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Juan A. Morales
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Juan A. Morales
Editor
The Spanish
Coastal Systems
Dynamic Processes, Sediments
and Management
The Spanish Coastal Systems
Juan A. Morales
Editor
The Spanish Coastal Systems

Dynamic Processes, Sediments
and Management
123
Editor
Juan A. Morales
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Huelva
Huelva, Spain
ISBN 978-3-319-93168-5 ISBN 978-3-319-93169-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93169-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949346
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or
for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
I dedicate this book to my grandfather,
Juan González, who made me questioning
the dynamics of my surrounding world.
Preface
During the 30 years of my profession, I was interested in visiting all the coasts of
Spain. My training as Doctor in Coastal Geology allowed me to observe and
interpret many of the features I saw in these coasts, because I read about its
currents, waves, and tides before visiting them. In addition, it was in the year 2000
when the Spanish Littoral Geomorphology Conference (GeoLit) began to be held
every two years. Since then there was a meeting point for researchers and pro-
fessionals who investigate the sedimentological and geomorphological processes
that shape the coast.
In the framework of these conferences, the coastal researchers had every two
years scientific encounters to make a tuning about the investigations conducted
during that period. The place of each conference was elected among the different
tracks, trying to complete the entire Spanish Coast. In the conference field trips, not
only we have gone through many coasts of Spain which have been explained by
scientists who have studied them, but that we have also created a family among all
those who love the coastal dynamic. The members of this family are the authors
of the chapters that built this book today.
This book synthesizes the scientific experience of investigators of many uni-
versities, research centers, and enterprises in the last 40 years of studying the
dynamic, geomorphology, and sedimentology of the Spanish coastal systems.
Huelva, Spain Juan A. Morales
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Family of the Coast, my colleagues and friends, who are
the authors of the chapters of this book. You know that without your contributions
and aims this book would not have been possible.
The final quality in the edition of this book was possible thanks to the invaluable
work of Alexis Vizcaino and Femina Joshi Arul Thas.
The knowledge contained in the chapters of this book was acquired by each of
us by means of the continuous financial support from the Spanish Ministry of
Science (under different denominations along years), regional and local research
plans, and always supported by the funds from EU. All these administrations
created in the last decades’ programs to finance research projects allowed a great
scientific development during all these years.
Personally, I would like to acknowledge the guides in my first years of career from
my coaches, Federico Vilas, Germán Flor, and Richard A. (Skip) Davis; all of them,
are now retired, but always available for their scientific counsels and help in life.
The planning of this book was possible by the help and knowledge of my direct
colleagues, José Borrego, Mercedes Cantano, Berta Carro, José Manuel
Gutiérrez-Mas, and Antonio Rodriguez-Ramírez, during my decades with them.
Also, my co-authors for years merit a special attention: thanks Irene Delgado,
Claudio Lozano, Germán Flor-Blanco, Mouncef Sedrati, Erwan Garel, and Gabriel
Pendón. With all of them, I got many sediment and water samples, many current
measurements, too much sand in my shoes, and too much mud in my hands and
face.
Finally, thanks to my wife, who has the suggesting name of Mar (Sea), for being
always available to visit new coasts with me, for the encouragement in getting my
studies, developing my science, and editing this book.
ix
Contents
1 Introducing the Spanish Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Juan A. Morales and Augusto Pérez-Alberti
Part I Rocky Coasts and Cliffs

2 The Rocky Coasts of Northwest Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Augusto Pérez-Alberti and Alejandro Gómez-Pazo
3 Cliff Coast of Asturias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
María José Domínguez-Cuesta, Pablo Valenzuela,
Laura Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Daniel Ballesteros,
Montserrat Jiménez-Sánchez, Laura Piñuela
and José Carlos García-Ramos
4 The Cantabrian Rocky Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Viola Bruschi and Juan Remondo
5 Rocky Coast in Catalonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Isabel Montoya-Montes, María José Sánchez-García, Ignacio Alonso,
Mariona Casamayor and Inmaculada Rodríguez Santalla
6 The Rocky Coasts of Balearic Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Pablo Balaguer, Guillem X. Pons and Miquel Mir-Gual
7 Littoral Endokarst from Mallorca Island
(Western Mediterranean) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Joan J. Fornós, Àngel Ginés, Joaquín Ginés, Francesc Gràcia
and Antoni Merino
8 The Rocky Coastlines of the Canary Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Amalia Yanes-Luque
xi
xii Contents
Part II Lineal Sandy Coasts and Beaches

9 Beaches of Galicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Ramón Blanco-Chao
10 Beaches in Valencian Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Josep E. Pardo-Pascual and Eulàlia Sanjaume
11 Mediterranean Coastal Lagoons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Eulalia Sanjaume, Josep E. Pardo-Pascual
and Francesca Segura-Beltran
12 Beach Systems of Balearic Islands: Nature, Distribution
and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Lluís Gómez-Pujol, Alejandro Orfila, Verónica Morales-Márquez,
Montserrat Compa, Laura Pereda, Joan J. Fornós and Joaquin Tintoré
13 Lineal Sandy Coasts and Beaches of Málaga: Andalusian
Mediterranean Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Gonzalo Malvarez and Fatima Navas
14 Beaches of Cadiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Laura Del Río, Javier Benavente, F. Javier Gracia, Giorgio Anfuso,
María Aranda, Juan B. Montes, María Puig, Lara Talavera
and Theocharis A. Plomaritis
15 Beaches of Huelva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Juan A. Morales, Antonio Rodríguez-Ramírez and Mouncef Sedrati
16 Classification and Characteristics of Beaches at Tenerife
and Gran Canaria Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Ignacio Alonso, Mariona Casamayor, María José Sánchez García
and Isabel Montoya-Montes
Part III Fluvio Marine Systems

17 The Galician Rías. NW Coast of Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Federico Vilas, Ana Bernabéu, Belén Rubio and Daniel Rey
18 Cantabrian Estuaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Germán Flor-Blanco and Germán Flor
19 Estuaries of the Basque Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Manu Monge-Ganuzas, Alejandro Cearreta, María Jesús Irabién
and Ane García-Artola
20 The Ebro River Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Inmaculada Rodríguez-Santalla and Luis Somoza
Contents xiii
21 Fan Deltas and Floodplains in Valencian Coastal Plains . . . . . . . . . 489

Francesca Segura-Beltran and Josep E. Pardo-Pascual
22 The Guadalquivir Estuary: Spits and Marshes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
Antonio Rodríguez-Ramírez, Juan J. R. Villarías-Robles,
José Noel Pérez-Asensio and Sebastián Celestino-Pérez
23 Estuaries of the Huelva Coast: Odiel and Tinto Estuaries
(SW Spain) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Berta Carro, José Borrego and Juan A. Morales
24 The Guadiana River Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
Juan A. Morales and Erwan Garel
Part IV Coastal Dunes

25 Aeolian Dune Fields in the Coasts of Asturias and Cantabria
(Spain, Nw Iberian Peninsula) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
Germán Flor, Germán Flor-Blanco, Patricio Martínez Cedrún,
Carmen Flores-Soriano and Cecilia Borghero
26 Coastal Dunes in the Ebro Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
María José Sánchez-García, Isabel Montoya-Montes,
Mariona Casamayor, Ignacio Alonso
and Inmaculada Rodríguez-Santalla
27 Littoral Dunes on Valencia Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
Eulalia Sanjaume and Josep E. Pardo-Pascual
28 Dunes in the Gibraltar Strait Realm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
F. Javier Gracia, Laura Del Río, María Aranda, Giorgio Anfuso,
Lara Talavera, Juan B. Montes and Javier Benavente
29 The Active Dune System of Doñana National Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
Ismael Vallejo and José Ojeda
30 Aeolian Sedimentary Systems of the Canary Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
Antonio I. Hernández-Cordero, Carolina Peña-Alonso,
Luis Hernández-Calvento, Nicolás Ferrer-Valero,
Aarón M. Santana-Cordero, Leví García-Romero
and Emma Pérez-Chacón Espino
Part V Case Studies of Coast-Human Interaction Problems

and Coastal Management
31 Coastal Management in the Basque Coast: A Case Study of
Dredging and Dumping Operations Along the Oka Estuary . . . . . . 729
Manu Monge-Ganuzas, Alejandro Cearreta and Ane García-Artola
xiv Contents
32 Shoreline Evolution and its Management Implications in Beaches

Along the Catalan Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745
José A. Jiménez and Herminia I. Valdemoro
33 Coastal Management in the Balearic Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765
Francesc X. Roig-Munar, José Ángel Martín Prieto, Josep Pintó,
Antonio Rodríguez-Perea and Bernadí Gelabert
34 The Integrated Coastal Zone Management
in the Canary Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
Emma Pérez-Chacón Espino, Carolina Peña-Alonso,
Aarón M. Santana-Cordero and Luis Hernández-Calvento
Part VI Final Remarks

35 Future Perspectives of the Spanish Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 817
Juan A. Morales
Chapter 1
Introducing the Spanish Coast
Juan A. Morales and Augusto Pérez-Alberti
1.1 Introduction
Spain is definitely a coastal country. The Spanish coast extends along more than
9000 km and 22 of the 50 Spanish provinces have coastal edges over the Atlantic
Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 1.1). In general terms it is a low altitude
coast. A topographic analysis of the 1000 m near the shoreline lets know that the
most part of this fringe is below 50 m of altitude. Exactly, a 76.06% have less than
50 m, 13.70% between 50 and 100 m; 6.44% between 100 and 150 m and only
3.79% exceeds 150 m.
The Spanish coast is too diverse displaying different littoral environments.
Beaches, dunes, rias, estuaries, deltas, fan-deltas, lagoons, rocky coasts and cliffs
with different geologic and dynamic controls are distributed along this extension.
But are the beaches the most valuable environments from an economic point of
view. A big part of the Spanish Economy is based on the tourism and the tourist
come to Spain looking for “sun and beaches”. For that, is essential for the political
authorities have beaches in a good “state of health”, including the sand amount and
the beach services. In Spain the main part of political tasks are not centered for the
Government of the nation, but distributed between regional autonomic responsibles,
but a proof of the importance of the beach maintenance is that this task depends
directly on the National Government (National Directorate of Coasts).
In the last six decades the entire coast of Spain has experienced a deep human
modification and is actually under an extreme urban pressure. During the Decades
of the 80s and early 90s, the main way of action for maintenance and the man-
J. A. Morales (&)
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain
e-mail: jmorales@uhu.es
A. Pérez-Alberti
Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain
e-mail: augusto.perez@usc.es
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

