Vineyard’s Cultural Landscape in Castilla-La Mancha (Spain): evolution and transformations

Despite the presence of amphorae, bowls and mud barrels from Pre-Roman and Roman ages in different regional settlements, such as the Cerro de Las Cabezas in Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real) or the Carranquevilla (Toledo), we do not have sufficient studies or sources to determine the significance of the vineyard in antiquity. Starting from the 12^th century, the vineyard started to expand slowly in Castilla-La Mancha due to repopulation by the Military Orders

The Military Orders were institutions of a religious–military type charged with spreading and defending the Christian faith and strictly associated with the privileged classes (aristocracy and clergy). Notable in Castilla-La Mancha were the Orders of San Juan, Calatrava and Santiago.

Starting from the second half of the 19^th century, vineyards in Castilla-La Mancha experienced an important expansion that extended to the entry of Spain into the European Economic Community in 1986. According to Table 1, the growth of the vineyard area between 1857 and 1987 was 404% in the area.

Table 1

Vineyard surface evolution (hectares) in Castilla-La Mancha (1857–1987)

That impressive increase has its roots in the last quarter of the 19^th century, a moment in which a series of circumstances happened that explain the take-off of regional viticulture: the cereal prices crisis, the effects of phylloxera in France and the reinforcing of the regional road network (Pillet 2001).

From 1855, cereals from America were being introduced into Spain at prices that caused stiff competition for regional cereals (Rodríguez 1988). The most significant consequence was the gradual substitution of cereals with vines on low productivity plots, which was favoured by the vine’s optimal edaphic and climatic adaptability and the economic possibilities opening up to small farmers. Those benefits paid off from 1868 onwards when the phylloxera

Phylloxera is a vine disease caused by the insect Dactylosphaera vitifoliae.

The consolidation of the Manchegan vineyard was also due to other factors of an agronomic and economic type. In the first place, the influence of phylloxera in our region did not reach the same level of importance as in other Spanish regions such as Catalonia or the Region of Valencia at the beginning of the 20^th century. Secondly, demand from cities close to the Mediterranean Sea, the Cantabrian Sea and the capital itself, Madrid, together with the improvement of communication networks, especially railways, reinforced commercial relations. After the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), vineyards secured by an agrarian structure achieved growth of more than 300,000 hectares from 1931 to 1987, consolidating themselves as an authentic regional monoculture. The increased area and the high performance obtained favoured the appearance of the first problems of overproduction in the fifth decade of the 20^th century, an imbalance which would become the main distinguishing mark of Castilla-La Mancha’s viticulture until the present day.

After the entry of Spain into the European Economic Community in 1986, the viticulture sector was exposed to market regulation mechanisms destined to palliate the structural excess problem. Among the suggested initiatives, the most notewerthy was the ultimate uprooting of vineyards as set out in the Regulation (EEC) 1442/88, which, thanks to subsidies around 7,000 ECUS per hectare resulted in the loss of more than 130,000 hectares of vineyard in Castilla-La Mancha by 1996, clearly reverting the previous upward trend.

Despite the total vineyard area decreasing, those measures of a punitive kind could not counter the increased productivity derived from the inclusion of irrigation, which underwent rapid expansion thanks to mainly internal factors. Added to the need to maximise the profitability of crops, there was at this time a period of Castilla-La Mancha drought in Spain that occurred between 1991 and 1995 and that forced administrations to lift the irrigation prohibition on that specific agricultural subsector in 1995. The result was the fast expansion of irrigated areas starting from that time onwards (Figure 1), with an estimate of more than 80,000 hectares in ten years (1996–2006).

Figure 1

In return, non-irrigated vineyard areas experienced a loss of more than 400,000 hectares between 1986 and 2016, explained by the withdrawal of low productivity vineyards, the influence of vineyard uprooting programmes and the generalised process of viticulture modernisation starting in 1999.

The diffusion of irrigation was also possible thank to the implementation of the Common Organisation of the Viticulture Market of 1999 (CMO). Since 1993, the European Commission had already been planning the productive adaptation of the main European producing regions in order to meet the pressure for new varieties of grapes in greater demand in the markets. The new varieties, mainly of Atlantic origin, required extra water which, as a consequence, was an incentive to increase irrigation.

That process of adapting was achieved thanks to the reorganising and varietal restructuring programmes approved in 2000, which had important effects on the landscape by the generalising of new vine varieties and the appearance of vineyards in espalier.

