This essay deals with the influence of Adam Smith—at the end of the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars—on the constitutional projects and public debates through which reformers of southern Europe tried to import and translate British society. I focus on the intellectual filters that affected the reception of Smithian thought, particularly the political and ideological aim to realize a Whig social order, that induced the Mediterranean elite to link the Wealth of Nations with the thought of Edmund Burke and Arthur Young. The result is a moderate and conservative profile of Smithian liberalism that was is in tune with the ideological trend of the nineteenth century.

This research examines migration in Linares during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, focusing on migration chains. The city experienced a significant increase in population due to the mining boom, which led to an almost sixfold increase in the population over a period of 30 years. Using data from the 1873 population register, which includes more than 22,500 individuals, this study confirms the effectiveness of the migration chain framework in analyzing internal migration during the preindustrial and early industrialization periods. This approach has revealed the significant influence of this form of social capital in determining migratory flows to Linares, highlighting the importance of places of origin in the spatial distribution of the city and in the occupational specialization of the migrant population. The findings suggest that migratory chains played a key role in providing information about opportunities at the destination, as well as in reducing the costs associated with the search for employment and housing.

Theoretical literature suggests at least three ways in which constitutional courts build social trust: democratic elements in the appointment of judges, technocratic qualities of the judges, and the impact of outcomes. This article contributes with empirical evidence to this theoretical debate. To do so, the article uses the case of Spain in the aftermath of the important ruling of the Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. The findings of the research point at technocratic elements such as the perception of judicial independence being very relevant to explain trust in the court, unlike democratic elements such as the appointment of constitutional judges by elected politicians. Overall, the evidence presented by the article backs the general idea that de-politicization and increased technocratic qualities of constitutional courts would help them gain social trust.

Este trabajo vincula la evolución del poder de mercado de la banca española con la liberalización financiera entre 1970 y 1990. Se realiza una cronología de las medidas de desregulación y se mide empíricamente el poder de mercado, para lo que se ha elaborado un indicador directo, el índice Lerner. Se comprueba que la desregulación bancaria no fue lineal, y las entidades bancarias compitieron incluso antes de la liberación completa. Se aprecia que el poder de mercado disminuyó en los años 70, por la mayor competencia a través de la red de oficinas, seguido por un aumento en los 80, coincidiendo con un parón en las medidas liberalizadoras. Desde 1988, la competencia se intensificó de nuevo con la consolidación de las medidas liberalizadoras. Además, los resultados permiten descartar la tesis de las reformas financieras consideradas como un pacto entre la banca y las autoridades que no alteró el marco competitivo permitiendo a los grandes bancos cartelizar el sector.

This article contributes new knowledge on the insertion of Spain into the European integration project and shows how European Investment Bank (EIB) policy, in the form of loans, helped boost the Spanish economy. EIB loans to Spain promoted both the Trans-European Networks (TENs) and the funding of enterprises. We argue that the funding of TENs encouraged the integration of Spain into the European space, whilst the funding of enterprises helped consolidate their competitive position, facilitating their expansion abroad.

The authors present results of a recent project that challenges the perceived absence of Late Pleistocene human settlements in high-altitude areas of inland Spain. Despite the apparent geographic and bioclimatic constraints, these areas may contain archaeological material from diverse prehistoric periods.

Between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, large quantities of wax were exported from the Maghrib to Europe. In the Maghrib, both raw wax and wax candles were involved in various social interactions that transcended mere environmental and economic considerations. For some Muslims, wax came to index Christianity, and its significance during the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday was critiqued as a corrupt innovation. At the same time, to prevent the facilitation of Catholic devotion—and because wax was deemed war material—the sale of wax to Christians was forbidden. Nevertheless, wax remained a profitable product sold to Christians in significant quantities. The anxiety surrounding the movement of wax and the attempts to regulate it indicate that for Muslims, wax served as a religious boundary marker. Christians too utilized the substance to reinforce communal boundaries. Catholics in the Maghrib—captives, clergy, and merchants—used wax to establish and express confessional divides, aiming to deter Catholic captives from converting to Islam. Priests distributed blessed candles to captives, who in turn donated wax to the clergy. Moreover, priests gifted candles to Algerian dignitaries, a practice opposed by the papacy. Wax formed invisible, often unintended connections between Muslim theologians and rulers, Catholic and Muslim captives, slaves, wax makers, merchants, and redeemers. These entanglements sparked anxiety, a sense of impurity, and a drive to reinforce religious boundaries. This article explores a fragmented history of these connections and relationships and argues that the failed attempts to regulate this circulation fostered new entanglements.