J. A. Morales (ed.), The Spanish Coastal Systems,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93169-2_1
2 J. A. Morales and A. Pérez-Alberti
agement of the Spanish coast was the building of fixed structures (groins, jetties and
breakwaters). The main purpose of these actions was to modify the marine
dynamics, thus reducing the rate of erosion. These structures, linked with punctual
replenishments, allowed the restoration of some damaged coastal areas. However,
in the late 90s the authorities noted that this type of work also interrupted the
transport of sediment in the coast, generating erosion downstream of the modified
area. Today, the trend towards so-called soft solutions is clear. Regeneration of the
coast is, fundamentally, through the contribution of a volume of sand able to
compensate the erosion.
According with the data of Greenpeace (July, 2012) the costs during the period
2009–2011 of the beach restoration was: 552 million euros in Galician Coast,
211 million euros in Cantabrian Coast (Asturias, Cantabria and Vasque Country),
168 million euros in eastern Mediterranean coast (Cataluña, Valencia and Murcia),
42 million euros in the Balearic Islands, 474 million euros in south Andalousian
coast and 242 million euros in Canary Islands. Nevertheless, the studies oriented to
the understanding of the coast commenced just three decades ago, when the coastal
evolution started affecting in an unexpected way to many badly planned human
structures.
This book reflects the scientific knowledge acquired by different research teams
over the last 30 years, which have contributed to an applied understanding. So
today, the coastal management can be boarded in an integrated way.
1.2 Factors Affecting the Spanish Coast
1.2.1 Winds and Waves
A coast can be defined as fringe of terrain where the continent meets the sea,
although in this encounter also the atmosphere plays an important role. The wind
regime controls the wave provenance and littoral drift acting on a coast, making it
an important element to consider in order to understanding the dynamics of this
coastal sector. Normally, the wind dynamic is the responsible to generate waves and
these waves are one of the most important coastal actors in a coast. Winds can
originate waves on the same coastal front (sea waves) or in oceanic areas located
offshore (swell waves). In this case, the waves are propagated to reach the coast. On
the other hand, the wind is also an actor itself, because is the responsible of the dune
dynamics.
The dominant wave provenance in relation with the orientation of the coastline is
a characteristic of fundamental importance to sediment transport. The existence of
an angle between the sense of wave propagation and the direction of the coast is
responsible of the existence of a littoral drift component in the sediment transport,
also called longshore current. Normally, fair weather waves are related with a swell
propagation and contribute to prograde the coastal profile to get a slight slope.
1 Introducing the Spanish Coast 3
Fig. 1.1 Spanish coasts according with the division observed in this book
Waves higher than 1.5 m are associated with storm sea waves. These waves tend
to be destructive for the coastal profile because they generate a movement of
sediments towards the sea, which results in a general erosional effect. The influence
of these storms is more important during the winter, causing erosion episodes on the
beaches and cliffs so as marine surges in the coastal front and overwash phenomena
in the back barrier areas. In most of Spanish coasts, these episodes destroy peri-
odically the urban esplanades located in front of the coastal towns.
Wave conditions have a cyclical behavior resulting in varying onshore and
offshore transports over the coastal profile. Usually, the conditions vary seasonally
from a depositional situation in summer to become erosional in winter. The net
balance of the coastal sedimentary budget depends on the relationships between
wave dimensions, coastal slope, sedimentary supply and coastal environments. This
balance can be also cyclical from a multi-year point of view and normally responds
to climatic cycles.
Fair weather waves are of moderate dimensions (Menendez et al. 2009). The
significant heights (Hs) are less than 0.5 m in the Mediterranean coast, dominating
the provenance of East component. On the Atlantic coast (north and southwest), Hs
rises to 1.5 m, reaching a maximum of 2.0 m on the Galician coast. During storm
times Hs is also higher in the Galician coast, reaching values of 5.0 m. These values
decrease to 4.0 in the northern coast, 3.0 m in the southwestern Atlantic coast and
have its minimum of 1.8 m in the Mediterranean coast. Maximum waves are
recorded in the northern (7.0 m) and northeastern (8.0 m) coasts. This record of
wave dimensions are related with the provenance of waves, being the higher waves
those coming from north Atlantic area, which arrive to the coast in form of swell
from N and NW.
Maximum waves recorded in the Atlantic coast have been measured in Galicia,
specifically in Cabo Vilán, with 13.5 m in 2009, reaching 12.9 m in Estaca de
Bares in 2008 and 12.0 m in Cabo Silleiro in 2014. Much smaller values have been
in measured in southern areas as the Gulf of Cadiz (6.6 m in 2003) or 4.8 m in
Tenerife Sur in 1999. In the Western Mediterranean coast the recorded values are
similar to those of the southwestern Atlantic coasts, with 6.3 m in Alboran Sea in
1963 to 6.6 m in Cabo de Gata in 2015, while to the East the values increase
recording 7.4 m in Cap de Begur and 8.1 m in Mahón, in 2014 (Balearic Islands).
1.2.2 Tides
The influence of tides on coastal processes is fundamental under different points of

view. From a dynamic perspective, the cyclic vertical displacement in water level
results in a variation of the foreshore tract exposed to wave action throughout the
time. On the other hand, tidal currents can erode and transport sediment themselves
in tide-dominated environments. That can be highly important in terms of sedi-
mentation, especially in systems drained by tides like inlets, bays and fluvial
mouths where the tide is the main responsible of the sedimentary infilling. Spanish
coast is divided in two types from its tidal regime. The Atlantic coast has a
mesotidal character with a mean range of about 2 m influencing the presence in this
coast of important tidal systems like the rias of Galicia or the estuaries developed
along the Cantabrian and the western Andalousian coasts. On the contrary, the
Mediterranean coasts are microtidal, with astronomic tidal ranges minor to 25 cm
and do not develop tidal systems at all.
1.2.3 Sediment Availability
The availability of sediment to be transported by waves and tides in the littoral

exerts a first-order control on the dynamics of a coastal zone (Wright 1977). In
Spain, the main part of the coastal sediment arrived to the coast through the 6 longer
fluvial systems. These rivers (Miño, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, Ebro, Júcar and
Segura) drained historically the central area of the Iberian Peninsula, transporting
sedimentary material along hundreds of kilometers to reach the coastal area. This
central peninsula is also drained by the rivers Duero and Tajo, but these finally
reach the sea in Portuguese coasts.
Available sediment grain size also play a critical role in coastal evolution, by
controlling the morphodynamic processes and the sediment depositional patterns at
different temporal-spatial scales (Orton and Reading 1993). The rivers Guadiana
and Ebro transported big amounts of sand able to build in their mouths important
deltas, being the main suppliers of sand in each respective coast. On the contrary,
the Guadalquivir River supply mainly suspended matter that infilled a wide estuary
located in the southwest of Spain which developed the extensive marshes that
presently constitute the Doñana National Park. Nevertheless, this system, do not
supply sand material to feed the adjacent coast. The other three main rivers (Miño in
the northwest, Jucar and Segura in the southeast) provided to their respective coasts
sandy material to be distributed along the nearer coastal systems, but only the
Segura was able to build a true depositional coast, whereas Miño and Júcar do not
supply enough sand to feed the potential wave transport, remaining a sedimentary
deficit in their adjacent open coasts that maintains a rocky character.
Additionally, it turns out that sediment supply to a coastal region is very closely
linked to the tectonic setting of the coastal zone. In the main part of Spanish coastal
systems uplifted mountains constitute denudation areas providing a good source of
sediment to be transported by short rivers to near coasts. Normally, these short
rivers transport gravels and sands, that infilled partially the estuaries developed in
their mouths and occasionally some pocket beaches located in the nearest open
areas. This is the case of all the coastal systems located in the northern, eastern and
southeastern coasts of Spain. On the contrary, there are no substantial uplifted
mountainous areas that can supply sediment near the southwestern coast of Spain.
Nevertheless this is the best sand-supplied coast of this country and the only that
maintains a prograding character. The long-term sediment balance between
shoreface and shelf is also of crucial importance to coastal evolution (Carter et al.
1987) and this is the only littoral tract in Spain where the coastal agents are directly
in contact with a sandy tertiary basin that continues underwater to a silty sand
continental shelf. Both, continental and marine materials supply all the sand that
tides and waves are able to rework. In addition, the Guadiana River is so excellent
sand supplier that not only was able to build a delta but also to feed of sand the
littoral drift acting in the western portion of this coast.
1.2.4 Climate Change and Sea Level Movements
The quantitative relationships between the rate of sea-level change, the rate of
sediment supply and the capability of coastal agents to rework mark the nature of
the long-term coastal evolution (Curray 1964). In this sense, Global warming
causes sea level rise while stronger waves and currents eat away at the coastline. In
a parallel way, a modification of the amount of mean rain water is expectable,
impacting on the amount of available material transported by continental waters to
reach the coast. According to the Spanish Environment Ministry, in the south-
eastern coast the expected rise in the sea level is 4.0 mm/year, whereas the northern
coast 2.5 mm a year. At same time, in Spain a decreasing of the rains will imply a
shortage of sedimentary supply from rivers.
After a study done by the EU (Policy Research Corporation 2016), in the case of
a general Sea Level Rise, the most vulnerable areas are the estuaries, deltas and
enclosed beaches. Research studies have indicated that a Sea Level Rise of 0.4 m is
considered to be a reasonable scenario for Spain by 2100. According with this
studio, the climatic changes could result in the disappearance of 40% of the beaches
in the Cantabrian coast. The inundation effect would also result in the disappearance
of about 50% of the Ebro Delta in Cataluña or Doñana Estuary in Andalousia. In

