Siglo y medio de comercio exterior de productos corcheros en españa, 1849-1999

In this work it is analyzed the evolution and composition of the foreign Spanish trade of cork products during the second half of the XIXth century and the XXth century. For it there has been in use the Estadística del Comercio Exterior de España, elaborated from 1849 up to the current importance. The above mentioned analysis sets up important changes in the characteristics that the cork business has had in Spain during the considered period, at least from a commercial point of view, emphasizing the major relevancy acquired by the import trade in the last quarter of the XXth century and the return to the stopper, which has frustrated the diversification process of the cork industry and trade, initiated in the first years of last century. For countries, Portugal has turned, from the civil war, into the first world power to the detriment of Spain. Our country could not have recovered the commercial leadership, that had during the second half of the XIXth century and the first third of the XXth, on the principal cork markets and, at present, it has small presence, in relative terms, on the markets of the new wine countries, great buyers of cork stoppers.