ABSTRACT
The province of Almería has undergone a unique transformation in Spain’s recent economic history. 1 Until the end of the 1960s, Almería was a socio-economically marginalized province. With the emergence of intensive horticulture during the 1960s, the province experienced an economic ‘take-off’ and henceforth surpassed regional and national averages of growth. This boom and the socio- economic changes it brought about became one of the most spectacular examples of converging development trajectories in the second half of the 20th century and was dubbed the ‘miracle of Almería’. Almería has moved from the bottom of the Spanish economic ranking to first among the Andalusian provinces and an intermediary position on the national level. Simultaneously, Almería has abandoned its long-standing tradition of being an emigration province and now has Spain’s second highest percentage of migrants. This chapter investigates the ‘miracle of Almería’ as a model of agricultural modernization and focuses on the ambivalence of Almería’s unique success story of rural development on the one hand and the social costs and challenges that accompany this model on the other hand. The first section is devoted to the massive transformation of the province from a ‘desert’ to the ‘orchard’ of Europe. The second section delineates Almería’s historic configurations and identifies three challenges the model is currently facing, namely the environmental impacts it entails; the restructuring of European retailing; and its reliance on a migrant workforce. In the third section, the resilience the agricultural sector has shown during the current crisis is discussed.
