Demythologizing and de-idealizing the commons: Ostrom’s eight design principles and the irrigation institutions in eastern Spain

Introduction In Governing the Commons, one of the most thought-provoking books ever written on common property, economic institutions or cooperation, Elinor Ostrom drew on a broad sample of local cases for empirical information to base her theory about the conditions required for successful collective action.1 Among those cases were four irrigation communities in eastern Spain (Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Orihuela), and from then on Spanish huertas began to be mentioned quite frequently in the international literature on the commons and the management of natural resources.2