The Instituto Nacional de Colonización y Desarrollo Rural (English: National Institute of Rural Development and Colonization) was the administrative entity that was established by the
Spanish State in October 1939, shortly after the end of the
Spanish Civil War, in order to repopulate certain areas of
Spain. This entity depended from the Ministry of Agriculture and it sought to alleviate the effects of the devastation caused by the three years of civil war.
The Instituto acquired land which it transferred to the villagers under different conditions according to the area and the levels of poverty of the tenants. The tenants eventually were expected to pay a small sum that allowed them to become the future owners of the land they tilled.
This ambitious plan led to the establishment of new villages in different parts of Spain, some of which still survive. The Instituto reached a height of activity and influence during the first two decades of Francoist Spain, but after the
Plan de Estabilización in 1959, and the subsequent
Planes de Desarrollo, its
autarkic goals and ideals became outdated. By 1971 the word "
Colonization" had stopped being
politically correct and the name of the entity was changed to Instituto Nacional de Reforma y Desarrollo Agrario (IRYDA).[1]
Goals and results
The Instituto's main goal was to increase agricultural production in Spain by devoting more land surface to agriculture. Priority was given to the development of new
irrigated areas in
arid and
semi-arid zones. This goal was very effective for the
propaganda purposes of the new regime and triumphalistic claims were made that the colonization measures would increase
self-sufficiency. But often irrigation was opposed to the traditional and
sustainable methods of
dryland farming that were
ecologically more in tune with locally available resources in
fragile environments.
Although the plans of the IRYDA were implemented with the avowed goal of a "better management of natural resources of the country" (
Spanish: "mejor aprovechamiento y conservación de los recursos naturales en aguas y tierras"),[2] the agricultural policies implemented were sometimes not mindful of the environment, leading to
salinization of the terrain and to
soil erosion in some areas. Some of the villages that were established in former
wetlands or in
chronic drought areas were later abandoned, along with the lands that surrounded them and that had formerly been earmarked for agriculture.
List of villages
Many of the new villages were given a name related to the nearest river or even a name with an explicit reference to the Caudillo in order to cast a benevolent image of Francisco Franco, like
Llanos del Caudillo, Villafranco del Delta, a village in the
Montsià comarca nowadays rechristened as
El Poblenou del Delta or
Isla Mayor near
Seville, the former Villafranco del Guadalquivir.
Some of these new settlements were built to house the families whose houses were flooded when their ancestral village was submerged by the waters of one of the many
reservoirs built during the development plans of the 1950s and 1960s, like
Loriguilla,
Mequinensa and
Faió (Fayón), among others. Others were renovations and repopulations of previously extant but abandoned towns.