Landscape and power: the debate around ugliness in Galicia (Spain)

Abstract

The approval of the European Landscape Convention in 2000 placed landscape at the centre of the political debate and gave it visibility. At that time, a movement surrounding the concept of ugliness began in Galicia (Spain), which condemned the degradation of the Galician landscape as a result of public and private actions that destroy what is understood as the typical Galician landscape. The media and experts are actively involved in this discourse. In this article, we reflect on the concept of ugliness and relate it to policies of power that seek to confront the resistance of the Galician rural world. We analyse the links between the canonical Galician landscape, which dates back to the nineteenth century, and ugliness, as well as the current authorised landscape discourse.