1^st Stage (1920-1936) Foreign Colonization

The chronological dating of this stage is defined by the first interventions in 1921 devoted to the transformation of the rice-producing marshland (^{González Arteaga, 1992}) by foreign companies, as well as the first agronomic trials that made rice appear in these areas, ending in the year when the Spanish Civil War began (1936), date when the first promotion for the definitive presence of rice as prevailing crop in the Guadalquivir marshland took place.

This is the time of the large foreign companies (Rio Tinto Company Limited, Compañía Islas del Guadalquivir S. A., Sherry Shippers Association, etc.) that invested in Spain. The favorable conditions in the area of valid legislation in terms of foreign investment fostered the establishment of a large number of companies that consolidated their entrepreneurial activity throughout the national territory, centering their interests on the exploitation of raw materials that had been scarcely used until then. The “company of Englishmen”, as it was known popularly, was established in the marshland and began a series of investments for the cultivation of these terrains (^{González Arteaga, 1992}). During this period, a colonization of the investment or speculative capital was implemented, depending on the case, with imperialist objectives, quite in vogue in those years, which sought the objective of overexploitation of the existing resources.

The social structure resulting from this process is characterized by a strong dichotomy between the two antagonistic classes present: owners and non-owners.

The dichotomous class stratification model used in this stage will be defined by the Pareto theory of social classes, in which the intentionality of discerning the classes (elites/masses) present was the basic objective. For the theoretical foundation of Pareto (1888) and its explanation of the circulation of elites, it must be understood that the differentiation between elite and mass is very important. Nevertheless, the explanation of the structuring and differentiation within the elites centers the theme to be considered much more. Although in our case it could seem that the political dimension articulates around itself the construction of the model, in most of the empirical studies other relevant facts are beginning to be taken into account.

As is easy to prove, this theoretical typology is materialized in the social structure of the rice fields during this first stage considered. We have opted for calling them owners even if, naturally, within this class, elite in Pareto terminology, the existence of these two differentiations that Pareto speaks about can be observed. Therefore, I will use the nomenclature of speculating owners and landlord owners to name both types that belong to the elite in the years that this stage includes (1920-1936). Moreover, the variable property will be filled with a rather notable political element, due to the very strong relationship between belonging to the owner class and their political status as individuals included in the aristocracy.

A very deep differentiation is found in the owner class, depending on their origin. There were owners of European origin who were, in the case of the company, shareholders who acquired their shares of the company from the different stock markets where it was listed. The materialization of these owners in the class structure of the time could be situated in the technicians who belonged to the company who resided in the marshland terrains. We can point to evidence of the presence of Bellavista, a club constructed in the mid-1920s for the Englishmen and other foreign professionals of the English Company that was located in a zone known as Colinas.

Despite its professional and paid character, this collective responded in the class vision to the interests of shareholder owners of the company. On the other hand, national owners of marshland terrains are visualized, whose orientation leans more towards stances that are quite coincident with the figure of landlord owners. Most times, this social aggregate did not reside in the zone, since their status prevented them from residing in the countryside. Their noble origin directed their habits towards urban residence, only going to the marshland to spend vacation periods or sporadic visits throughout the year. In addition, they had the ownership of lands which - in posterity - were devoted to rice-producing, thanks to successions associated to family inheritance, particularly represented by families of noble origin.

At the base of the social structure, non-owners are found. Following Pareto, they would be named as mass. Their extraordinary initial heterogeneity was subsumed when appealing to their status in the structure of land ownership, since all of them shared the fact of not being owners of the land and of being conditioned by the unfurling of their workforce, as a means of production and to obtain wealth of their own and exclusive. By then they could be resemble a typology that responded to the classic canons of local day laborers, with the peculiarities of the context mentioned. That is, a territory characterized by the extensive exploitation derived from its livestock production use, which did not imply an intensive use of workforce.

The first components of this rural social structure are clearly reflected on the social structure of rice-farming municipalities (^{Muñoz Sánchez, 2010}), giving rise to living examples of classical rural social structures. In these, the property structure of the rice fields conditions the status of the individuals, placing them in the social places of privilege when they possess means of production associated to the land production factor (rice fields). The property trend of this factor makes it belong to the owner class, that is, the social elite or, on the contrary, determines the inclusion of the mass of non-owners. Therefore, it is clear that the antagonism and the social polarization produced by this context were conditioned by the access or lack thereof to land ownership and, thus, hugely differentiate the individuals within this social structure.