Varietal diversification is linked to those who encouraged the administration in recent years. According to the data offered by the regional administration, between 2000 and 2007 a profit of 3.1% was confirmed from red grape varieties, notably Cencibel or Tempranillo, already forming 17.5% of the total extents in 2010, together with other varieties that were barely known in Castilla-La Mancha, such as Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. However, there was a yearly decrease of 2.6% in the traditional white variety airén. to the point of currently reaching only 47.5% of the regional viticulture area.

Secondly, the aids granted to the mechanising of agrarian activities explain the emergence of a new type of viticulture landscape: vineyards in espalier. From the 467,000 hectares of vineyards in Castilla-La Mancha at the time of launching the vine in 2008 by the CMO, 17.2% were already in that category.

The expansion of vineyards in espalier (Figure 2) generated new social and economic dynamics in the territory. Generally, it is a type of vineyard that involves a more intensive use of the soil while incorporating, almost in a generalised way, support watering that obviously improves the performance of the exploitation and allows the important costs of the initial investment and of production to be tackled.

Figure 2

The use of water implied a new factor of environmental pressure on aquifers in the zone, in particular on the Occidental Mancha aquifer, which was officially overexploited by the administration, thus confirming the absence of the integration of sectoral policies that intervene in the territory.

Those reorganising and varietal restructuration programmes were extended in the Regulation (EC) 479/2008 of the Council of 2 April, which set a new CMO for the viticulture sector. Generally, it is calculated that what follows is an improvement of the viticulture sector on the basis of the development of competitiveness, modernisation and commercialisation, these being important measures linked to the regulation of the productive potential. Among some of them, the prohibition on creating new crops of vine until 31 December 2015 and the fixing of a bonus for uprooting vineyards during three seasons (2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11) stands out, justified as a complementary measure aimed at the adapting of productive zones especially when they did not assure a viable production. The first results of that programme showed that Spain represented 58% of the total vineyards uprooted in the European Union during the period, meaning a reduction of the productive potential of around 43%. In Castilla-La Mancha, a total of 77,247 hectares were uprooted, that is, 82% of the national area and 47% of the total area uprooted in Europe. That exaggerated indicator showed that Castilla-La Mancha did not enjoy such a consolidated position in the market as other Spanish productive regions such as Galicia and La Rioja, neither of which saw the need to join that kind of programme. These strictly productive and neoliberal types of dynamics are contrasted by non-productive aspects of the vineyard, such as heritage, environmental and cultural values that can be interpreted within the controversial concept of “post-productivism” that we will explain below.

Figure 3

If today we consider the landscape as a “territorial and historic totalling” (Silva, Fernández Salinas & Mata 2017, p. 19), that of the Castilla-La Mancha vineyards reflects the changes that have continued over time, the difficulties of adapting to community policies and how it still is a model of identity for the local population. The special features that allow us to analyse its nature are:

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It is an historic landscape (cultural) whose roots date back, as we indicated, to the Romanisation in the Iberian Peninsula.

From a post-productivist perspective, vineyard landscapes combine some associated values such as the development of wine tourism, commitment to quality, and appreciation of landscape values.

The elements (resources) of Agrarian Heritage in the vineyard landscapes of Castilla-La Mancha can be grouped following the Charter of Baeza on Agrarian Heritage (ed. Castillo 2013). Initially, they were grouped within material heritage as: goods or implements and tools (jars, sheds, squeezers, etc.), elements linked to transport (various types of carts, wagons, etc.) and bibliographical documents and objects (literary texts from authors such as Cervantes, Antonio Ponz, Francisco Nieva, etc.); singular real estate, above all of a structural type (wine cellars, farmhouses, shacks, etc.); and equal and grouped real estate, such as the wine landscapes themselves (especially those of the traditional vineyard), population settlements, livestock paths and routes (the Sorian and Segovian royal cattle route). In immaterial heritage we differentiate between: language (singular terms associated to wine culture, such as “viñuelo” or “atroje”, a collection of popular proverbs about wine, etc.); beliefs, rituals and festive acts (Romería de la Virgen de las Viñas in Tomelloso, etc.); and wisdom, works and traditions (forge, cutlery, traditions associated with grape harvesting, etc). To all that we add a natural and genetic heritage based on: some physical properties of the territory associated with prairies and plains (average altitude 650 m); extreme climate and limited rainfall (under 400 mm yearly) with regular droughts, optimally clayey soil for vine cultivation, a high number of sunlight hours during the year; and a varietal genetic contribution centred on the Cencibel or Tempranillo grape for the red wines and on the airén grape for the white (Cañizares & Ruiz 2014). Everything that defines “heritage vectors”, that is, elements forming landscapes that possess an identity value attributed to the local population or that have obtained institutional recognition (Silva, Fernández Salinas & Mata 2017, p 21) and that are fundamental to the process of heritage recognition.