addition, significant increases in wave height as well as changes in the direction of
the waves and an increasing of the number of storms per year have been observed
along the Cantabrian and Galician coasts over the past 50 years. This effect has also
been observed in other areas, like northern Cataluña, leading to an increased risk of
flood events along the low slope coasts. The total coastline subject presently to
erosion is 757 km3 (11.5%), but the most vulnerable regions in this respect are
Andalucía with erosion along 41% of its coastline, Cataluña with 33% and Valencia
with 26%, despite these regions having protection structures and nourished beaches
along 25% their coastline.
1.2.5 Tsunamis
Tsunamis are waves of large wavelength caused by eventual disturbances of the sea
floor during seisms, volcanic eruptions or submarine landslides (Dawson and Smith
2000). From a human point of view, a tsunami is a low frequency high-magnitude
event, but within a geological timescale is a frequent phenomenon. The impact of
these events at the coastal areas is usually catastrophic. In open coasts the effect of a
tsunami is destructive, not only for the human constructions, but also for the proper
coastal sedimentary environments, representing a breakpoint in the coastal evolu-
tion. In protected low-energy coastal environments, such as lagoons, estuaries, or
coastal lakes, the impact of a tsunami can create a recognizable sedimentary record
difficult to distinguish from storm facies. This record may include surficial for-
mations as cheniers and washover fans (Rodríguez-Ramírez and Camacho 2008) or
subtidal layers which will be conserved interbedded into the ordinary coastal
sediments (Ruiz et al. 2005).
The coast of the Gulf of Cadiz has been repeatedly struck by tsunamis during the
late Holocene and the historic period. Recent papers identified from a geological
point of view the record of, at least, fourteen catastrophic tsunamis affecting this
coast (Morales et al. 2008; Gutierrez-Mas et al. 2009; Lario et al. 2011; Ruiz et al.
2013). Seven of these events were recorded in historical documents (Campos 1991).
Pherhaps, the most famous is the tsunami that followed the November 11, 1755
Lisbon Earthquake, that destroyed the city of Lisbon and many coastal settlements
along the southwestern Iberian coast. The geological effects of this event on the
evolution of these coasts were also widely documented (Dabrio et al. 1998; Luque
2008; Lima et al. 2010).
Less known is the action of tsunami in the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Recent
papers demonstrated the actions of tsunamis in the eastern coast of the Iberian
Peninsula and on the Balearic Islands by studying large boulders present on coastal
rocky terraces and cliffs (e.g. Roig-Munar et al. 2015). The hard nature of these
coasts minimized the influence of these phenomena on the coastal evolution, but the
within sedimentary environments also experienced the events as destroying
breakpoints.
1.2.6 Human Actions
Dams along the rivers disrupt the natural sediment process to their mouths and
coastal adjacent areas. The 6 long fluvial systems with mouths in Spanish coasts
(Miño, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, Ebro, Júcar and Segura) are regulated by 211
dams and many of them are located just in the main courses. In addition, also
numerous short rivers coming to the coasts just from coastal mountains are also
dammed. These dams cut the bypass of sediments causing a sedimentary deficit on
the adjacent coastal systems being one of the human actions with higher impact on
the coast.
Other important human action is the caused by the alteration of the tidal network.
In Atlantic coasts artificial salt pans and fishing farms occupy wide areas of ancient
tidal flats. In parallel, extensions of salt marshes were reclaimed by agricultural
activities. These facts generated a great decreasing of tidal prism in tidal systems,
with a consequent diminution of the tidal currents developed in their mouths.
Finally, in open coasts, many hard structures were built to stabilize tidal channels
(jetties) or avoid the coastal erosion (groins and seawalls). In this sense, more than
60% of estuarine mouths in the Atlantic coasts are presently controlled by jetties,
whereas the main part of urban beaches along the Mediterranean coastline was
rigidized with rocky structures. Many chains of coastal dunes were dismantled to
transform the in urban promenades. These structures contributed to a leak of
flexibility of the coast.
1.3 History of Human Occupation
As in the rest of coasts all over the world, the starting point of the Holocene coastal
evolution in Spain was the beginning of the Flandrian Transgression that followed
the melting of the Würm glaciations. Since then, the Sea Level was rise at a varying
rate, with an estimated average of 7.8 m each thousands of years. The arrival of the
sea at the present level is estimated occurred around 4,000 years BP (Friedman
et al. 1992). In the northeast coast of Spain the Sea Level curve indicates a stabi-
lization of the relative level 5 m under the present position occurred around
7,000 years ago (Alonso and Pagés 2010). This stand maintained during at least
3,000 years, then, it started to go up again to reach 2 m under the present level
around 3,700 years ago. In southwestern Spain the relative movements are com-
pletely similar (Delgado et al. 2012), existing evidences of the oldest surficial sandy
formations around 3,700 years B.P.
Evidences of early human occupations of the coast during pre-roman civiliza-
tions are abundant in Spain. In southwestern Spain, foundries of copper metallurgy
were located in the coast of the 3rd millennium before Christ. Previous works of
Chalcolithic ages evidenced in the continental area of this coast would be sunk by
the last Sea Level Rise of the Flandrian Transgression. In the 3rd and 2nd
millennium before Christ other civilization named Argar was established in the
southeastern Spain. Some of their villages were fortified cities located in positions
that allowed a control of the adjacent coast. At the end of this period the first chains
of sandy barriers were already build by the coastal agents in the sedimentary
littorals.
Later, in the southwestern area Tartessos civilization commenced in Spain the
commercial relationships with Greeks (since 1,200 B.C.) and Phoenicians (since
1,000 B.C.). These relationships were based on the Spanish metals (bronze and
silver) and implied a wide harbor development. Phoenicians also established
commercial villages in all the Mediterranean coast of Spain. In northern Spain,
Celtic villages (named castros) occupy privileged positions near estuaries and
elevated points of the coast since VI century B.C. In the same ages, towers made in
stone named Talayots were build in the Balearic Islands to domain the coast.
After a brief Carthaginian domination of Iberia that finished with the 2nd Punic
war, Roman times signified the establishment of many port cities. 16 of these cities
were located in the Mediterranean coast whereas only 6 were in the Atlantic coast.
This fact suggests that the main part of these cities were found with the commercial
objective of catering Rome with Spanish products. During Roman domination,
there was a climatic optimum and some authors suggested that the Sea Level was
located some centimeters above its present position. In facts some present estuaries
are described in the roman texts as “pallus” (palustrine environments), giving an
idea of the state of clogging of these systems.
The Visigoth domination implied a recession of the harbour activities that reborn
with the Arab invasion. In general terms, the middle age was a warm period with an
agricultural peak and the peoples from the Arabian Peninsula and the northern
Africa colonized and used the incipient deltaic systems for agriculture, developing
also systems to seize the force of the sea. In this sense, the marshes were modified
to build the first tidal mills. Arabs also fortified many Mediterranean coastal towns
to certificate their military domain of these coasts. Some of these coastal cities were
progressively conquered by the Christians during all the middle age wars.
After the final conquest of Spain by Christians, the Renaissance arrived to this
land. This fact coincided in time with the discovery of America in 1492. The
colonization of this new world was done by using ships even bigger and stronger
and these boats were constructed using oak wood. The use of a high amount of
wood signified an intense deforestation of wide continental areas that remained
unprotected and submitted to erosive processes. During centuries, the rivers
transported amounts of sediments to coasts that evolved quickly, developing coastal
plains and prograding deltas like Guadiana or Ebro. This is a moment where the
coasts were not very populated, with the exception of important port cities like
Bilbao, Barcelona, Valencia or Cadiz. The piracy was usual in this epoch. That was
why a defensive system constituted by towers was built along the entire coast of
Spain.
During the centuries XVIII–XIX the little ice age allowed the complete colo-
nization of the coastal plains. A bad time for the agriculture induced the
development of the intensive fishery and many small fisher villages were born in all
the coasts.
The industrial revolution arrived to Spain with an enormous port development
and the location on the coastal surroundings of wide industrial complexes. More
than half of the Spanish population move to live on the coast. That was the real
beginning of the coastal human transformation, but not only by the industrial port
infrastructures. This transformation was accompanied by a human invasion of the
coastal wetlands that were extensively exploited in agricultural or industrial uses
like rice fields or salt pans.
In the XX century the extensive widening of the harbor areas signify a new
dimension for the coastal occupation, but in parallel, a new tansformative element
arrived to the Spanish coast: the sun-and-beaches tourism. Wide coastal plains were
transformed in new urban areas. Airports, marinas and similar infrastructures were
created to satisfy the tourism needs. But the most serious situation was that all this
urbanization was done without a real plan or with a plan that ignored the natural
functioning of the coast. That was how arrived the speculative operations, the
excessive coastal modification or the uncontrolled wastes. In this context the Law
for coasts was dictated in 1988 to try to avoid all of this uncontrolled use of the
littoral areas. Since then, the coastal fringe is considered as public domain. In
consequence, many houses built in previous epochs were destroyed and now all the
projects to modify the coast need strong environmental studies and an integral plan
of coastal management.
In the future, new challenges are raised, especially regarding Global Change and
Sea Level Rise, but also a new vision must be done to include in the coastal
management elements as the new energy sources.
1.4 Galician Coast
Extends between the mounts of the rivers Miño and Eo (Fig. 1.2). This is a rocky
coast including cliffs (Fig. 1.3a) and low-slopped coasts, where a 86% are under
100 m of altitude and only a 0.76% exceeds the 300 m. It is composed by igneous
and metamorphic paleozoic materials deformed by the Variscan Orogeny, but
tectonically re-elevated during the Alpine orogeny when the Atlantic Ocean was
opened (Gómez-Pujol et al. 2014). In the building of coastal forms, the tectonic
played an important role, just by the superposition of these two tectonic cycles. The
coast with the highest altitude corresponds with the plutonic rocks of A Capelada
Complex (A Coruña) where are the highest cliffs of the Iberian Peninsula, reaching
600 m in Cabo Ortegal.
The most characteristic elements are the rias, that are estuaries with a state of
infilling incipient or null (Fig. 1.3b), located in the mouth of rivers coming directly
from the range and with a very short course. A part of these estuaries (Rias Baixas)
are related with a wide strike-slip fault system that also originated grabens in the
continent. Other part (Rias Altas) are also related with the presence of a lithologic
Fig. 1.2 Coastal configuration of the Galician coast, indicating the main coastal systems
banded oriented in N-S direction. This process favored the differential erosion and
the fluvial incision of the less competent materials.
Normally the rivers transport too small amounts of sandy sediments, for that, this
coast do not developed important beaches, but short beaches located in the middle
part of estuaries or in the bottom of cliff bays, as the case of Corrubedo
Beach-Lagoon system (Fig. 1.3c). Pebble beaches are also common (Fig. 1.3d).
The climate of Galicia is too rainy, so the beaches are too far and hide and are not
extensively used by tourists, for that are the most natural and less managed beaches
of Spain.
In the 5 years comprised between 2001 and 2005 in Galicia, the most important
performances were held at beaches in the provinces of Coruña and Pontevedra
(Pérez-Alberti et al. 2013). Galicia received an investment of 450 million Euros,
which were employed to improve 55 km of promenades and nourished only 20 km
of beaches.
Nevertheless, on the Galician coast, the General Directorate of Coasts has car-
ried out a series of geophysical surveys and marine drilling campaigns. The main
aim of these studies was the evaluation of sand existing in the seabed and its
possible use as zones of loan in the replenishment of beaches. In these campaigns,
the 10 km next to the coast, along the Galician shelf, between the years 1987 and
1994 are prospected.
Fig. 1.3 Some examples of coasts in Galicia. a Cliff coast in As Catedrais. b Ria de Pontevedra.
c Dune-Marsh in Corrubedo. d Pebble beach in Coido
1.5 Cantabrian Coast
The north coast of Spain extends between the Eo River estuary and the border with
France. This coast presents a high degree of similitude with the previously
described coast. A 82.7% of the Cantabrian coast is lower than 100 m of altitude
and only the 1.1% exceeds the 300 m. In the western sector, metamorphic rocks
domain the lithologies, whereas towards the East from the Nalón Estuary, the
coastar rocks are mainly composed by limestones. The Cantabrian Coast, as the
Galician one, is controlled by the rising of the Cantrabrian Range during the
Variscan and Alpine orogenies.
The relief is characterized by a chain of coastal cliffs. Between Eo and Nalon
Rivers, cliffs with a flat top and a very sloped front are dominant. These flat tops of
the cliffs extend to the continent by means of a coastal plain named Cantabrian
rasa (Fig. 1.4a). Eastward, from Cabo de Peñas, sectors of flat-topped cliffs
alternate with slight-sloped cliffs, including sectors with a strong karstification
(Fig. 1.4b).
Fig. 1.4 Some examples of coasts in the Cantabrian Coast. a Cliff coast in the surroundings of
Cabo de Palos, where different rasa plains can be seen. b Small beach developed by karstification
in a doline in Gulpiyuri. c Sandy barrier closing the Tina Menor Estuary (Cantabria). d Wide tidal
flats and marshes in the Natural Park of Urdaibai (Basque Country). e Small beach developed in a
cliff front in Mixota (Asturias)
Fig. 1.5 Cantabrian Coast, indicating the administrative divisions and the main coastal features
A set of small estuaries cutted the coast in a perpendicular way. The cantabrian
estuaries are also named rias by the local people; nevertheless, these are not rias
from a geological point of view. The most significant of these estuaries are
(Fig. 1.5): Navia, Nalon, Villaviciosa, Tina Mayor, Tina Menor, San Vicente de la
Barquera, Suances, Bilbao, Mundaka, Deva, Zumaia, Orio and Pasajes, existing
also valleys occupied by bays as Santoña, Santander and San Sebastián. The rivers
draining these estuaries are as short as the coast of Galicia and also come from a
very near range, but in this case, the estuarine environments developed in their
mouths are smaller and shallower and, in consequence, the degree of infilling of
these systems is higher. So the main part of these estuaries developed sandy barriers
in their mouths (Fig. 1.4c) that normally are constituted by wide beach-dune sys-
tems, developing ecologically rich tidal flats and salt marshes in their inner parts
(Fig. 1.4d).
The main part of Cantabrian beaches are just developed in the front of these
barriers, but also small beaches can also be developed in very small bays of the cliff
front (Fig. 1.4e). The human use of these minor beaches is very restricted, because
the access is normally difficult and crossing highly scarped roads. In consequence,
these beaches are very natural and normally less managed.
The most popular beaches in the Cantabrian coast are those located just in the
estuarine mouths, because these are most extensive and the access by car is easy.
The problem of these beaches is that the main part of them was modified by the
human action in relation with the control of the navigation to the harbors located in
the inner estuaries. So, many of these inlets are bordered by jetties. Some of these
jetties were built so early as the 40s decade, when the Spanish coastal engineers
experimented firstly these kind of solutions. The main part of these beaches suffered
a quick evolution after the building of the jetties and many of them experienced a
rotation process, with progradation in the areas closer to the jetties and erosion in
the farter areas. Now, the main part of these beaches has a new equilibrium and all
of these systems have a cyclic behavior with strong erosive periods during stormy
winters. In many cases, these storms eroded the dune fields located in the backshore
area, which act as a sand reserve. Nevertheless during 80s and 90’ many of these
dune fields were transformed or destroyed to build. For that, the present efforts of
the authorities were centered in the maintenance and development of the dune
fields, that can avoid the necessity to nourish the beach after important storms.
Nevertheless, in many occasions during the last decade, some beaches have to be
nourished. An example was the action developed in 1996 in the western beach
(Playa de Poniente) in Gijón (Asturias) that was nearly disappeared after the
building of a marina. The actions included the building of a limiting groin, the
building of a promenade and the replenishment of the beach. For that
120,666.8 tons of rocks were used to build the groins and 451,493 m3 of sand were
employed to nourish a beach surface of 300,000 m2. The sand was taken from a
submarine place located 6 miles to the northwest of El Musel harbor. The total cost
was 24 million Euros and an important study of environmental impact was
aboarded.
Fig. 1.6 Catalan Coast, indicating the main coastal features
1.6 Catalan Coast
The eastern coast of Spain, from the border with France to the Ebro Delta in the SE
point of Iberia is a coast with a bigger diversity from a geomorphological point of
view. Two well-defined sectors can be differentiated in the coastal front. The first
one, named Costa Dorada, extends from the Ebro mouth to the Tordera Delta and
the other from here to the border with France. The first sector is a low coast in
which a dominance of deltas (Ebro, Llobregat and Tordera). The second, the
so-called Costa Brava, is a generally low rocky coast with a predominance of
low-slopped cliffs (Fig. 1.6). In general, a 90% of this coast do not exceeds the
100 m of altitude and only a 0.2% his higher than 300 m.
From a geological point of view, plio-quaternary sediments are characteristic of
the southern flat areas (Ebro Delta, Campo de Tarragona or surroundings of El
Prat de Barcelona). To the North, mesozoic rocks of the Catalan Range conditions
the coastal morphology. In the surrounding of Cap Roig the jurassic and cretacean
limestones domains, whereas from the surroundings of Barcelona to Cap de Begur
domain the granitic rocks. Near the border with France, terrigenous sedimentary
rocks as sandstones, shales and conglometates are the most significant lithologies.
This variety of rocky formations exerts an important control on the coastal
morphodynamics.
The most significant factor controlling the sedimentation is an active littoral drift
acting in a north-to-south sense. From a geological point of view all this coast is
dominated by the presence of three Alpine ranges (Pirineos, Iberian and Coastal
Fig. 1.7 Some examples of coasts in Catalonia. a Beach developed on a rocky platform in
Capellans Beach (Photo by Jorge Franganillo). b Small beach in a rocky coastal cell in Tossa de
Mar (Photo by Alberto Gonzalez-Rovira). c Aerial view of the Ebro Delta. d Coastal defenses in
Cambrills Beach. e Barcelona Beach during the touristic season (Photo by Manuel Martin)
Catalan ranges), composed by Mesozoic materials deformed during the Alpine