The scenario relayed signals a polarization and a very strong social antagonism that are materialized in two clearly irreconcilable postures (^{González Arteaga, 1992}) referring to the strong concentration of property in few hands - around 5 % - and the situation of scarcity and precariousness in their standards of living, which the rest of the population in the non-owner class suffered. On the one hand, the owner class that concentrates the entire property of rice-producing lands and has all the privileges derived from its social position and in addition generates a conservative ideology of the existing situation. On the other hand, the non-owner class, with clear desire for changes in the land ownership structure, because the panorama was not favorable at all for it and harbored a hope for social change that would benefit them, allowing them to gain access to land ownership where they worked.

2^nd Stage (1937-1960) Dictatorial Stage

It is marked by a profound political and social change, and not only because it went from the 2nd Republic until the beginning of the most important civil conflict of Spanish history, but rather because - in terms of our interest - the model of exploitation and management of a space like Sevilla’s rice fields was abandoned. During the time interval conceived in this stage, rice cultivation is considered as valuable in itself, and not as an example of agrarian experimentation in the marshland terrains transformed into agricultural surface. The civil war, as precipitating event, and the first moments of the post-war period, with the productive limitations of Spanish farmlands - provoked by the destruction of surface useful for agriculture and by the scarcity of agricultural production in the post-war period -, constitute the starting point of this stage until reaching 1960, the end of this period, when taking into consideration that the modernizing paradigm imbues all the initiatives developed in the rice fields.

The second stage of the rice-farming social structure, called in our contribution dictatorial stage, was marked by a strong tendency to state colonization of these social spaces. The imperative need for food for the Francoist army motivated the swift and efficient implementation of rice cultivation in the Sevilla marshland. This contingent use can be pointed to as the definitive support for rice cultivation, as occurred in the war production Ford system in the US case, which was later redirected towards the consumption industry. The state interests in the zone were quite strong and made possible special attention and efforts in the consolidation of this rice-producing zone as the largest in the whole country. The state intervention was quite broad if we compare it to the null public intervention in this zone during the prior stage, but above all it can be materialized in the practices by the National Institute for Colonization (Instituto Nacional de Colonización) and the National Housing Institute (Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda) (^{Reguera Rodríguez, 1986}), in addition to the infrastructure interventions carried out, from the new retaining walls to the construction of the Canal de los Presos. On the other hand, the activity carried out by companies that had the consent of the Francoist regime, such as Industrias Agrícolas, Beca y Compañía, should not be overlooked, which responded to the interests of the social sectors closest to the regime and with properties in the zone, highlighting in this case Queipo de Llano and the Marquis of Carranza as examples of collaboration.

All this set of acts of state or public interventions fostered a rather desired effect - performing word play with Robert K. Merton’s concept of undesired consequences of the action - of attracting foreign population towards the rice fields, with the intention of taking advantage of the workforce harbored there, and thus manage the resources that would be generated in the future. The set of Valencia residents who arrived to the Sevilla marshland and the preferential treatment they received by the Beca company allowed a rather accelerated development of the rice-producing resources (^{Muñoz Sánchez, 2009b}). The phenomenon of colonization that marks this stage in its beginnings was supported without restrictions by the State, beginning not only a program of infrastructure intervention like the one mentioned, but also complementing it with a migratory policy and of population consolidation in the zone, which would allow supplying workforce for the crop that was being grown (^{Curzio, 1992}). The population system generated had characteristics of its own and it is almost still current in contemporary times. The settlement model enacted by the Francoist regime was based on the colonization towns, conceived as urban nuclei at the service of agrarian production. The residential establishment of the population in that zone was the veiled objective of the marshland colonization. The resource of colonato (tenant farming) was used to achieve the settlement of a fixed population that could be included in the agricultural tasks associated to rice farming and which would strengthen with its knowledge the development of the crop in this zone of new implantation.

