Industrial Revolution in Spain

We explain what the industrial revolution was in Spain, the process that began at the end of the 18th century. Also, its characteristics and history.

What was the industrial revolution in Spain?

The industrial revolution in Spain It was an industrialization process that began at the end of the 18th century, accelerated from the 1830s onwards, and experienced greater momentum in the mid-19th century. with the laying of railway lines on the peninsula.

It was a later process than the industrialization that began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century. The main industrial areas of Spain were Catalonia (textile industry), Malaga (textile and steel industries), Asturias and the Basque Country (mining and steel industry). In this period, the Spanish industry relied heavily on foreign capital investment and a protectionist trade policy.

During the industrialization process Banking entities were created and the role of the Bank of Spain was consolidated. However, the country remained largely rural until the beginning of the 20th century.

The economic transformations of the 19th century

Changes in agriculture

The Spanish population increased throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.although to a lesser extent than in more developed countries. The decrease in mortality and the maintenance of a high birth rate explain this trend. Most of the population remained rural. It is estimated that, in 1865, 80% of the population still lived in rural areas.

In the 19th century, agriculture underwent a profound reform based on the abolition of the manor regime, the suppression of mayorazgos (the subjection of property and land to a lineage) and the great confiscations promoted by Juan Álvarez Mendizábal and Pascual Madoz.

With these measures Agriculture was liberalized and free movement of land was allowed in the market. Thus, obstacles to the development of capitalist agriculture were eliminated. Most of the land came into the hands of individual private owners.

The liberal confiscations

The great economic transformation of this period was the process of confiscation of lands and ecclesiastical assets.. Was started in 1835 by the progressive Juan Álvarez Mendizábal (Minister of Finance between 1835 and 1837), who also suppressed the religious orders of the regular clergy, and was completed by the progressive Pascual Madoz (Minister of Finance in 1855), with the extension of confiscation to municipal assets (such as communal lands).

The confiscation consisted of the expropriation of the assets and their nationalization for sale at public auction, and had three objectives:

• A financial goal: obtain income to pay the public debt of the State and finance the Carlist wars.
• A political objective: expand the social base of liberalism with buyers of confiscated goods. Furthermore, a good part of the regular clergy, which was affected by the confiscation, supported the Carlists (with whom the liberal government was politically at odds).
• A social objective: create an agrarian middle class of peasant owners.

The confiscation did not give all the results that its promoters had expected:

• In the financial field, did not solve the problem of public debt.
• In the political field, Liberalism gained followers but also distanced itself further from Catholic public opinion.
• In the social field, Most of the confiscated assets were purchased by wealthy urban nobles and bourgeois. Poor farmers were unable to bid at auctions.

The confiscation did not serve to mitigate social inequality. Even the new bourgeois owners often raised rents, which affected the poor peasants. For this reason, the nobility, in general, supported liberalism, while many peasants became anti-liberal (Carlists).

Furthermore, the confiscation of 1855 mainly affected the lands of the municipalities and harmed the town councils and the poorest residents, who were deprived of the free use of communal lands.

However, the confiscations of Mendizábal and Madoz radically changed the situation in the Spanish countryside and, in some cases, freed up space in the cities for industrial growth.

Industrialization in Spain

The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in Great Britain in the second half of the 18th century It spread in the 19th century to other areas of Europe. However, in Spain it was only initially produced in a very localized way, in Catalonia, Malaga, Asturias and the Basque Country.

Several factors explain this delay:

• The shortage of coal and other raw materials
• The low technological development compared to other countries (such as Great Britain and Germany) and the dependence on foreign capital
• The lack of articulation of an internal market, due to communication difficulties and the low purchasing power of the majority of the population
• Political factors, such as the loss of the colonial market (due to the independence processes in America), the destruction caused by the War of Independence against the French occupation of Spain or political instability.

The expansion of the railway line was a key factor of modernization in Spainjust like in the rest of the world. However, Spain incorporated this new means of transport with some delay. The first railway line on the peninsula was built between Barcelona and Mataró in 1848.

Curiously, the first railway in Spanish dominions was built in Cuba in 1837, for the Havana-Güines route. After the promulgation of the General Railway Law in 1855, a true railway “boom” took place in Spain. In 1866 the network reached 5,145 kilometers in length. This allowed different areas to be communicated in an internal market.

Beginning in the 1830s, mechanical innovations were incorporated in the cotton textile industry in Cataloniaand the railway line gave a decisive boost to this industrial branch from the 1850s onwards.

In Asturias and the Basque Country, the steel industry stood outwhich benefited from access to coal and iron ore in those regions. The textile industry and the steel industry developed in Malaga. These processes accelerated at the end of the 19th century, while in Malaga the industry entered a crisis phase (partly due to the costs of access to coal).

Trade policy was generally protectionist. The tariff laws of 1841 and 1849 favored the interests of Catalan textile industrialists and Castilian landowners wheat farmers.

Only during the Democratic Sexennium (1868-1874) was a liberal policy attempted with the Figuerola Tariff of 1869 (a law that reduced import limitations). However, the Restoration government returned to protectionism with a tariff law in 1875.

