THE DEMISE OF EUROPEAN MOUNTAIN PASTORALISM: SPAIN 1500-2000

This article deals with the evolution of mountain pastoralism in Spain from 1500 to 2000. There were two major ruptures for the Spanish livestock sector during this period: the constitution of a market society in the early nineteenth century and the incorporation of industrial inputs for animal feeding from 1960 onwards. Only the second of these ruptures shifted comparative advantage from the mountains to the lowlands, but both of them created pressures for intensification and the gradual demise of pastoralist segments within the annual cycle of livestock raising.