cycle. The main structural axis are orientated with a component W-E, then the main
rivers flux along valleys longer than in the northern coast despite to have a rocky
dominated coast. So, the southern part of this coast is flooded by one of the longer
and most discharging rivers of Iberia: the Ebro River.
The geological configuration of this coast induced the existence of rocky tracks
separated by more or less open embayments partially covered by long beaches
developed on a rocky subtidal platform (Fig. 1.7a). The morphological configura-
tion of the entire coast is very similar, but the presence of many caps and bays
divide the coast in many sedimentary cells (Fig. 1.7b). The only exception is the
Ebro river mouth, which developed the biggest delta in Spain and one of the most
important of Europe (Fig. 1.7c), considered as the most important supplier of
sediments of the eastern coast of Spain. Regrettably, this river was regulated by
more than 40 dams and presents now an important sedimentary deficit, suffered not
only by the beaches located in the delta front, but by all the coastal cells located
downdrift.
On the other hand the eastern coast of Spain is the most exploited from a
touristic point of view and the cost of beach maintenance is the higher of Spain. In
this sense, many coastal defenses were built along the beaches (Fig. 1.7d). Only the
5000 km of urban beaches of the city of Barcelona (Fig. 1.7e) received a budget of
33 million Euros for restoration between 2006 and 2010. The works of beach
management included the building of submerged breakwaters, the beach replen-
ishment with 700.000 m3 and a continuous monitoring by cameras, studied and
analised by the Superior Scientific Bureau of Spain (CSIC).
1.7 Levante and Alboran Coasts
Between the Ebro Delta and the Gibraltar Strait, the Levantine-Alboran coast
stretches. This coast enlarges the Mediterranean coast of three Spanish regions:
Valencia, Murcia and Andalucía (Fig. 1.8). In this coastal fringe, a 91% is lower
than 100 m of altitude and less 1% exceeds the 300 m. From this point of view, this
littoral is a low and ravined coast, where alternate rocky tracks with wide coastal
plains. Good examples of the rocky tracks can be observed in Sierra Helada
(Alicante), the segment between Cabo de Palos and Cabo de Gata (Almeria).
Examples of the coastal plains are the flats of Castellón, Valencia, Alicante or
Cartagena, some of them associated to coastal lagoons like the Albufera de
Valencia or the Mar Menor in Murcia.
The proximity of the Betic Range, generates two distinctly different broad sec-
tors in the configuration of the relief (Fig. 1.9). The first, from the Ebro Delta to
Cabo de Palos, is constituted by a sedimentary coast with wide sandy plains. The
second, much more controlled by the geological nature of the rocks, is constituted
Fig. 1.8 Levante and Alboran Coasts, indicating the main coastal features
Fig. 1.9 Some examples of coasts in Levante and Alboran. a Double tombolo completely
urbanized from Calpe Rock (Levante Coast). b Cliffs excavated in volcanic rocks in Cabo de Gata.
c Betic Range see from the sea in Marbella (Alboran Coast)
by low-slopped cliffs cutted by narrow valleys where ephemeral streams named

