Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper researches the unexplored life of the Asociación para la Reforma de los Aranceles de Aduanas (Association for the Reform of Customs Tariffs) after its “reconstitution” in 1879. The result is a picture of a group of academics, politicians and businessmen actively involved in the spreading of free trade ideas during the 1880s and early 1890s, coinciding with the disappearance of this type of organization in continental Europe. Neither differences in its composition or procedures can be found to explain the longer duration of the Asociación’s activism over time. This longer persistence can be put down to the delay with which the Asociación faced the discontent arising from the distributional effects of globalization, not reflected in peaks of agrarian emigration in Spain until the late 1880s. When the failure to sign a treaty with France in 1892 jeopardized the gains from wine exports, the loss of support from public opinion was deemed irreversible and the Asociación, just as its European counterparts had done ten years earlier, stopped campaigning publicly to defend free trade.

This paper presents a review of the history of the insular telephone network of Tenerife (RTIT). The development of this telephone service was the best example in the Canary Islands of the commitment of a local administration, as its implementation represented a great economic effort at a time when the economy of the archipelago had not yet recovered from the crisis of the Great War. With this, it was possible to create a communication ring that managed to connect almost all the inhabited nuclei on the island, which continued even beyond the concession of the telephone monopoly in Spain to the CTNE in 1924.

This work considers different aspects related to the tourist economy and the economic history of tourism. In the first place, the scarcity of study on this important economic sector in the academic world, much more inclined to analysis of agriculture and industry rather than services, activities increasingly essential in economic structures. Secondly, the vision of mass tourism as one more piece in the globalization process, which made a decisive start in the 1950s. And, finally, an empirical focus on the Mediterranean as the epicenter of world tourism development since the late 1940s until practically the present day, based on the study of concrete indicators on the 22 countries that compose, in essence, the coast of the Mare Nostrum.

This article contains a contribution to the history of the hollow glass production factories that emerged in Spain throughout the 20th century and, specifically, illustrates a unique initiative during the 1960s, that of the Vidriera del Norte (VINSA). Rooted in a previous experience set up in Mexico, the factory began its journey at the Burgos Industrial Pole as a business adventure and soon became a pioneering initiative in the new market for glass container manufacturing at the national. The difficulties in starting production, its expansion, consolidation and subsequent absorption by the French group Saint Gobain constitute a significant example of the industrial history of bottle manufacturing in the years of Spanish developmentalism.

Women were employed in the loading and unloading of cargo, towed barges, and piloted boats on waterways. However, this has been little considered in the specialized literature, both European and Spanish. At the end of the 19th century, women dock workers were important in the ports of La Coruña, Santander, and Bilbao. They were organized in unions and were involved in numerous and important strikes. The main objectives of this paper are to reconstruct the chronology of the presence of these women and their involvement in labor mobilization in the sector, and establish the circumstances of their disappearance after the First World War. This work focuses on the main ports of northern Spain, and opens a discussion about the characteristics and evolution of female work in a sector considered exclusively male. Essentially, this paper represents an initial interpretation on women dock workers in Spanish ports.

After three centuries of commercial revolution and progress in manufacturing during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the Mediterranean experienced a period of famine, increasing military conflicts and the black death pandemic during the 14th century, at the time of the Wolf Solar Minimum. The combined effect was to decrease population, agrarian and industrial output, trade, land rent and fiscal income and to raise agrarian yields, wages, seigniorial debts and distributional conflicts. In spite of recurring shocks, Barcelona and its hinterland, the Principality of Catalonia, recorded a net trend of growth up to the early 15th century, which took place together with new forms of government intervention such as fiscal reforms, devaluations, protectionism and public banking. On the contrary, during most of the 15th century, Barcelona and Catalonia experienced an unequivocal great depression, which coincided with the Spörer Solar Minimum. Too high costs of imperialism in Napoli contributed to exacerbate social and institutional domestic divides. The reaction of the Catalan nobility and the intransigence of the Barcelona oligarchy regarding reformist proposals ended in total war, with enduring consequences for long term development. Barcelona, which had successfully emulated the path of development of Venice, Genoa and Florence, lagged far behind throughout 1462-1516. Although the quality of life of Catalan peasants might have improved and some merchants began to make profits in the Atlantic with the slave and sugar businesses, it did not compensate the costs of commercial decline in the Mediterranean and the loss of markets for Catalan manufactures.

This article provides a detailed account of the electrification of a backward economy; how Chile developed from consuming less than 130 kWh per inhabitant, with an electricity matrix dominated by thermal power plants, and little involvement from the public sector, to consuming over 800 kWh per person, largely because of hydropower stations, which greatly improved the living standards of the population. This change was mainly attributable to the design and implementation of an ambitious National Electrification Plan, implemented by the state from the 1940s to the 1970s, which relied heavily on capital investments. This national accomplishment was not down to private enterprise; it was directly orchestrated and executed by a public sector company, ENDESA, although relying heavily on foreign loans. The article explains what made this success possible: qualified workers, generous financing by external institutions, the availability of rich water resources, and a lack of environmental concerns.

From the end of the 17th century, the production and export of distilled spirits from wine has been one of the most dynamic sectors of the Catalan economy. At the end of the 18th century, this trade got into crisis and gave prominence to table wine exports. Throughout the article, we defend the hypothesis that the replacement was possible thanks to a new winemaking, product of the advances in chemistry, which provided, on the one hand, the necessary instruments for the preservation of wines, and, secondly, making wines adapted to different markets thanks to coupages and imitation wines. It was within this framework that the production of spirits again played a fundamental role for fortifying wines that were destined for exports and for all kinds of coupages and imitations, for which they were an indispensable ingredient.