The consequence of this circumstance was the consolidation, in a first phase of this stage, of a social structure characterized by a tripartite formation where owners, tenants and day laborers were differentiated. The keys of this typology of social structure were based on the access to land ownership, the connection with the State and the ethnic origin of some individuals - referring especially to the migrant population that arrived to the zone from eastern Spain. With this, it is not argued that there is no presence of other social classes, but rather that in these moments social structuration is based on these guiding principles (^{Muñoz Sánchez, 2007}).

The local political-economic elite settled their inner struggles by establishing the level of contact and pressure that it could achieve with the higher power agencies in the hierarchy of the Francoist State. Living example of this was the political pulse provoked by Beca against the mayor of Puebla del Río with his failed attempt to segregate Villafranco in 1956. In this case, the mayor managed to stop the process by using legal procedures and his political influences both in Madrid and in Sevilla (^{González Arteaga, 1992}). Rafael Beca and his partners hoped to consolidate their entrepreneurial project, attaining at the same time the political supremacy over the territory where they carried out their activity, to achieve in that way a freedom to maneuver that until that moment was prohibited by the political authorities of Puebla with its mayor leading. In the same way, the incursion of Valencia residents under this context was also marked by the special relationship they had with the top person responsible for the Sevilla rice fields, Rafael Beca. For the latter, the treatment in favor of Valencia residents was justified because it was through them that the future success of the rice fields could be achieved, since they had experience with the crop that they could develop with greater advantages than in their native land. This is why he benefitted them through access to positions of tenants, exploiting lands that were the property of the company, which subsequently they were given access to as owners, so the positions of tenant farmers were marked by strictly political relationships, beneficial to the Valencia residents who, as was explained (^{Muñoz Sánchez, 2009b}), categorized themselves as default rice-farmers, from the mere fact of coming from the easterly migration and without evaluating their previous knowledge of the crop.

As has been said, within an economic context such as this, marked by autarchy and the period of civil post-war, food scarcity was frequent; therefore, the State paid special attention to control over the few existing food resources. Wheat and rice constituted important sources of food, so that the controls established on the production of both cereals were very strong. Rationing and controlled distribution of these were the tenor of that historical moment. However, the coming into play of the phenomenon of illegal trade established a parallel black market that contained these and other food products and of any other kind. Naredo paid attention to this issue in one of his best-known articles (^{Naredo, 1981}).

In turn, a new system of dependence on the social structure of rice-producing municipalities was articulated. This procedure was benefitted from the scarcity of food distribution systems that existed in the rice-farming zone and which motivated those who owned an establishment that could trade foods to have the control over one of the scarcest goods.

In these moments the small bourgeoisie was formed by a fraction of commercial class and another one associated to small-scale owners who were consolidating their position after gaining access to land ownership, which they exploited as tenants and which were owned by the Beca Company. In their turn, the elite were formed by large-scale landowners and by the people who harbored the political, economic and ecclesiastic power.

By then, an expansion of the activities that the State was negotiating began to be expanded, and therefore, an increase began in the number of individuals who were used in the political-bureaucratic apparatus which, as will be seen later, will be part of the social classes not linked to the agrarian sector. This element did have special relevance in the population nuclei that were catalogued as municipalities and had town councils; however, in the case of Villafranco, the incidence was lower, since it was only considered as a Minor Local Entity of Puebla del Río and, therefore, the administration and management of its services was far from there.

3^rd Stage. (1960-1986) Modernizing stage

It was marked by the modernization context of Spanish agriculture and, also, of the Andalusian rice-producing zone. The public effort undertaken to improve the productivity of different crops, as well as the energetic and mechanizing efficiency were milestones that conditioned the development of these temporal forks. The interventions by organizations such as the Agrarian Extension Service of the Ministry of Agriculture, in addition to the measures taken by the National Colonization Institute, were tangible proof of this set of transformations directed at achieving the modernizing objective.

The culmination of this stage is situated when Spain entered the then-called European Economic Community (1986), which contributed to a substantial change in the management and orientation of Spanish agriculture, given that the European guidelines in agricultural and environmental matters would mark a different path. Some authors (^{Gómez and González Rodríguez, 1997}) have catalogued the Common Agrarian Policy as the first supranational European policy, since it was one of the earliest priorities in matters of joint management and administration of European funds.