ramblas are developed. In this second track the flat sectors are less abundant and
narrower, with the exception of the track Campo de Dalias-El Ejido (Almería) and
Motril (Granada), where extensive fan deltas were developed.
Very tourist beaches stretch along this coast and all of them have a clear ten-
dency to the erosive processes. As proof of this fact, they are constant nourishment
that the Coastal Administration is obligated to do in these beaches. An example of
nourishment in this coast was the replenishment of Denia (Alicante). This
restoration try to resolve a problem of continuous erosion caused downdrift of a
jetty. The replenishment was done in 2006, with a volume of sand of 953,307 m3
taken by a suction dredge from an area of seabed located in the front of the cliff of
Sierra Helada, 35 m under the sea level. The sand had a medium size of 0.22 mm
and was distributed in three beaches with a total of 2,810 m long, covering an area
of 106,000 m2, with a medium slope of 3.5%. In order to avoid further losses of
sand, three groins perpendicular to the coast were built, but the previous groin of
Punta del Molino was 60 m shortened. Since then other restoration were necessary
in the same beach. The last of them in July 2011, when 300 m of beach were
replenished with 800 tons of sand, which disappeared in only a week, with a cost of
near 12,000 Euros.
Fig. 1.10 Balearic Islands, indicating the main coastal features
Fig. 1.11 Some examples of coasts in Balearic Islands. a Tramuntana Cliffs along the northern
coast of Mallorca (Photo by M. Rosa Ferre). b Cala in the eastern coast of Mallorca (Photo by
Vicente Miramón). c Endokarstic cavity connected with the coast (Photo by Roberto Lumbreras).
d Tsunamigenic blocks in the southern coast of Menorca (Photo by M. Mar Mateo)
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one of the last legislatures, who might have come out of one of
Lever’s novels. He was undoubtedly a bad case, but had a genuine
sense of humor, and his “bulls” made him the delight of the house.
One day I came in late, just as a bill was being voted on, and
meeting my friend, hailed him, “Hello, Pat, what’s up? what’s this
they’re voting on?” to which Pat replied, with contemptuous
indifference to the subject, but with a sly twinkle in his eye, “Oh,
some unimportant measure, sorr; some local bill or other—a
constitutional amendment!”
The old Dublin Parliament never listened to a better specimen of a
bull than was contained in the speech of a very genial and pleasant
friend of mine, a really finished orator, who, in the excitement
attendant upon receiving Governor Cleveland’s message vetoing the
five-cent-fare bill, uttered the following sentence: “Mr. Speaker, I
recognize the hand that crops out in that veto; I have heard it
before!”
One member rather astonished us one day by his use of the word
“shibboleth.” He had evidently concluded that this was merely a
more elegant synonym of the good old word shillalah, and in
reproving a colleague for opposing a bill to increase the salaries of
public laborers, he said, very impressively, “The throuble wid the
young man is, that he uses the wurrd economy as a shibboleth,
wherewith to strike the working man.” Afterwards he changed the
metaphor, and spoke of a number of us as using the word “reform”
as a shibboleth, behind which to cloak our evil intentions.
A mixture of classical and constitutional misinformation was
displayed a few sessions past in the State Assembly when I was a
member of the Legislature. It was on the occasion of that annual
nuisance, the debate upon the Catholic Protectory item of the Supply
Bill. Every year some one who is desirous of bidding for the Catholic
vote introduces this bill, which appropriates a sum of varying
dimensions for the support of the Catholic Protectory, an excellent
institution, but one which has no right whatever to come to the State
for support; each year the insertion of the item is opposed by a small
number of men, including the more liberal Catholics themselves, on
proper grounds, and by a larger number from simple bigotry—a fact
which was shown two years ago, when many of the most bitter
opponents of this measure cheerfully supported a similar and equally
objectionable one in aid of a Protestant institution. On the occasion
referred to there were two assemblymen, both Celtic gentlemen, who
were rivals for the leadership of the minority; one of them a stout,
red-faced man, who may go by the name of the “Colonel,” owing to
his having seen service in the army; while the other was a dapper,
voluble fellow, who had at one time been a civil justice and was
called the “Judge.” Somebody was opposing the insertion of the item
on the ground (perfectly just, by the way) that it was unconstitutional,
and he dwelt upon this objection at some length. The Judge, who
knew nothing of the constitution, except that it was continually being
quoted against all of his favorite projects, fidgeted about for some
time, and at last jumped up to know if he might ask the gentleman a
question. The latter said, “Yes,” and the Judge went on, “I’d like to
know if the gintleman has ever personally seen the Catholic
Protectoree?” “No, I haven’t,” said his astonished opponent. “Then,
phwat do you mane by talking about its being unconstitootional? It’s
no more unconstitootional than you are!” Then, turning to the house,
with slow and withering sarcasm, he added, “The throuble wid the
gintleman is that he okkipies what lawyers would call a kind of a
quasi-position upon this bill,” and sat down amid the applause of his
followers.
His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained altogether too much glory
from the encounter, and after the nonplussed countryman had taken
his seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the elated Judge,
looked at him majestically for a moment, and said, “You’ll excuse my
mentioning, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down knows
more law in a wake than you do in a month; and more than that,
Mike Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin’ Latin on the flure of
this House, when you don’t know the alpha and omayga of the
language!” and back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated
submission behind him.
The Judge was always falling foul of the Constitution. Once, when
defending one of his bills which made a small but wholly indefensible
appropriation of State money for a private purpose, he asserted “that
the Constitution didn’t touch little things like that”; and on another
occasion he remarked to me that he “never allowed the Constitution
to come between friends.”
The Colonel was at that time chairman of a committee, before
which there sometimes came questions affecting the interests or
supposed interests of labor. The committee was hopelessly bad in its
composition, most of the members being either very corrupt or
exceedingly inefficient. The Colonel generally kept order with a good
deal of dignity; indeed, when, as not infrequently happened, he had
looked upon the rye that was flavored with lemon-peel, his sense of
personal dignity grew till it became fairly majestic, and he ruled the
committee with a rod of iron. At one time a bill had been introduced
(one of the several score of preposterous measures that annually
make their appearance purely for purposes of buncombe), by whose
terms all laborers in the public works of great cities were to receive
three dollars a day—double the market price of labor. To this bill, by
the way, an amendment was afterwards offered in the house by
some gentleman with a sense of humor, which was to make it read
that all the inhabitants of great cities were to receive three dollars a
day, and the privilege of laboring on the public works if they chose;
the original author of the bill questioning doubtfully if the amendment
“didn’t make the measure too sweeping.” The measure was, of
course, of no consequence whatever to the genuine laboring men,
but was of interest to the professional labor agitators; and a body of
the latter requested leave to appear before the committee. This was
granted, but on the appointed day the chairman turned up in a
condition of such portentous dignity as to make it evident that he had
been on a spree of protracted duration. Down he sat at the head of
the table, and glared at the committeemen, while the latter, whose
faces would not have looked amiss in a rogues’ gallery, cowered
before him. The first speaker was a typical professional laboring
man; a sleek, oily little fellow, with a black mustache, who had never
done a stroke of work in his life. He felt confident that the Colonel
would favor him,—a confidence soon to be rudely shaken,—and
began with a deprecatory smile:
“Humble though I am——”
Rap, rap, went the chairman’s gavel, and the following dialogue
occurred:
Chairman (with dignity). “What’s that you said you were, sir?”
Professional Workingman (decidedly taken aback). “I—I said I was
humble, sir?”
Chairman (reproachfully). “Are you an American citizen, sir?”
P. W. “Yes, sir.”
Chairman (with emphasis). “Then you’re the equal of any man in
this State! Then you’re the equal of any man on this committee!
Don’t let me hear you call yourself humble again! Go on sir!”
After this warning the advocate managed to keep clear of the
rocks until, having worked himself up to quite a pitch of excitement,
he incautiously exclaimed, “But the poor man has no friends!” which
brought the Colonel down on him at once. Rap, rap, went his gavel,
and he scowled grimly at the offender while he asked with deadly
deliberation:
“What did you say that time, sir?”
P. W. (hopelessly). “I said the poor man had no friends, sir.”
Chairman (with sudden fire). “Then you lied, sir! I am the poor
man’s friend! so are my colleagues, sir!” (Here the rogues’ gallery
tried to look benevolent.) “Speak the truth, sir!” (with sudden change
from the manner admonitory to the manner mandatory). “Now, you
sit down quick, or get out of this somehow!”
This put an end to the sleek gentleman, and his place was taken
by a fellow-professional of another type—a great, burly man, who
would talk to you on private matters in a perfectly natural tone of
voice, but who, the minute he began to speak of the Wrongs (with a
capital W) of Labor (with a capital L), bellowed as if he had been a
bull of Bashan. The Colonel, by this time pretty far gone, eyed him
malevolently, swaying to and fro in his chair. However, the first effect
of the fellow’s oratory was soothing rather than otherwise, and
produced the unexpected result of sending the chairman fast asleep
sitting bolt upright. But in a minute or two, as the man warmed up to
his work, he gave a peculiarly resonant howl which waked the
Colonel up. The latter came to himself with a jerk, looked fixedly at
the audience, caught sight of the speaker, remembered having seen
him before, forgot that he had been asleep, and concluded that it
must have been on some previous day. Hammer, hammer, went the
gavel, and—
“I’ve seen you before, sir!”
“You have not,” said the man.
“Don’t tell me I lie, sir!” responded the Colonel, with sudden
ferocity. “You’ve addressed this committee on a previous day!”
“I’ve never—” began the man; but the Colonel broke in again:
“Sit down, sir! The dignity of the chair must be preserved! No man
shall speak to this committee twice. The committee stands
adjourned.” And with that he stalked majestically out of the room,
leaving the committee and the delegation to gaze sheepishly into
each other’s faces.
OUTSIDERS.
After all, outsiders furnish quite as much fun as the legislators
themselves. The number of men who persist in writing one letters of
praise, abuse, and advice on every conceivable subject is appalling;
and the writers are of every grade, from the lunatic and the criminal
up. The most difficult to deal with are the men with hobbies. There is
the Protestant fool, who thinks that our liberties are menaced by the
machinations of the Church of Rome; and his companion idiot, who
wants legislation against all secret societies, especially the Masons.
Then there are the believers in “isms,” of whom the women-
suffragists stand in the first rank. Now I have always been a believer
in woman’s rights, but I must confess I have never seen such a
hopelessly impracticable set of persons as the woman-suffragists
who came up to Albany to get legislation. They simply would not
draw up their measures in proper form; when I pointed out to one of
them that their proposed bill was drawn up in direct defiance of
certain of the sections of the Constitution of the State he blandly
replied that he did not care at all for that, because the measure had
been drawn up so as to be in accord with the Constitution of Heaven.
There was no answer to this beyond the very obvious one that
Albany was in no way akin to Heaven. The ultra-temperance people
—not the moderate and sensible ones—are quite as impervious to
common sense.
A member’s correspondence is sometimes amusing. A member
receives shoals of letters of advice, congratulation, entreaty, and
abuse, half of them anonymous. Most of these are stupid; but some
are at least out of the common.
I had some constant correspondents. One lady in the western part
of the State wrote me a weekly disquisition on woman’s rights. A
Buffalo clergyman spent two years on a one-sided correspondence
about prohibition. A gentleman of Syracuse wrote me such a stream
of essays and requests about the charter of that city that I feared he
would drive me into a lunatic asylum; but he anticipated matters by
going into one himself. A New Yorker at regular intervals sent up a
request that I would “reintroduce” the Dongan charter, which had
lapsed two centuries before. A gentleman interested in a proposed
law to protect primaries took to telegraphing daily questions as to its
progress—a habit of which I broke him by sending in response
telegrams of several hundred words each, which I was careful not to
prepay.
There are certain legislative actions which must be taken in a
purely Pickwickian sense. Notable among these are the resolutions
of sympathy for the alleged oppressed patriots and peoples of
Europe. These are generally directed against England, as there
exists in the lower strata of political life an Anglophobia quite as
objectionable as the Anglomania of the higher social circles.
As a rule, these resolutions are to be classed as simply bouffe
affairs; they are commonly introduced by some ambitious legislator
—often, I regret to say, a native American—who has a large foreign
vote in his district. During my term of service in the Legislature,
resolutions were introduced demanding the recall of Minister Lowell,
assailing the Czar for his conduct towards the Russian Jews,
sympathizing with the Land League and the Dutch Boers, etc., etc.;
the passage of each of which we strenuously and usually
successfully opposed, on the ground that while we would warmly
welcome any foreigner who came here, and in good faith assumed
the duties of American citizenship, we had a right to demand in
return that he should not bring any of his race or national antipathies
into American political life. Resolutions of this character are
sometimes undoubtedly proper; but in nine cases out of ten they are
wholly unjustifiable. An instance of this sort of thing which took place
not at Albany may be cited. Recently the Board of Aldermen of one
of our great cities received a stinging rebuke, which it is to be feared
the aldermanic intellect was too dense fully to appreciate. The
aldermen passed a resolution “condemning” the Czar of Russia for
his conduct towards his fellow-citizens of Hebrew faith, and
“demanding” that he should forthwith treat them better; this was
forwarded to the Russian Minister, with a request that it be sent to
the Czar. It came back forty-eight hours afterwards, with a note on
the back by one of the under-secretaries of the legation, to the effect
that as he was not aware that Russia had any diplomatic relations
with this particular Board of Aldermen, and as, indeed, Russia was
not officially cognizant of their existence, and, moreover, was wholly
indifferent to their opinions on any conceivable subject, he herewith
returned them their kind communication.[7]
In concluding I would say, that while there is so much evil at
Albany, and so much reason for our exerting ourselves to bring
about a better state of things, yet there is no cause for being
disheartened or for thinking that it is hopeless to expect
improvement. On the contrary, the standard of legislative morals is
certainly higher than it was fifteen years ago or twenty-five years
ago. In the future it may either improve or retrograde, by fits and
starts, for it will keep pace exactly with the awakening of the popular
mind to the necessity of having honest and intelligent
representatives in the State Legislature.[8]
I have had opportunity of knowing something about the workings
of but a few of our other State legislatures: from what I have seen
and heard, I should say that we stand about on a par with those of
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Illinois, above that of Louisiana, and
below those of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Wyoming, as well as below the national legislature at Washington.
But the moral status of a legislative body, especially in the West,
often varies widely from year to year.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The Century, January, 1885.
[7] A few years later a member of the Italian Legation “scored”
heavily on one of our least pleasant national peculiarities. An
Italian had just been lynched in Colorado, and an Italian paper in
New York bitterly denounced the Italian Minister for his supposed
apathy in the matter. The member of the Legation in question
answered that the accusations were most unjust, for the Minister
had worked zealously until he found that the deceased “had taken
out his naturalization papers, and was entitled to all the privileges
of American citizenship.”
[8] At present, twelve years later, I should say that there was
rather less personal corruption in the Legislature; but also less
independence and greater subservience to the machine, which is
even less responsive to honest and enlightened public opinion.
VI
MACHINE POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY[9]
In New York city, as in most of our other great municipalities, the

