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| Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia |
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Reference |
| Thomas F. Glick, "Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia", 2001, http://libro.uca.edu/irrigation/irrigation.htm |
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Introduction to the Institution |
| Valencia, a city famous for having one of the oldest continuously-operating irrigation systems in the world. The torno type canal irrigation system today encompassing roughly 17,000 hectares of cultivated land, consists of eight interlinked branch canals that draw water from both sides of the Turia river. Medieval patterns of water use, agricultural and irrigation techniques, the settlement patterns of the irrigated areas, and traditional modes of social control in irrigation affairs all [3]survived practically intact into modern times. The basic water-use unit in medieval Valencia was the community of irrigators comprising all who drew water from a single canal system. The communities' objectives were to apportion water justly and fairly to each user and to prevent conflict among the irrigators |
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Rules for Management
of the Institution |
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(a) Boundary Rules |
| Spacial Boundaries: The canal system today encompassing roughly 17,000 hectares of cultivated land, consists of eight interlinked branch canals that draw water from both sides of the Turia river, each of which has its own large user group or Canal Community: Cuart, Benacher-Faitanar, Favarra Rovella, and Mislata (on the right bank) and Tormos, Mestalla, and Rascaña (on the left bank).Social Boundaries: All persons having land in the service area of the canal were members of the commons. |
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(b) Governance
rules |
| That ancient cooperative tradition is manifested publicly in, and partly governed by, the famous Water Court, which has met every Thursday for the last 700 years in the Apostles’ Door of the Cathedral of Valencia on the Royal Plaza in the city center. All of the elected leaders of the member communities take part in the weekly Court and must ordinarily attend the subsequent meeting of the Tribunal de las Aguas. The basic unit of Valencian irrigation society was the community of irrigators, The primary business of the commons as a whole was to enact regulations for the distribution of water and maintenance of the canal system and then to elect the executive and administrative officers to whom authority for the day-to-day running of the canal's normal affairs was delegated. The "deputies" (diputats, elets, or sindichs) formed a kind of governing council and were selected by varying criteria. The most usual form of representation, especially on the longer canals, was by village. The syndic or deputy functioned primarily as spokesman for a particular group within the commons. The chief irrigation officers of the kingdom were the sobrecequiers (or çabacequies) and cequiers. The sobrecequier was a municipal officer; a cequier usually had jurisdiction over just one canal. The method of electing cequiers differed from community to community. The usual methods were election from a slate or competitive bidding to see who could get the job done at the least expense. This pro rata sum was the cequiatge rate or the rate of assessment that each hereter had to pay as his share of the upkeep of the canal system. They had to see "that no one dare steal water, nor disturb the canals, nor cut off the water of any canal, nor divert it through another, nor break down the main canals or branches." The cequier could impose a fine for flooding the road and for stealing water. He watched the diversion dam and controlled the amount of water diverted from the river into the canal. Each irrigation community also had two or more inspectors (veedors), officials typical of medieval Valencian corporations, who assisted the cequier in a variety of tasks but were not subordinate to him. Rather, their purpose was to represent the rights of the commons. the communities had financial officers, such as the collector of the cequiatge and the treasurer (clavari). Maintenance: Once a year cequiers were to clean the main canals from head to tail, remove vegetation from them, and not return the water to the canals until the cleaning had been accomplished in the prescribed manner. They were entrusted with the maintenance of divisors and bridges and had to repair the diversion dam whenever it was breached. Secondary channels the irrigator himself was responsible for maintaining the stretch of canal on which his property fronted. One of the cequier's duties was to see that the hereters cleaned the canals for which they were responsible. If the landowner was recalcitrant, the usual formula was for the cequier to hire men to do the work and charge the owner double the fee. The customary time for cleaning canals was during the month of April, that is, before the spring crops were planted |
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(c) Resource Allocation |
| The traditional distribution system called a turno was a cyclical rotation where farmers took turns in using a given canal flow whenever it arrived, watering their fields to their satisfaction consecutively in a fixed contiguous order. But the frequency with which the rotations came varied throughout the year according to the available river flow, and there was great deal of variation in both the flow of the canals and the actual duration of each person’ turn, so that these were not fixed according to the day of the week and the amount of time given to each farmer. |
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Conflict Resolution Mechanism |
| 1) The dishonest acts (fraus) were defined in the regulations of the communities or municipalities (stealing water, flooding the road, irrigating without right, for example). The cequier would "denounce" such acts in the commission and the fine was exacted later. The cequier could also settle such disputes as he might encounter; the decision, was binding on both parties. The power to initiate a judicial process without one of the disputants actually seeking a decision from him was crucial to the cequier's authority. Justice must be swift lest valuable water be lost. This summary justice was a completely oral process; no records were made of the judicial act. 2) Some conflicts used to arise because of the problem in the hydraulic flow of water, which used to arise not because of the dishonest behaviour but because of technical problems like back water caused by various kinds of obstruction in the channel, effects on the flow resulting from the construction of the mills, divisors, and other permanent structures. For this technical specialists called levelers were consulted, not only in the planning and building stages but also thereafter, when unforeseen hydraulic difficulties arose. |
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Problems Faced by Institution |
| Not mentioned |
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Changes in the Institution over time |
| Traditional patterns of huerta social life lasted well into the present century. However, elements of the old institutions of water control lost their effectiveness as the conditions which they were designed to serve were altered. The completion of the Generalísimo Reservoir in 1950, by assuring the Valencian huerta of the permanent availability of irrigation water, initiated the decline of the venerable Tribunal of Waters, the most salient component of the traditional system of control, whose purpose was to resolve conflicts in time of water shortage. |
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Purpose |
| Regulate the distribution of water and manage the canal system |
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Country |
| Spain |
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Date Of Publication |
| RS-2001 |
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