In order to dive into the rice-producing context, particularly centering on the public policies carried out within it, the strong public investment destined to the improvement and remodeling of the rice fields’ irrigation canals is brought up, as well as that for the elevating pumps used to capture water from the Guadalquivir course, carried out mostly with resources from public funds. The Service of Agrarian Extension acted intensively in this regard. At the same time, the good relationships between the rice-producing union and the Francoist government made it so that many resources were destined to the levels of mechanization in the crop. The backing for the substitution of animal traction by mechanical traction, nominalized in the acquisition of tractors and harvesters, exemplified this situation well. Sevilla’s rive fields were populated in a short lapse of time by machinery which - until that moment - was only brought in by the colonizing companies of the first stage.

Attention has been paid to the scope of the mechanization and technification supported by state intervention; however, there is another sphere, the population, where there was work of even greater intensity. The projects carried out by the National Colonization Institute (Instituto Nacional de Colonización, INC), within the Sevilla rice-producing context constitute one of the best examples of the colonizing pattern developed in the new agricultural spaces under irrigation. The Irrigation Zone of the Low Guadalquivir, environment in which part of the rice-producing zone is found, was one of the agricultural projects on which the INC had to act. As has been seen, settling population in the rice fields was the veiled objective of the colonization of the marshland, so that the resource of tenant farming was used to achieve the settlement of a permanent population.

The stage described here was marked by a deepening of the following trends; on the one hand, a growing increase in agricultural productivity was observed, and in addition the process of technification and mechanization was accentuated for all crops (^{González Delgado, 1998}). The strong impulse of government organizations competent in this matter from the Ministry of Agriculture was crucial.

It was since 1960 when changes in the Spanish social structure began to be discerned, which can be considered capital for the near future. Therefore, the changes in the physiognomy of the Spanish social structure also contributed to the transformation of the social structure of the rice-farming municipalities. In order to locate a historical milestone, the mechanization carried out in the crop starting in the 1970s set out a situation regarding the beginning of changes (^{Muñoz Sánchez and Pérez Flores, 2010}). The Spanish countryside, and in addition Sevilla’s rice fields, experienced a marked process of population migration with destination to the cities, with the subsequent rise in salaries from the loss of offer. This motivated the adaptation to this difficult context to become a challenge that was overcome thanks to the mechanization process of the tasks of cultivation of rice and of all agrarian crops, almost completely.

At the same time that it generated a reduction in the workforce demanded, the mechanization process produced the creation of new economic sectors with huge potentialities to create employment, as were maquilas, enterprises of machinery repair, the phytosanitary sector, agrarian aviation, and a long etcetera (^{González Delgado, 1998}). With this, a new economic context was set out, which would have as consequence a new social context. The individuals occupied in this new tertiary sector are the ones that make up these new middle classes, associated to the emergence of the Spanish policy of economic development. The synergy produced by the economic activity generated by Sevilla would be an incentive for the proliferation of enterprises that performed their tasks in the Sevillan city and which have their seat in the rice-producing municipalities.

All of this, together with the creation of agroindustry and later the agroindustrial complex, contributed to the blossoming of sectors within the social structure, different from those existing until that time. The process of social mesocratization underlined by Tezanos (1992) would lead to the irruption of new middle classes that are distinguished from the old small bourgeoisie in its different fractions.

The growth of the service sector of the economy of Spain, Andalucía and the rice-farming municipalities has contributed to the parallel growth of the so-called white-collared and service middle classes. These social aggregates are product of the creation of new occupations related to the administration and the provision of services to other enterprises, activities that did not develop until the middle of the 1980s. The emergence of the rice agroindustry of transformation and its economic role of wealth creation, thanks to the need there was for provision of services from other companies, conditioned a new context in which the entrepreneurial activity substituted in part the agrarian production. It is not that rice agriculture lost its importance, but rather that it is displaced to a secondary role in this new script.

