Gas Street Lighting in Andalucia During the First Third of the Twentieth Century: a Depressed Sector

Abstract

The first and the second Technological Revolutions gave rise to city population growth cities thus radically
changing the urban environment, we are told. In keeping with these changes, local governments transformed
the old social services and created other new ones. The author here analyses the decline of one these social
services, namely gas street lighting in Andalucia during the first third of the twentieth century. To this end
she has grounded this study upon the Estadística del Impuesto sobre el Consumo de luz de gas, electricidad
y carburo de calcio/Statistics as to the Tax upon the use of Gas Lighting, Electricity and Calcium Carbohydrates.
The document indicates that gas street lighting went through many vicissitudes in the Andalusian area during
this period, one of the reasons of these being the inadequate strategy pursued by the gas companies. The
major cause of this decline however is here seen to have been the proper technological limitations of the gas
sector in the teeth of the competition from electricity one resulting in a drastic reduction in the number of
Andalusian towns with gas street lighting during the first third of the twentieth century.