Las estrategias económicas de la vieja aristocracia española y el cambio agrario en el siglo XIX

Although only recently the positive performance of the landlords in the Spanish agricultural growth has been standed up, we know relatively little about the participation of the landed aristocraty in these changes. Through the analysis of the administation, the accounting, investments and strategies of some aristocratic families, the article emphasizes the slowness and very often failure of some transformations. The work shows that nor mental factors neither the scarcity of resources and opportunities explain these failures. Instead it is pointed out their incapacity in creating an efficient organization which could solve, at die same time, the problems of a scattered inheritance and the ambiguities of formal property rights.