Spontaneous or programmatic? Land occupations during spain's second republic (1931-1936)

This paper studies the spatial deployment of temporary settlements in Extremadura in 1932-1933 and 1936. The literature has stressed the role of bottom-up forces driving settlements in 1933 and 1936, perhaps making land reform in Extremadura an interesting case study of local collective action-driving policy implementation in a developing economy. Contrary to this view, we argue that there was an equal or more important role of the top-down, programmatic design of land occupations, which explains a large share of the spatial and temporal variation of expropriations and settlements.We thank the valuable comments and suggestions from editors and anonymous referees, especially the Chief Editor and three anonymous referees at this journal. All errors and omissions are ours only. Pablo Martinelli thanks the financial support from Spain's Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under project HAR2016-76814-C2-1-P