Presentation short abstract

In the past 50 years, Galicia (Spain) has replaced rural areas with eucalyptus. Plantation logics are transforming land to maximise profit for pulp production. Grassroots groups have organized to thwart and prevent the expansion.of eucalyptus plantations by uprooting them and restore native species.

Presentation long abstract

The Plantationocene, as a particular socio-ecological system that transforms people, more-than-human species, and landscapes unfolds in distinct ways in Galicia, Spain. It does so by plantation logics and transformations brought about by the introduction and expansion of Eucalyptus as extractivist industry for cellulose, but also as it turns into an invasive species with properties that makes forests vulnerable to fires. I will engage in human/more-than-human ethnographic fieldwork to elucidate the logics of the Galician Plantationocene and how people and trees subvert, challenge and put forth alternatives to understand transformed landscapes, relationships, and imaginaries.The first dimension of this research will focus on the emergence of grassroots groups and forest autonomous communities network called the “de-eucalyptization brigades” to thwart the expansion of eucalyptus plantations with the aim of restoring biodiverse Galician forests. I examine how they deploy cultural strategies of reviving cultural heritage traditions that promote ideas of Galician indigeneity. The second dimension of this research which is a more-than-human ethnographic account about how these practices entail changes in the way people relate to both invasive and native trees of the forest unraveling the ways people and plants co-constitute one another in ways to contest logics of the Galician Plantationocene.