direction of political affairs has been for many years mainly in the
hands of a class of men who make politics their regular business and
means of livelihood. These men are able to keep their grip only by
means of the singularly perfect way in which they have succeeded in
organizing their respective parties and factions; and it is in
consequence of the clock-work regularity and efficiency with which
these several organizations play their parts, alike for good and for
evil, that they have been nicknamed by outsiders “machines,” while
the men who take part in and control, or, as they would themselves
say, “run” them, now form a well-recognized and fairly well-defined
class in the community, and are familiarly known as machine
politicians. It may be of interest to sketch in outline some of the
characteristics of these men and of their machines, the methods by
which and the objects for which they work, and the reasons for their
success in the political field.
The terms machine and machine politician are now undoubtedly
used ordinarily in a reproachful sense; but it does not at all follow
that this sense is always the right one. On the contrary, the machine
is often a very powerful instrument for good; and a machine politician
really desirous of doing honest work on behalf of the community, is
fifty times as useful an ally as is the average philanthropic outsider.
Indeed, it is of course true, that any political organization (and
absolutely no good work can be done in politics without an
organization) is a machine; and any man who perfects and uses this
organization is himself, to a certain extent, a machine politician. In
the rough, however, the feeling against machine politics and
politicians is tolerably well justified by the facts, although this
statement really reflects most severely upon the educated and
honest people who largely hold themselves aloof from public life, and
show a curious incapacity for fulfilling their public duties.
The organizations that are commonly and distinctively known as
machines are those belonging to the two great recognized parties, or
to their factional subdivisions; and the reason why the word machine
has come to be used, to a certain extent, as a term of opprobrium is
to be found in the fact that these organizations are now run by the
leaders very largely as business concerns to benefit themselves and
their followers, with little regard to the community at large. This is
natural enough. The men having control and doing all the work have
gradually come to have the same feeling about politics that other
men have about the business of a merchant or manufacturer; it was
too much to expect that if left entirely to themselves they would
continue disinterestedly to work for the benefit of others. Many a
machine politician who is to-day a most unwholesome influence in
our politics is in private life quite as respectable as anyone else; only
he has forgotten that his business affects the state at large, and,
regarding it as merely his own private concern, he has carried into it
the same selfish spirit that actuates in business matters the majority
of the average mercantile community. A merchant or manufacturer
works his business, as a rule, purely for his own benefit, without any
regard whatever for the community at large. The merchant uses all
his influence for a low tariff, and the manufacturer is even more
strenuously in favor of protection, not at all from any theory of
abstract right, but because of self-interest. Each views such a
political question as the tariff, not from the standpoint of how it will
affect the nation as a whole, but merely from that of how it will affect
him personally. If a community were in favor of protection, but
nevertheless permitted all the governmental machinery to fall into the
hands of importing merchants, it would be small cause for wonder if
the latter shaped the laws to suit themselves, and the chief blame,
after all, would rest with the supine and lethargic majority which
failed to have enough energy to take charge of their own affairs. Our
machine politicians, in actual life act in just this same way; their
actions are very often dictated by selfish motives, with but little
regard for the people at large though, like the merchants, they often
hold a very high standard of honor on certain points; they therefore
need continually to be watched and opposed by those who wish to
see good government. But, after all, it is hardly to be wondered at
that they abuse power which is allowed to fall into their hands owing
to the ignorance or timid indifference of those who by rights should
themselves keep it.
In a society properly constituted for true democratic government—
in a society such as that seen in many of our country towns, for
example—machine rule is impossible. But in New York, as well as in
most of our other great cities, the conditions favor the growth of ring
or boss rule. The chief causes thus operating against good
government are the moral and mental attitudes towards politics
assumed by different sections of the voters. A large number of these
are simply densely ignorant, and, of course, such are apt to fall
under the influence of cunning leaders, and even if they do right, it is
by hazard merely. The criminal class in a great city is always of
some size, while what may be called the potentially criminal class is
still larger. Then there is a great class of laboring men, mostly of
foreign birth or parentage, who at present both expect too much from
legislation and yet at the same time realize too little how powerfully
though indirectly they are affected by a bad or corrupt government.
In many wards the overwhelming majority of the voters do not realize
that heavy taxes fall ultimately upon them, and actually view with
perfect complacency burdens laid by their representatives upon the
tax-payers, and, if anything, approve of a hostile attitude towards the
latter—having a vague feeling of animosity towards them as
possessing more than their proper proportion of the world’s good
things, and sharing with most other human beings the capacity to
bear with philosophic equanimity ills merely affecting one’s
neighbors. When powerfully roused on some financial, but still more
on some sentimental question, this same laboring class will throw its
enormous and usually decisive weight into the scale which it
believes inclines to the right; but its members are often curiously and
cynically indifferent to charges of corruption against favorite heroes
or demagogues, so long as these charges do not imply betrayal of
their own real or fancied interests. Thus an alderman or
assemblyman representing certain wards may make as much money
as he pleases out of corporations without seriously jeopardizing his
standing with his constituents; but if he once, whether from honest or
dishonest motives, stands by a corporation when the interests of the
latter are supposed to conflict with those of “the people,” it is all up
with him. These voters are, moreover, very emotional; they value in a
public man what we are accustomed to consider virtues only to be
taken into account when estimating private character. Thus, if a man
is open-handed and warm-hearted, they consider it as a fair offset to
his being a little bit shaky when it comes to applying the eighth
commandment to affairs of state. I have more than once heard the
statement, “He is very liberal to the poor,” advanced as a perfectly
satisfactory answer to the charge that a certain public man was
corrupt. Moreover, working men, whose lives are passed in one
unceasing round of narrow and monotonous toil, are not unnaturally
inclined to pay heed to the demagogues and professional labor
advocates who promise if elected to try to pass laws to better their
condition; they are hardly prepared to understand or approve the
American doctrine of government, which is that the state cannot
ordinarily attempt to better the condition of a man or a set of men,
but can merely see that no wrong is done him or them by anyone
else, and that all alike have a fair chance in the struggle for life—a
struggle wherein, it may as well at once be freely though sadly
acknowledged, very many are bound to fail, no matter how ideally
perfect any given system of government may be.
Of course it must be remembered that all these general
statements are subject to an immense number of individual
exceptions; there are tens of thousands of men who work with their
hands for their daily bread and yet put into actual practice that
sublime virtue of disinterested adherence to the right, even when it
seems likely merely to benefit others, and those others better off
than they themselves are; for they vote for honesty and cleanliness,
in spite of great temptation to do the opposite, and in spite of their
not seeing how any immediate benefit will result to themselves.
REASONS FOR THE NEGLECT OF PUBLIC
DUTIES BY RESPECTABLE MEN IN EASY
CIRCUMSTANCES.
This class is composed of the great bulk of the men who range
from well-to-do up to very rich; and of these the former generally and
the latter almost universally neglect their political duties, for the most
part rather pluming themselves upon their good conduct if they so
much as vote on election day. This largely comes from the
tremendous wear and tension of life in our great cities. Moreover, the
men of small means with us are usually men of domestic habits; and
this very devotion to home, which is one of their chief virtues, leads
them to neglect their public duties. They work hard, as clerks,
mechanics, small tradesmen, etc., all day long, and when they get
home in the evening they dislike to go out. If they do go to a ward
meeting, they find themselves isolated, and strangers both to the
men whom they meet and to the matter on which they have to act;
for in the city a man is quite as sure to know next to nothing about
his neighbors as in the country he is to be intimately acquainted with
them. In the country the people of a neighborhood, when they
assemble in one of their local conventions, are already well
acquainted, and therefore able to act together with effect; whereas in
the city, even if the ordinary citizens do come out, they are totally
unacquainted with one another, and are as helplessly unable to
oppose the disciplined ranks of the professional politicians as is the
case with a mob of freshmen in one of our colleges when in danger
of being hazed by the sophomores. Moreover, the pressure of
competition in city life is so keen that men often have as much as
they can do to attend to their own affairs, and really hardly have the
leisure to look after those of the public. The general tendency
everywhere is toward the specialization of functions, and this holds
good as well in politics as elsewhere.
The reputable private citizens of small means thus often neglect to
attend to their public duties because to do so would perhaps
interfere with their private business. This is bad enough, but the case
is worse with the really wealthy, who still more generally neglect
these same duties, partly because not to do so would interfere with
their pleasure, and partly from a combination of other motives, all of
them natural but none of them creditable. A successful merchant,
well dressed, pompous, self-important, unused to any life outside of
the counting-room, and accustomed because of his very success to
be treated with deferential regard, as one who stands above the
common run of humanity, naturally finds it very unpleasant to go to a
caucus or primary where he has to stand on an equal footing with his
groom and day-laborers, and indeed may discover that the latter,
thanks to their faculty for combination, are rated higher in the scale
of political importance than he is himself. In all the large cities of the
North the wealthier, or, as they would prefer to style themselves, the
“upper” classes, tend distinctly towards the bourgeois type; and an
individual in the bourgeois stage of development, while honest,
industrious, and virtuous, is also not unapt to be a miracle of timid
and short-sighted selfishness. The commercial classes are only too
likely to regard everything merely from the standpoint of “Does it
pay?” and many a merchant does not take any part in politics
because he is short-sighted enough to think that it will pay him better
to attend purely to making money, and too selfish to be willing to
undergo any trouble for the sake of abstract duty; while the younger
men of this type are too much engrossed in their various social
pleasures to be willing to give their time to anything else. It is also
unfortunately true, especially throughout New England and the
Middle States, that the general tendency among people of culture
and high education has been to neglect and even to look down upon
the rougher and manlier virtues, so that an advanced state of
intellectual development is too often associated with a certain
effeminacy of character. Our more intellectual men often shrink from
the raw coarseness and the eager struggle of political life as if they
were women. Now, however refined and virtuous a man may be, he
is yet entirely out of place in the American body-politic unless he is
himself of sufficiently coarse fibre and virile character to be more
angered than hurt by an insult or injury; the timid good form a most
useless as well as a most despicable portion of the community.
Again, when a man is heard objecting to taking part in politics
because it is “low,” he may be set down as either a fool or a coward:
it would be quite as sensible for a militiaman to advance the same
statement as an excuse for refusing to assist in quelling a riot. Many
cultured men neglect their political duties simply because they are
too delicate to have the element of “strike back” in their natures, and
because they have an unmanly fear of being forced to stand up for
their own rights when threatened with abuse or insult. Such are the
conditions which give the machine men their chance; and they have
been able to make the most possible out of this chance,—first,
because of the perfection to which they have brought their
machinery, and, second, because of the social character of their
political organizations.
ORGANIZATION AND WORK OF THE MACHINES.

