Common Goods and Private Profits: Traditional and Modern Communal Land Management in Portugal

In Portugal still exist large tracts of communally owned land used for grazing, gathering, and for provision of fertilizer. Within users' communities inequality can persist as one's capability to exploit a communal resource is related to access to private means of production: cattle, man-power, and land. Communal land has become private property by usurpation, sales by local authorities, and partitioning amongst the commoners after state intervention. In all cases, elites benefitted more than lower strata. Most of the remaining area has been placed under control of the forestry services, but since 1976, local communities can exercise rights of exploitation and management over these areas as well. Although revenues of state planted forests sometimes have become the bone of contention between local factions, and local and higher level organizations within and outside the state, this combination of forestry and popular rights seems to offer the best guarantee for equal distribution of communal wealth.