 percent of the total.4 Woodland (bosc), very visible in reality although obscured...