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

The article explores the survival patterns and mechanisms of an autochthonous technology- based telecommunications company during the 1980s-1990s in a context of increasing market liberalization and integration, which nevertheless maintained its oligopolistic structure. It aims to shed light on the behaviour of industrial companies in these areas between the nation-state and multinationals and in a context of intense technological change, growing economic integration and rapid transition to open economies. As for the methodology, the narrative prevails, since it relates the vicissitudes of Amper, which are not well known as a whole. The analysis of the trajectory is based on a combination of primary and secondary sources, among which Amper’s own stand out. The article is structured in four main sections, which include the factors of Amper’s expansion, the internationalisation of the company in its various facets, the corporate partnership with multinationals and the divestments and segregations. Its findings reveal that Amper’s longevity is due to the conjunction of a plurality of technological and organizational factors, which turned an old family business into a complex mini-multinational ICT company specializing in defence and security.

Research on the development of industrial capitalism often overlooks the existence of successful industrialisation processes in southern Europe. The article analyses how the cloth-making industry of the town of Alcoi responded to the difficulties that it faced during two crises that occurred almost two hundred years apart. The first arose at the end of the sixteenth century and after the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. The second crisis began between 1809 and 1815, in the context of the Peninsula War. Both conjunctures caused serious difficulties to manufacturing activities that were resolved with the profound changes that would fundamentally affect the sphere of production. The study clarifies certain aspects with respect to the emergence of industrial capitalism in Alcoi in the early nineteenth century.

This article studies the feminisation process of the cork industry in the Girona region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also reconstructs women’s activity rates in 1920. The analysis of the life cycle’s influence on women’s labour-force participation underlines the diversity of local models, depending on labour demand. Whereas in those places where it was weak, only young single women worked, in those towns where labour demand was intense women worked for a wage after their marriage and, although female labour participation was not completely insensitive to variables such as the number of children or family structure (nuclear or stem), it was more decisively determined by the number of male workers in the household.

Agrarian mercantilism, being the ruling tradition throughout the 18th century, extended its influence into the 19th century under the cover of classical economics as applied to the ‘natural order’ of economic development. The agrarian sector with its excellent political representation, backed that trend. Given this state of affairs, it is no surprise to find that the industrial discourse met with difficulty in trying to find a place within the fields of economic analysis, economic policy and technical education. Catalan industrialists, producers’ associations and the economists linked to them would consequently be the first to support the industrial cause. The key to their success was the link they established with the liberal cause. Throughout the century, the industrial discourse was not uniform either in connection with demands for tolls (prohibitionism, protectionism, free trade) or in connection with its doctrinal source (eclecticism, social economics, saintsimonianism, etc.)