Transitions under Climate Stress: Drought, Governance, and the Emergence of the Mediterranean Climate in Early Modern Spain

Historical research has increasingly recognized that past societies were shaped by climate variability, yet the mechanisms linking climatic stress, governance, and long-term adaptation remain unevenly explored. In particular, little attention has been paid to how recurrent droughts affected the fiscal foundations of early modern states and how these pressures contributed to the historical construction of climatic regions, such as the Mediterranean, as objects of governance and identity.
This paper examines the relationship between drought, agrarian production, and fiscal vulnerability in early modern Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the emergence of the political-environmental idea of España seca (“dry Spain”). Rather than treating climate as a deterministic driver of crisis, the study explores how climatic variability interacted with a highly tensioned agrarian–fiscal system dependent on stable cereal production and predictable revenue extraction.
Methodologically, the paper combines historical climatology and socio-economic analysis by integrating drought proxies derived from rogation ceremonies  with long-term cereal tithe series. Rogation data are transformed into a standardized drought index, while tithe series are normalized to capture relative fluctuations in agrarian output and fiscal capacity across regions. This comparative approach allows for the identification of synchronous and asynchronous patterns between climatic stress and agrarian-fiscal performance.
The results suggest that periods of recurrent drought coincided with sustained declines in agrarian output and increased volatility in tithe revenues, undermining fiscal predictability rather than simply causing episodic shortages. These dynamics contributed to a shift in political interpretation: drought increasingly came to be framed not as a temporary anomaly but as a structural environmental condition. This reframing crystallized in the notion of España seca, which linked aridity, agricultural fragility, and economic vulnerability.
During the eighteenth century, this interpretation informed governance strategies aimed at stabilizing production and revenue through agrarian and hydraulic interventions. In this sense, the Mediterranean climate emerged not only as a descriptive category but as a historically produced framework for managing climatic risk. By tracing these processes, the paper highlights how climate stress can catalyse enduring governance pathways and regional identities, offering historically grounded insights relevant to contemporary debates on climate adaptation and transition strategies in Mediterranean environments.