Mariano over at Liberalismo.org has been translating various pertinent texts into Spanish. His latest gem is a chapter entitled Inversión (Investment) taken from Thomas Mackay’s 1891 A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation. As an ex-vintner, Mackay is of more than theoretical relevance to Spain and Catalonia. Here is part of chap 4, State Socialism in the Antipodes, written by Charles Fairfield, who I think I am right in saying was Rebecca West’s evil daddy:
One can imagine Mackay rubbing his hands in glee on reading the footnote:
There’s quite a lot of cork production further up the Catalan coast (guided walks), but the big plantations and forests are down south, in Andalusia. There producers–who receive generous EU subsidies–are fighting alongside environmentalists–who hate the flammable, water-intensive eucalyptus plantations that often replace dehesa (Smithsonian)–to see off what they claim is the threat posed by plastic stoppers.
It is unlikely that Mackay would have been at all sympathetic to this view, or to attempts to reclassify plantations as nature in order to hang onto subsidies by hook or by crook, but with water stocks low and major forest fires around the corner, the conservationist/protectionist argument will probably win ground this summer.
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