Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at addressing the recent efforts of the Portuguese authorities to transform the physical and symbolic landscapes of the country through the extensive adoption of wind power, focusing on the conflictive aspects of the implementation of wind farms in protected areas.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims at addressing, from an anthropological viewpoint, the recent process of transformation of the physical and symbolic landscapes of the country through the extensive adoption of renewable energies (particularly wind power).

The widespread of a new presumably benign (and only apparently consensual) mechanized landscape has been taken as a material testimony of effective local appropriation of environmental ideas that circulate globally, as well as an opportunity to debunk longstanding cultural assumptions of Portugal as an undeveloped "Mediterranean" place and to re-imagine it as a modern "European" country. At the local level, authorities struggle for wind power, which is expected to bring "development" to "remote areas".

Our presentation will be focused on the controversial aspects of the implementation of wind parks in two Portuguese protected areas - the Nature Park of Aire and Candeeiros Mountains and the Nature Park of Montesinho. In both case-studies we have followed the local debates on the setting up of wind parks in the baldios (communal lands) that are reactivating old antagonisms between the local populations and the preservationist authorities. We believe that theses case studies may aptly illustrate the clash between the "ethics of environmentalism" and the "ethics of cultural self-determination" suggested by the convenors of this panel.