The occupations produced by the tertiary sector are not associated in many cases to direct production; moreover, in some cases they can be catalogued as non-productive when not performing any production process in their realization, as is the case of administrative tasks. Thus, the distinction between productive and non-productive work elaborated by the Neo-Marxist theorists of social stratification will give us a new perspective in this social context characterized by the increase of these occupations. According to the trends studied, the working class went from being the most numerous in the prior stage to becoming relegated to a second place in quantitative and qualitative terms by the new middle classes (^{Tezanos, 1996}). These classes are the ones that in the future will have in their hands the key to governability and the social strength to place in power one party or another, so that they are found in a very different context to the one present during the dictatorial period.

Nevertheless, the de-agriculturization of the Spanish economy and the transformation of the economic structure began the path of birth and later consolidation of the so-called middle classes; all of this, together with the creation of the agroindustry and the social mesocratization whose key factor is the emergence of new middle classes that are distinguished from the old small bourgeoisie, led to consider these new middle classes as important factors of social change.

The increase in the tertiary sector, as well as the outsourcing of agriculture services, fostered for social classes associated to salaried employment to take on an importance of great weight in the social structure of that second stage. Likewise, the de-ruralization of the population and the democratization process of institutions, amplified by a shock-absorbing function fulfilled by the middle classes, lead to considering the institutionalization of the social conflict and its regulations as a trend that is still valid today.

The social conflicts, quite polarized until this moment, are mitigated by the shock-reducing function that the emerging middle classes fulfill in this social structure. The central position of the middle classes weighs upon the social conflict between owners and day laborers that characterized the first stage of the social structure of the rice-producing municipalities, transforming it into a context in which democratization allows for new potentialities for conflict resolution backed by their institutionalization in the reigning democratic scope to be generated. As ^{Dahrendorf (1974)} already stated, conflicts lose violence when they are institutionalized and can pass through predetermined courses that facilitate their solution. When there is a democratized political context, the emerging middle classes whose numbers have increased enormously - because of the circumstances mentioned before - take advantage and position themselves in places of privilege within political parties that defend their interests. From that moment, the so-called local mesocracies that support their authority and representativeness in the rice-producing sector and whose leaders come from small and medium-scale owners come into play, that is, from the middle class of the social structure which functioned during that stage. The managers of the cooperatives, their technicians, in addition to a whole cast of professionals who are developing their activity in positions of privilege in the rice sector, are the clearest exponents of these professional middle classes which in many cases distance themselves from positions of direct ownership.

Fourth stage (1986- ?). From the globalized society to the uncertain future

In this fourth section, we go on to perform a theoretical reflection about the future of social classes in the social structure of the rice-producing municipalities, making special mention of the new theoretical contributions that attempt to describe the novel situations towards which social classes are directed in the future circumstance. In this point we will follow the thesis of mesocratization of class structure, in addition to the transformation of the economic and occupational structure, so that we begin from these circumstances in explaining this stage. We should also recall that the phenomenon of the qualification of the workforce will condition this stage because the collective of workers without qualification is decreased through it, and in parallel qualified workers gain access to better working and security conditions. However, not everything will be as positive as we have been describing before because in this moment new phenomena that will give a different physiognomy to the social structure, such as social vulnerability, migration and economic and employment crisis, will become part of this starting context.

The main axes that will lead our attention in the scope of the occupational structure will be, on the one hand, the decrease in agrarian occupation and, on the other, the increase of occupation in other economic sectors, especially in the service sector. This trend has been known as tertiarization of the economy and in the rice-producing municipalities this transformation was strongly consolidated. The irruption of new jobs, disconnected from agrarian activity, and more centered in other productive sectors, contributes to an important part of those occupied in the agrarian sector directing their work expectations towards other scenarios.

