Why did agricultural cooperatives fail? An answer from the study of a municipality in rabassaire Catalonia

Abstract

Agricultural cooperatives have been considered a fundamental instrument for the adaptation of peasant farms to the complex situation undergone by the agricultural sector during the last years of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The historiography has highlighted the weakness of Spanish agricultural cooperatives and their limited contribution to agricultural modernization. Although in some regions such as Catalonia many cooperative initiatives arose, they found many difficulties to consolidate themselves in the middle and long term. From the study of the cooperative dynamics that took place in a small town situated in the heart of the main wine-growing area of Catalonia, we draw attention to one of the reasons that contributed decisively to the relative failure of cooperatives: the increasing social and political unrest that was present in this area of Catalonia during the 1920s and 1930s.