The machinery of any one of our political bodies is always rather
complicated; and its politicians invariably endeavor to keep it so,
because, their time being wholly given to it, they are able to become
perfectly familiar with all its workings, while the average outsider
becomes more and more helpless in proportion as the organization
is less and less simple. Besides some others of minor importance,
there are at present in New York three great political organizations,
viz., those of the regular Republicans, of the County Democracy,[10]
and of Tammany Hall, that of the last being perhaps the most
perfect, viewed from a machine standpoint. Although with wide
differences in detail, all these bodies are organized upon much the
same general plan; and one description may be taken in the rough,
as applying to all. There is a large central committee, composed of
numerous delegates from the different assembly districts, which
decides upon the various questions affecting the party as a whole in
the county and city; and then there are the various organizations in
the assembly districts themselves, which are the real sources of
strength, and with which alone it is necessary to deal. There are
different rules for the admission to the various district primaries and
caucuses of the voters belonging to the respective parties; but in
almost every case the real work is done and the real power held by a
small knot of men, who in turn pay a greater or less degree of fealty
to a single boss.
The mere work to be done on election day and in preparing for it
forms no slight task. There is an association in each assembly or
election district, with its president, secretary, treasurer, executive
committee, etc.; these call the primaries and caucuses, arrange the
lists of the delegates to the various nominating conventions, raise
funds for campaign purposes, and hold themselves in
communication with their central party organizations. At the primaries
in each assembly district a full set of delegates is chosen to
nominate assemblymen and aldermen, while others are chosen to
go to the State, county, and congressional conventions. Before
election day many thousands of complete sets of the party ticket are
printed, folded, and put together, or, as it is called, “bunched.” A
single bundle of these ballots is then sent to every voter in the
district, while thousands are reserved for distribution at the polls. In
every election precinct—there are probably twenty or thirty in each
assembly district—a captain and from two to a dozen subordinates
are appointed.[11] These have charge of the actual giving out of the
ballots at the polls. On election day they are at their places long
before the hour set for voting; each party has a wooden booth,
looking a good deal like a sentry-box, covered over with flaming
posters containing the names of their nominees, and the “workers”
cluster around these as centres. Every voter as he approaches is
certain to be offered a set of tickets; usually these sets are “straight,”
that is, contain all the nominees of one party, but frequently crooked
work will be done, and some one candidate will get his own ballots
bunched with the rest of those of the opposite party. Each captain of
a district is generally paid a certain sum of money, greater or less
according to his ability as a politician or according to his power of
serving the boss or machine. Nominally this money goes in paying
the subordinates and in what are vaguely termed “campaign
expenses,” but as a matter of fact it is in many instances simply
pocketed by the recipient; indeed, very little of the large sums of
money annually spent by candidates to bribe voters actually reaches
the voters supposed to be bribed. The money thus furnished is
procured either by subscriptions from rich outsiders, or by
assessments upon the candidates themselves; formerly much was
also obtained from office-holders, but this is now prohibited by law. A
great deal of money is also spent in advertising, placarding posters,
paying for public meetings, and organizing and uniforming members
to take part in some huge torchlight procession—this last particular
form of spectacular enjoyment being one peculiarly dear to the
average American political mind. Candidates for very lucrative
positions are often assessed really huge sums, in order to pay for
the extravagant methods by which our canvasses are conducted.
Before a legislative committee of which I was a member, the
Register of New York County blandly testified under oath that he had
forgotten whether his expenses during his canvass had been over or
under fifty thousand dollars. It must be remembered that even now—
and until recently the evil was very much greater—the rewards paid
to certain public officials are out of all proportion to the services
rendered; and in such cases the active managing politicians feel that
they have a right to exact the heaviest possible toll from the
candidate, to help pay the army of hungry heelers who do their
bidding. Thus, before the same committee the County Clerk testified
that his income was very nearly eighty thousand a year, but with
refreshing frankness admitted that his own position was practically
merely that of a figure-head, and that all the work was done by his
deputy, on a small fixed salary. As the County Clerk’s term is three
years, he should nominally have received nearly a quarter of a
million dollars; but as a matter of fact two thirds of the money
probably went to the political organizations with which he was
connected. The enormous emoluments of such officers are, of
course, most effective in debauching politics. They bear no relation
whatever to the trifling quantity of work done, and the chosen
candidate readily recognizes what is the exact truth,—namely, that
the benefit of his service is expected to enure to his party allies, and
not to the citizens at large. Thus, one of the county officers who
came before the above-mentioned committee, testified with a naïve
openness which was appalling, in answer to what was believed to be
a purely formal question as to whether he performed his public
duties faithfully, that he did so perform them whenever they did not
conflict with his political duties!—meaning thereby, as he explained,
attending to his local organizations, seeing politicians, fixing
primaries, bailing out those of his friends (apparently by no means
few in number) who got hauled up before a justice of the peace, etc.,
etc. This man’s statements were valuable because, being a truthful
person and of such dense ignorance that he was at first wholly
unaware his testimony was in any way remarkable, he really tried to
tell things as they were; and it had evidently never occurred to him
that he was not expected by everyone to do just as he had been
doing,—that is, to draw a large salary for himself, to turn over a still
larger fund to his party allies, and conscientiously to endeavor, as far
as he could, by the free use of his time and influence, to satisfy the
innumerable demands made upon him by the various small-fry
politicians.[12]
“HEELERS.”
The “heelers,” or “workers,” who stand at the polls, and are paid in
the way above described, form a large part of the rank and file
composing each organization. There are, of course, scores of them
in each assembly district association, and, together with the almost
equally numerous class of federal, State, or local paid office-holders
(except in so far as these last have been cut out by the operations of
the civil-service reform laws), they form the bulk of the men by whom
the machine is run, the bosses of great and small degree chiefly
merely oversee the work and supervise the deeds of their
henchmen. The organization of a party in our city is really much like
that of an army. There is one great central boss, assisted by some
trusted and able lieutenants; these communicate with the different
district bosses, whom they alternately bully and assist. The district
boss in turn has a number of half-subordinates, half-allies, under
him; these latter choose the captains of the election districts, etc.,
and come into contact with the common heelers. The more stupid
and ignorant the common heelers are, and the more implicitly they
obey orders, the greater becomes the effectiveness of the machine.
An ideal machine has for its officers men of marked force, cunning
and unscrupulous, and for its common soldiers men who may be
either corrupt or moderately honest, but who must be of low
intelligence. This is the reason why such a large proportion of the
members of every political machine are recruited from the lower
grades of the foreign population. These henchmen obey
unhesitatingly the orders of their chiefs, both at the primary or
caucus and on election day, receiving regular rewards for so doing,
either in employment procured for them or else in money outright. Of
course it is by no means true that these men are all actuated merely
by mercenary motives. The great majority entertain also a real
feeling of allegiance towards the party to which they belong, or
towards the political chief whose fortunes they follow; and many
work entirely without pay and purely for what they believe to be right.
Indeed, an experienced politician always greatly prefers to have
under him men whose hearts are in their work and upon whose
unbribed devotion he can rely; but unfortunately he finds in most
cases that their exertions have to be seconded by others which are
prompted by motives far more mixed.
All of these men, whether paid or not, make a business of political
life and are thoroughly at home among the obscure intrigues that go
to make up so much of it; and consequently they have quite as much
the advantage when pitted against amateurs as regular soldiers
have when matched against militiamen. But their numbers, though
absolutely large, are, relatively to the entire community, so small that
some other cause must be taken into consideration in order to
account for the commanding position occupied by the machine and
the machine politicians in public life. This other determining cause is
to be found in the fact that all these machine associations have a
social as well as a political side, and that a large part of the political
life of every leader or boss is also identical with his social life.
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF MACHINE POLITICS.

