CHIA Seminar: Luis Toledo Machado

A research seminar paper by Luis Toledo Machado, titled: ‘Back-to-the-land after Franco: rural communes and new peasantry in Spain (1971-1984).’

Since the 1960s, numerous communes have been founded in the Western world.

They sought to offer an alternative to family life and to anticipate the creation of a new utopian social order. In some cases, they were located in the countryside.

These groups expected to achieve a new balance between humankind and nature by living together and implementing alternative technologies.

This paper focuses on the analysis of the historical categories that mediated the founding of these rural communes during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship and the Spanish transition to democracy.

To better understand this crucial episode of back-to-the-land and ecologism in Spain, various underground sources and interviews with the participants of these initiatives are examined.

About the speaker

Luis Toledo Machado holds a PhD in Contemporary History (Autonomous University of Madrid, 2023).

His doctoral dissertation, entitled “Youth and Utopia. The Countercultural Communes in Spain (1968-1986)”, was carried out thanks to the University Teacher Training Grants (FPU).

As a member of the HISTOPIA research project (led by Juan Pro Ruiz), his research focuses on intentional communities, utopianism, environmental history, counterculture and the history of the family and the youth.

Luis has published articles in the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Historia Contemporánea, El Futuro del Pasado and Ayer (in press).

How to attend

The event is in-person at Parkinson Seminar Room 2.27 and online on Zoom.

Access via the Zoom link or email hysmt@leeds.ac.uk to join online.

CHIA

This event is part of a programme offered by CHIA, the Centre for the History of Ibero-America. Find out more about CHIA’s activities on the Centre’s homepage.