Beyond 1936: the crisis of Spain’s traditional agriculture in historical perspective, 1900-1975

Abstract

Spanish economic historians have commonly studied the periods before and after the Civil War as separate periods. Within this framework, the so-called ‘crisis of traditional agriculture’ has been treated as a rapid process taking place during the developmental years of the Franco regime. This paper argues that the great transformation of Spanish agriculture that would eventually lead to such a ‘crisis’ was a longer-run process – a process that started in the early decades of the twentieth century. The paper considers a series of endogenous and exogenous factors that transformed agricultural systems in Spain. The paper also gives an overview of literature. In fact, it basically relies on such an overview in order to state its main argument.