Functional land and emotional landscape. Dry stone constructions in la garriga d'empordà€ in the 19th century

Abstract

The relationship between traditional farmers with the physical characteristics of the site (material function) has long been analysed, but rarely has farmers' cultural relationship with their geographical environment (emotional function) been upheld. To demonstrate this duality implies finding farmland created both due to material profitability or family subsistence and due to psychological necessity or personal self-realization. For example, the transformation in the nineteenth century of desolate, stony unproductive landscapes in la Garriga d'Empordà -Catalonia-(of some 8 km²) into farmland, for poorer peasant families meant not only a minuscule means of material progress but above all a major means of social hope and human dignity. To confirm this duality is to corroborate that many functional territories are also emotional landscapes for those who farm them, mainly during the period of major agricultural expansion in Europe due to the growth in population at the onset of the modern era. © 2021, Asociatia Geographia Technica. All rights reserved.