ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the agricultural communities coming into legal recognition from the 1960s onwards, as well as the modification of the relevant laws up to the 1990s, which finally lead to a full recognition, at least in comparison with the previous decrees. The legalisation of the agricultural communities is relevant in several aspects. The chapter examines a paradoxical process; that of the legal recognition of the agricultural communities. It shows that process of legal recognition the state, through its different instances, plays a central role in securing the semi-communal form of land ownership for the agricultural communities. The agrarian reform and unionisation of the peasants had an indirect effect on the agricultural communities and their comuneros. The agrarian reform affected them indirectly because the distribution of land was aimed at peasants without land, mainly the inquilinos of the expropriated fundos, not those who owned land, which was the case of the comuneros.
