Sobre la agricultura y el crecimiento económico en España (1800-1935)

The aim of this paper is to offer a general reflection on the role played by agriculture in the economic development of Spain during the period 1800-1935.lt first draws attention to the fact that the early development economists viewed agriculture as a sector from which factors and resources could be extracted for the benefit of the industrialisation process. This view broadened out into a more complex one, with the economic historians of the time questioning some of the basic ideas that had formed the basis of the earlier analysis. The paper then places emphasis on the unfavourable starting point suffered by the Spanish agricultural sector in 1800, before turning to a comparison of the results obtained by this sector and those of other European countries. Finally, jt analyses the models of agricultural development that were applied, as well as the productive and institutional conditioning factors of that development. The paper concludes that although Spanish agriculture followed a growth path that was coherent with the endowment and prices of its productive factors, and obtained reasonable results thereby, institutional variables, the distribution of ownership and public policy initiatives acted as a break on that growth.