Hopes of recovery: Struggles over the right to common lands in the Spanish countryside, 1931–1936

Introduction The build-up of capitalism in Spain went hand-in-hand with an in-depth rede¿nition of property rights in land, which mainly followed the stream of the rest of the Western world; namely the establishment of the dominance of private individual property rights.1 Nevertheless, since this was a complex social process, every country and even every region followed their own speci¿c paths within that general movement.