Laudator Temporis Acti

J.B. Trend, The Language and History of Spain (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1953), p. 21:

Woods and meadows were found, too, in the Pyrenees and at the higher levels in Castille, with the great pinewoods of Guadarrama and Gredos, Urbión and Cuenca. The reaction of an average Spaniard of today, driving through a wood, is not "How beautiful!" but "How profitable!" (¡Que riqueza! What riches!) Yet replanting has never kept pace with cutting though some of the oldest documents in the language are warnings or penalties for the man who should cut down a tree. Qui pino taiare, inforquen-lo (Whoso shall cut down a pine tree, let them hang him), was a piece of customary law in a village on the borders of Portugal, and the legislators were right; the more the trees were cut, the drier the climate became and the typical vegetation turned to heath and moor. In some parts of Castille ilex (encina) is about the only tree left; with a carpet of those inconspicuous aromatic plants which the Romans hardly noticed but the Moslems used for medicines.

Labels: arboricide