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Social Organization and Matrimonial Strategy in the Region of Valencia (Spain).

In the inland valleys north of Valencia, since the 18th century, the population, in spite of bad natural conditions, has grown very quickly, inducing the cultivation of poor lands. Today the villages are undergoing a crisis, and the social stratification is changing. Traditionally, there were three groups of peasants: rich, relatively well off and poor. The transmission of land, bilateral and perfectly egalitarian, should have led for everyone of them to an exaggerate parcelling. In fact, among the rich, a matrimonial strategy, based on group endogamy and on birth limitation involved along the years the reconstituion of individed matrimony, while among the rest, whose matrimonial area was much larger and whose scanty patrimony got excessively parcelled, emigration solved the problems of survival.