From a quite proximal vision to the contemporary conception of change and social structure, Castells performs a pharaonic effort in his study (^{Castells, 1998}) to describe what the keys are to the analysis of the current moment. Today, this social structure gives greater preference to the criteria of centrality and connection than to those of position in the vertical social hierarchy. The possibility of having access to information flows and the possession or lack of information in a society with saturation of it are very important elements at the time of determining the social class. The new organization of labor derived from the changes produced by the revolution in information technologies and knowledge make qualifications take on a substantial importance. The social positions that result from the application of a new form of work organization in the enterprise-network come to respond to the existence of three typologies of positions referred to the reticular context that characterizes the company-network. Following Castells, “[…] the workers in the network, who establish connections of their own accord […] and navigate through the routes of the network company; the workers from the network, who are in the line but do not decide when, how, why or with whom; and the disconnected workers, tied to their own specific tasks, defined by non-interactive instructions in a single direction” (^{Castells, 1998:273}). Dropping into the central issue of this article, we maintain that the process of economic diversification that took place in the rice-producing municipalities and the profound transformation of the agrarian structure itself have made it so the social positions proposed by Castells can be differentiated in a relatively clear manner. On the one hand, and when we refer to the workers in the network, we find the whole collective of people who, regardless of their sector of occupation, have connections with the new phenomena of innovation and development offered within this context. The professionals who, within the new social structure, know firsthand the processes of change that are coming or those that are germinating have the rudiments to be able to adapt better to future changes. Examples of these are: workers from technological sectors or information management who belong to management or administration companies that perform services for the rice-producing sector (webpage administrators, commercial agents from the crab-producing or rice-producing industry, researchers devoted to innovation in the rice-producing sector, etc.). In the case of workers from the network in the scope of rice-producing municipalities, we are referring to the whole collective of workers who are inserted into the rice-producing agroindustrial system, leaving aside their functions based on their authority in the job. In this way, we would be referring to agricultural technical engineers who collaborate with the application of the principles of the Integrated Production System, or to the workers of the rice-transforming industry, the workers of the rice-producing cooperatives or the plane pilots of the agricultural aviation companies. Lastly, and with regards to the disconnected workers, we would point out the workers who perform their work on the rice-producing surfaces themselves (tractor drivers, harverster drivers, day laborers) and all those who carry out their work for the communities of rice irrigators, whose work consists in maintaining the infrastructures for irrigation of the rice fields.

In the fourth stage, the key of the analysis that results from land ownership moves to a second plane given that the transformation of the economic and occupational structure gives greater importance and dynamism to the tertiary sector. The agricultural owners relinquish the sign of being a social reference in the creation of wealth and jobs - obtained in the third stage - to the non-agricultural entrepreneurs who begin to appear in the places of social privilege of this globalizing stage. At the same time, the broadening of the process of de-agriculturization and wage earning that affects the active population makes other elements that had only begun to germinate in the third stage become part of the structure. The differentiation between the middle classes, understanding them as agricultural or non-agricultural, will have a quite important transcendence in the formation of this social stratification of the rice-producing municipalities. The mesocratization of the social structure will become a palpable fact and will have as consequence an extremely strong influence of these social classes, even up to the point of unseating hegemonic political parties in power at the local level, as it happened with the attainment of the mayor’s office by an independent party in the municipality of Puebla del Río in the 1999 to 2003 legislature. The “rationalization” of agrarian public policies amplified in their action will also have a special consideration given that it exerted a greater intervention through the potent agrarian legislation and the economic dependence on the supports that it produces in rice farmers. In this same line, relationships of dependence are generated in favor of the public funds obtained by rice farmers. Strong connections are detected with the transforming industry and these public resources materialized in the backing for transformation and the potentiation lines of the agroindustry, to give some examples. The social structure that is conformed is characterized by social fragmentation, salaried employment of the active population and an increasingly greater concentration of property which, although many insist on denying it, is an effect favored by the Common Agrarian Policy currently in force.

The new paradigms that guide the progression of the Common Agrarian Policy will transform the physiognomy itself of the social structure, that is, in this point there are proposals for a diversification in land uses, as well as in the activities developed in them. The emergence of activities unknown until that moment in the rice-producing municipalities, such as active tourism, ornithological tourism, or the location of photovoltaic energy sun gardens on surfaces previously devoted to rice production, make new social aggregates irrupt into the social structure, which are more defined by their non-rural or neo-rural character. At the same time, the assumption of the competencies in agricultural and environmental matters by the Andalusian Board, as well as the competency development fostered by the new Andalusian Statute, in which competencies in hydric matters are assumed, consolidate a new scenario in which new agents of the rural environment (tourists, local and autonomic administrations, associations of representation of interests or new rural residents) are positions of great transcendence in what will be the rice-producing rural environment in a not-so-distant future.