In the financial field, this period was characterized by the difficulties of the state Treasury, overwhelmed by public debt. Despite these problems, some important measures were adopted:

• In 1856 the Bank of Spain was createdwhich replaced the Banco Español de San Fernando. In 1874 it was established as a national bank with a monopoly on the issuance of paper money.
• In October 1868 the peseta was adopted as a new unit of the monetary system.

The social transformations of the 19th century

The social classes

The main feature of Spain in this period was the gradual disappearance of class society and its replacement by a class societybased on the right of property and equality before the law. This new society allowed for greater social mobility, mainly through success in business or through administrative and military careers.

A new dominant social group emerged made up of the upper bourgeoisie (Catalan textile businessmen, Madrid and Basque financiers), the landowning oligarchy (owner of large estates, especially in southern Spain) and senior officials of the State and the army.

A not too numerous urban middle classes also emerged (small rural and urban landowners, army officers, civil servants, doctors, teachers).

The peasant population made up the majority of the country's population and was made up of owners, tenants and landless day laborers.

Finally, the industrialization process gave rise to the class of industrial workers.

The origins of the labor movement in Spain

Spanish industrialization in the 19th century was a slow and highly localized phenomenon. in some areas. This explains the initial weakness of the labor movement, at least until the Democratic Sexennium (1868-1874). It is estimated that in 1860 there were around one hundred and fifty thousand industrial workers in the country, and more than half lived in Catalonia.

Nevertheless, Already in the 1830s some associations were born (such as “mutual aid societies”), protests of a Luddite nature occurred. (that is, against machines, such as the conflicts in 1835 at the El Vapor factory in Barcelona in 1835 or the protests against the “selfactinas”, spinning machines, in 1854), and the first workers' newspapers also appeared. These first manifestations of the labor movement were harshly repressed by the governments of the time.

During the Democratic Sexennium, Political freedoms gave an important boost to the labor movement. In 1864 the International Workers' Association (AIT) had been created in London, and the new situation in Spain allowed the creation of the Spanish section of the AIT, founded by the Italian anarchist. Giuseppe Fanelli.

From the beginning, among the Spanish “internationalists” there was a clear predominance of ideology anarchist, inspired by the thoughts of Mikhail Bakunin. The anarchist movement had a special presence in Catalonia, where industrialization was increasingly vigorous..

On the other handPaul Lafargue spread the ideas of Marxism in Spain, and in 1872 he created a small group from Madrid that, shortly after, gave rise to the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party).

The confiscations of Mendizábal

Between 1835 and 1837, the progressive Juan Álvarez Mendizábal served as Minister of Finance and promoted what became known as “the liberal confiscations.” With the aim of obtaining money to pay the public debt and expand the social base of liberalism, Mendizábal organized a massive expropriation of assets and their subsequent sale at public auction.

In 1836, he sent his proposal to María Cristina de Borbón (the queen regent of Spain). In it, the confiscation is justified as a strategy to improve the economy and progress of Spain. Mendizábal's proposal was published as a royal decree the following day.

Official statement from Juán Álvarez Mendizábal to Her Majesty the Queen Governor

February 19, 1836

“Madam, selling the mass of assets that have become the property of the Nation is not only fulfilling a solemn promise and giving a positive guarantee to the national debt, it is opening a very abundant source of public happiness; reviving a dead wealth, to unclog the channels of industry and circulation; to attach oneself to the country by the natural and vehement love of all that is one's own; to expand one's homeland, to create new and strong ties that bind one to it; exalted throne to Elizabeth II, symbol of order and freedom. It is neither cold commercial speculation, nor a mere credit operation.

The decree that will have the honor of submitting to the august approval of VM on the sale of assets already acquired by the nation, as well as in its material result must produce the benefit of reducing the large sum of the public debt, is necessary that in its object and even in the means by which it aspires to that result, is chained, is fused in the lofty idea of ​​creating a copious family of property owners, whose enjoyments and whose existence is based mainly on the complete triumph of our current institutions.

Article 1. From now on, all real estate of any kind that had belonged to the extinct religious communities and corporations, and the rest that have been awarded to the nation for any title or reason, and also all that from now on have been awarded to the nation from now on, are declared for sale. the act of its adjudication.

Article 2. Exceptions from this general measure are buildings that the government designates for public service or to preserve monuments of the arts or to honor the memory of national feats (…)”

References

• Carr, R. et al. (2022). Spain. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Carretero, I.M. (2007). Legal texts of the Spanish ecclesiastical confiscations and related to them. The confiscation: the plundering of the artistic and cultural heritage of the Church in Spain: minutes of the Symposium 6/9-IX-2007. Escurialenses Editions.
• González Enciso, A. & Manuel Matés, J. (coords.) (2013). Economic history of Spain. Ariel.
• Nadal, J. (dir.) (2003). Atlas of industrialization in Spain, 1750-2000. Criticism.
• Paredes, J (coord.) (2008). Contemporary history of Spain. 19th century. Ariel.