Abstract
This paper explores the dialectical relationship between regionalist discourses and landscapes in the contested making and unmaking of an iconographic European place: the millennia old, irrigated croplands of L'Horta de València (in Valenciano-Catalan) surrounding Valencia, Spain. Drawing upon archival and interview research I ask: How does the regionalism/landscape dialectic function within the historical co-construction of regional politics and places? The regional capital of Valencia has developed in symbiosis with (and often at the expense of) its surrounding croplands. If L'Horta has served as a traditional referent for Valencian regionalist discourse, however, accelerating urbanization has caused some to rearticulate Valencianism as nationalist resistance to urban speculation and economic globalization, contesting the legitimacy of regional government. But this regionalist landscape continues to disappear in the face of new Valencian spaces and the new regional imaginaries they are said to represent. Tracing the historical co-construction of regional politics and place highlights the dynamic importance of the regionalism/landscape dialectic in Europe. Elsewhere I have analyzed the hyper-modern landscapes of entrepreneurial regionalism emerging in Spain. Here I explore the iconographic landscapes that preceded them, revealing the ongoing process by which regional difference can be placed, contested, and perhaps displaced.
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