Rural geography in Spain (1940-2020)from a strong French influence to agrowing thematic and methodological diversity

Résumé

Rural Geography is presented as the branch of the discipline with thegreatest historical tradition in Spain. Its development was due to the enormous influencein our country of the French School, of Vidalian origin, and for the need that thegeographers of the first Franco regime to define a neutral profile, markedly academic inregional and landscape studies, as they faced the authoritation regime’s attempts toexploit geography for its purposes. For decades, practically until the 1980s, most of thegeographical theses presented in Spain included rural content. Since that decade, thedevelopment of urban, geomorphological, geoeconomic or tourism studies, amongothers, has turned Rural Geography into another branch of our discipline. This hasallowed it to evolve towards greater methodological and thematic diversity, to update itscontents and gradually detach itself from the French hegemony when it comes toundertaking its investigations.