Desarrollo, crisis y reconversión de la siderurgia española a través de una empresa vizcaína AHV (1929-1996)

The process of industrialisation in the Basque Country experienced a change and acceleration as from the setting up of three large siderurgical plants (Altos Hornos de Bilbao, La Vizcaya y La San Francisco) around 1882. Thus heavy industry was prioritised over light industry, and especially so after the 1891 customs duties to siderurgy as a whole. This model of economic development 'large companies of the siderurgical sector that conformed the industrial fabric' especially affected Biskaia and lasted up until the oil crisis in the nineteen-seventies and the industrial reconversion of the nineteen-eighties. The closing down of Altos Hornos de Vizcaya and its partial replacement by a mini-smelting plant and the closing down and the reiterated difficulties of the large shipyards that survived, evidence a substantial transformation of the economic model, which has been traumatic for many sectors. The successive tariff liberalisations have largely been the cause of such a change.