Inherited desertification refers to the state of a landscape after its past desertification and ecological degradation, which, although no longer active, have left an aftermath impeding any significant recovery. It is often associated with a global change event whereby significant socio-economic changes bring ephemeral wealth about at the expense of overexploiting a natural resource beyond its resilience. In Southeast Spain, in the Sierra de Gador, in the nineteenth century, this happened during the lead mining rush. The mountain population, pre-eminently agricultural, ventured in the enterprise of mining with chaotic manual labor. Lead made up over 80% of the total Spanish mineral/metallurgical exports until the 1870s. Smelting was carried out using the local woodlands, and the impact was irreversible. It is estimated that 1.4 million tons of alpha grass and over 52,000 tons of holm-oak charcoal had been consumed by 1860. These figures would be the equivalent of about 50,000 hectares of grasslands and around 28,000 hectares of holm-oak woods. Climate drift toward increased aridity and intense soil erosion caused by runoff over deforested slopes make recovery of these forests almost impossible at a human time scale. This sequence of processes stresses the most dramatic aspect of desertification: the enormous difference between the duration of its causes and that of its effects.