The role of expert in the representation of nature in the Spanish national parks: the case of Las Tablas de Daimiel

Faced with the generalized idea that protected natural areas were and are created to protect a unique, biodiverse or threatened nature, this article explores other reasons, which often go unnoticed, but which are perhaps more powerful and influential in promoting the protection of certain territories. From the point of view of environmental history and social geography, using historiographical and qualitative techniques, the discourses, socio-political situations and the representations and interests of the actors involved in the conservationist objectives of Tablas de Daimiel National Park and Donana as a backdrop, are analysed here with the aim of understanding many of the realities experienced -conflictual or not -in the protected areas. The paper relates the representation of nature with the knowledge and power that the expert naturalist possesses over it and applies to its management and conservation.