La reforma agraria italiana vista desde España (1918-1953). Un comentario crítico

Abstract

The existing historiography tends to frame the agrarian reform programs in two great historical moments: the period after the First World War and during the 1960s within the parameters of the “Green Revolution.” Based on a certain recent bibli-ography, a critical review of the same view is proposed from the Spanish case. In Mediterranean Europe, some agrarian reform programs were born in democracy but were executed, in a very different way from how they were designed, during a dictatorship. There are certain parallels between the cases of Italy and Spain, whose agrarian structures were relatively similar, between a north where land ownership was more distributed and there was greater industrialization and a south where large property was predominant. In some way, political regimes, in democracy and dictatorship, had to respond to social demands. The role played by the large lan-downers was central to the success or failure of the reform programs, or agrarian counter-reform? However, changes and continuities can be found among those that were conditioning reform policies.