¿Privatización o expolio? La desamortización del monte público en Almodóvar del Campo, Ciudad Real (1845-1897)

As late as 1895, the town of Almodóvar del Campo (Ciudad Real province) still controlled 63,269 hectares of public forest. Yet, just two years later, that huge area of land had been privatized, including land supposedly excluded from disentailment for environmental reasons. This paper focuses on two main issues: why were these forests not sold until 1895 -almost half a century after the Madoz disentailment law- and why were exempted lands privatized as well? The answer lies in the survival of the derecho maestral, an ancient feudal rent that complicated the definition of new property established by the liberal disentailment laws in towns that belonged to former military orders. We use a microanalytical methodology to examine systematic, fraudulent practices in the context of public auctions and land valuations. In addition, we explore the speculative behaviour of local oligarchies and focus on the use of a peculiar society, the Sociedad Compradora (Purchasing Company), which was created ad hoc and controlled by the local oligarchy to immediately resell privatized lands at a profit. Municipal sources confirm the intricacies of this capital accumulation process and how it resulted in the impoverishment of the peasantry in this region.