Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and by civil wars in Spain, so that it only settled again after a long pause. By
1856, the Barcelona urban region had become an industrial district of some size,
and Catalonia as a whole was dominated by this industry, which accounted for
61 per cent of manufacturing in the region. By the end of the century there was
further growth and diversification into other textile industries, including silk and
linen.
A second Kondratiev wave, occurring roughly between 1880 and 1914, was
centred on Spain's north coast, Cantabria (Nadal & Carreras 1990). Part of it was
based on the ria of Bilbao itself, where there had long been an iron ore export
industry, which allowed the accumulation of some capital amongst the mining
and merchant firms responsible for shipping the ore. Steel manufacture was
followed with a shipbuilding and heavy engineering industry based on the large
iron and steel mills set up around 1880. In Santander, further west, the dominant
industries were forges and presses making engineering products. For Asturias at
the western fringe, coalmining was predominant, but there were also local iron
and steelworks.
To the east of Bilbao in Guipuzcoa, a highly diversified industrial complex
came into being in this late nineteenth century period. This was based on a
variety of industries, including an important paper industry at Tolosa, and textile
mills along the small rivers of this mountainous region. Many of these industries
were set up by French and Catalan entrepreneurs. Beer, chocolate, matches and
soap were other small industries, and in the interior both of Guipuzcoa and
Vizcaya, there were many craft foundries and skilled engineering industries such
as the manufacture of small arms, of domestic stoves, of cutlery and of locks, which
were integrated into the steelmaking industries growing on the coast.
In contrast to Barcelona's development of textiles, Cantabrian industry was
subject to government intervention and protection from foreign competition by
physical limits on imports and by high tariff barriers, especially after the advent
of Franco. Franco's Spain, as set up after the Civil War, was based on the principle
of self-sufficiency, and in the early years, isolation and independence from the
rest of Europe. This stance was only gradually relaxed after the Second World War.
Barriers to market competition were maintained in place up to 1958, when the
system became untenable and Spain was forced to adopt a more open economic
policy, beginning its movement from a protected to a free-market economy.
In the period since 1958, the opening of the economy has meant an effective
fusing together of later innovations in a single complex mass of changes in
national and regional economy. No longer is it possible to talk of a Kondratiev
wave led by a particular innovation or set of innovations. Instead, there are
changes in government and the amount of restrictions or controls it exerts, allied
to changes in national economic orientation and outside tastes and preferences, As
a result, Spain has become host to a variety of new industries and economic
activities, in new regions of development, hitherto considered economic
backwaters. Sectorally, one change is towards the tertiary sector, and
particularly towards tourism in the new Spain, which favours the Mediterranean