The political associations of the various districts are not organized
merely at the approach of election day; on the contrary, they exist
throughout the year, and for the greater part of the time are to a
great extent merely social clubs. To a large number of the men who
belong to them they are the chief social rallying-point. These men
congregate in the association building in the evening to smoke, drink
beer, and play cards, precisely as the wealthier men gather in the
clubs whose purpose is avowedly social and not political—such as
the Union, University, and Knickerbocker. Politics thus becomes a
pleasure and relaxation as well as a serious pursuit. The different
members of the same club or association become closely allied with
one another, and able to act together on occasions with unison and
esprit de corps; and they will stand by one of their own number for
reasons precisely homologous to those which make a member of
one of the upper clubs support a fellow-member if the latter happens
to run for office. “He is a gentleman, and shall have my vote,” says
the swell club man. “He’s one of the boys, and I’m for him,” replies
the heeler from the district party association. In each case the feeling
is social rather than political, but where the club man influences one
vote the heeler controls ten. A rich merchant and a small tradesman
alike find it merely a bore to attend the meetings of the local political
club; it is to them an irksome duty which is shirked whenever
possible. But to the small politicians and to the various workers and
hangers-on, these meetings have a distinct social attraction, and the
attendance is a matter of preference. They are in congenial society
and in the place where by choice they spend their evenings, and
where they bring their friends and associates; and naturally all the
men so brought together gradually blend their social and political
ties, and work with an effectiveness impossible to the outside
citizens whose social instincts interfere, instead of coinciding with
their political duties. If an ordinary citizen wishes to have a game of
cards or a talk with some of his companions, he must keep away
from the local headquarters of his party; whereas, under similar
circumstances, the professional politician must go there. The man
who is fond of his home naturally prefers to stay there in the
evenings, rather than go out among the noisy club frequenters,
whose pleasure it is to see each other at least weekly, and who
spend their evenings discussing neither sport, business, nor scandal,
as do other sections of the community, but the equally monotonous
subject of ward politics.

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The Spanish Coastal Systems Dynamic

Processes Sediments and Management

Dark Laughter Spanish Film Comedy and the Nation 1st

Ocean Energy and Coastal Protection A Novel Strategy

Law, Literature and Political Philosophy in the Spanish

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme

Development in Coastal Zones and Disaster Management

Coastal Ocean Observing Platforms Sensors and Systems

Dynamic Systems Vibration and Control Fred Barez

Accounting Information Systems: The Processes and

The Spanish Coastal Systems

ISBN 978-3-319-93168-5 ISBN 978-3-319-93169-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949346

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Huelva, Spain Juan A. Morales

1 Introducing the Spanish Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I Rocky Coasts and Cliffs

Part II Lineal Sandy Coasts and Beaches

Part III Fluvio Marine Systems

21 Fan Deltas and Floodplains in Valencian Coastal Plains . . . . . . . . . 489

Part IV Coastal Dunes

Part V Case Studies of Coast-Human Interaction Problems

32 Shoreline Evolution and its Management Implications in Beaches

Part VI Final Remarks

Juan A. Morales and Augusto Pérez-Alberti

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

1.2 Factors Affecting the Spanish Coast

1.2.1 Winds and Waves

The influence of tides on coastal processes is fundamental under different points of

1.2.3 Sediment Availability

The availability of sediment to be transported by waves and tides in the littoral

1.2.4 Climate Change and Sea Level Movements

of about 50% of the Ebro Delta in Cataluña or Doñana Estuary in Andalousia. In

1.2.6 Human Actions

1.3 History of Human Occupation

1.4 Galician Coast

1.5 Cantabrian Coast

Fig. 1.6 Catalan Coast, indicating the main coastal features

1.6 Catalan Coast

Catalan ranges), composed by Mesozoic materials deformed during the Alpine

1.7 Levante and Alboran Coasts

by low-slopped cliffs cutted by narrow valleys where ephemeral streams named

Fig. 1.10 Balearic Islands, indicating the main coastal features

In New York city, as in most of our other great municipalities, the

ORGANIZATION AND WORK OF THE MACHINES.

THE SOCIAL SIDE OF MACHINE POLITICS.

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