El comercio exterior en el desarrollo agrario de la España contemporánea: un balance

This paper provides an overview of the research devoted to agricultural foreign trade in Spanish economic history. We begin with a review of the ideas that emerged in the pioneering research into the economic history of Spain which first appeared during the 1970s . We then move on to analyse the development of this theme in the 1980s, a decade which undoubtedly saw the publication of key papers, both with respect to our knowledge of the foreign sector as a whole and regarding its role in the development of Spanish agriculture. The third and most extensive part of the paper is dedicated to the progress made in the 1990s, when the contribution of agricultural historians is particularly noteworthy, and which enables us to now conform that we have a relatively extensive knowledge of the theme. The paper closes with some brief conclusions and reflections on possible lines of future research.