Analysis on the legal treatment of wetlands in the spanish wáter law of the 19th century

Abstract

Since roman times, wetlands were considered, in general terms, to be areas of scarce value and unhealthy places; hence the public authorities ordered them to be drained and converted en masse into farmland. Their pejorative conception, together with the generalised rejection by the rulers and public opinion, led the legislator of the time to develop various actions aimed at their eradication, the continuity of which would be perfectly defined in nineteenth- century spanish water legislation. Indeed, both the Water Laws of 1866/1879 and the Ports Law of 1880, through various concessions, exemptions and other dispensations, managed to encourage, throughout the peninsular geography, numerous projects for the drying up and drainage of land, which undoubtedly contributed to the socio-economic development of the country.