Food systems have historically been a structural challenge for large cities, which have had to organize complex networks for food production, storage, transport, and distribution. Although these processes traditionally relied on nearby agricultural landscapes directly linked to urban consumption, industrialization and globalization have diluted this relationship of proximity. However, these productive landscapes retain their own interest today as a fundamental part of understanding contemporary urbanity, especially in the European context, where the landscape is recognized as cultural heritage. In Spanish cities, and particularly in the Madrid region, these areas retain vestiges of a historical rurality closely linked to the city, as well as a strong identity and social dimension linked to the memory of food production.

In recent decades, many of Madrid’s agricultural areas have disappeared or been transformed by urban pressure and territorial specialization associated with large logistics infrastructures. However, there are still areas where agricultural activity coexists with heritage assets and communities that preserve traditional knowledge and practices. Based on cartographic exploration, this research identifies those territories where productive soils coincide with a high density of protected cultural and natural assets. By superimposing heritage and land use maps, and filtering for agricultural, industrial, hydraulic, and railway assets linked to food, complex territorial systems are revealed that can be understood as potential cultural landscapes.

One of the most significant cases identified using this methodology is the area surrounding the Real Acequia del Jarama, a historic hydraulic infrastructure stretching over 70 kilometers that forms the backbone of the Vega Baja del Jarama and is still in operation today. Built between the 17th and 20th centuries on the basis of an original initiative by Philip II, the irrigation canal has sustained a continuous agricultural system for centuries, shaping a unique productive landscape close to the metropolis of Madrid. Along its route, there is a wide range of heritage assets—dams, huts, drainage channels, bridges, mills, farms, and old railway infrastructure—that demonstrate the close relationship between water, agricultural production, food processing, and distribution. This network has made it possible to maintain agricultural activity and preserve a territory that has largely resisted the processes of abandonment and urbanization.

The conservation of the Royal Jarama Irrigation Canal and its associated landscapes can be explained by a two-way relationship between production systems and heritage protection, reinforced since 1994 by its inclusion in the Southeast Regional Park. However, beyond the sum of isolated assets, this territory clearly constitutes a whole that justifies its recognition as a cultural landscape. Understanding the irrigation channel from a comprehensive perspective would ensure active conservation, consistent with the principles of the European Landscape Convention and the National Cultural Landscape Plan, and provide appropriate tools for its management. In this sense, the research not only provides a historical and territorial reading, but also an innovative methodology based on the cross-referencing of geospatial data, capable of identifying productive landscapes with persistent cultural and natural values, contributing to blurring the traditional boundaries between countryside and city, nature and culture.