The Mexican Cristero experience constituted a political laboratory and a school of resistance providing blueprints of action later exercised in Spain. With barely ten years between their own countries’ conflicts, the ladies of Catholic Action—in Mexico and then in Spain—organized themselves, first, as a passive resistance, and then both used the same justifications to support the use of political violence. News of the Mexican Catholic women’s experience had arrived across the Atlantic in the chronicles of Spanish newspapers beginning in the late 1920s and in the edifying, right-leaning novels that were spread, above all, in Spanish Catholic schools during the 1930s. This helps us understand the parallels between the actions, liaisons, informants, and weapons suppliers of the Brigades and other Catholic organizations in Mexico and the members of the women’s fifth column in Spain. Perhaps the contemporary presence in the public sphere of European fascists resonated more among young urban Madrid or Barcelona women during the Spanish Civil War, but, without a doubt, the social origin, experience, and cultural heritage of Mexican women was more in line with the efforts of conservative Spanish women all over the country during the conflict. In both cases, the defence of religion and their Catholic identity was at the forefront of their efforts and gave coherence to what might, at times, appear to be diverse political projects.

This paper explores the relationship between entrepreneurship, measured by the number of new firms per million inhabitants, and modern economic growth in Spain between 1886 and 2000. Following Audretsch and Keilbach’s methodology, our analysis seems to confirm that entrepreneurship has had a positive and statistically significant effect on GDP per capita and labor productivity. This finding challenges the traditional view that the entrepreneurial factor has hindered the country’s economic growth. Additionally, using data on the size and legal form of start-up firms, our results suggest that neither characteristic has been an important driver of Spain’s long-term economic growth. However, we find that the impact of both variables differs depending on the years studied. To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to test econometrically the long-term contribution of entrepreneurship to Spain’s economic growth.

This article analyses the activities conducted by the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) in Spain between 1936 to 1943 to understand Italian policy towards the Francoist regime during that period. In doing so, this piece argues that it is important to adopt a political economy approach that looks at production, trade and industrial investments, always in relation to politics, diplomacy, law, culture and government. In fact, this article establishes that, for the main actors in Rome at the time, all these considerations were inseparable when it came to the Italian policy towards Franco’s Spain. Furthermore, I argue that the BNL initiatives are better understood when situated within the larger history of the Fascist regime in Italy and its imperialistic policies in the Mediterranean area.

Several proposals to modernize obligations and contracts law in the Spanish Civil Code have not succeeded. However, Spanish contract law has evolved through judicial interpretation, which has reformulated existing rules and recognized new ones. This article deals with major transformations in general contract law and special contracts. Additionally, the Civil Code has been affected by its interaction with EU law, as interpreted by the CJEU. Updating the Civil Code in this manner has created conceptual obscurity and has increased legal uncertainty. Formal modernization of the Civil Code would be welcome, provided it treats Spanish private law as an integral part of the pluralistic legal order of the EU.

This article analyzes the evolution of banking supervision in Spain under Franco’s regime (1939–1975), highlighting how political and economic factors shaped oversight in an authoritarian setting. Two phases emerge. In the 1940s–50s, supervision—lodged in the Ministry of Finance—was weak, poorly staffed, and focused on enforcing banks’ oligopolistic interest rate agreements, reflecting regulatory capture. Following the 1959 Stabilization Plan, rising external pressure, domestic concerns about oligopolistic practices, and the 1962 Banking Law prompted reform. Supervision shifted to the Bank of Spain with the establishment of the Private Banking Inspection Service, resulting in more frequent inspections and gradual formalization of supervision. Archival records indicate that by the 1970s, inspections had become more frequent and rigorous, signaling a cautious shift toward risk-based oversight. However, the reforms remained incomplete. Persistent systemic vulnerabilities culminated in the severe banking crisis of 1977–1982, underlining the limitations of supervisory transformation under authoritarian rule.

This paper examines whether the democratic shortcomings of Restoration Spain influenced the expansion of education spending. Specifically, we discuss how electoral outcomes conditioned the allocation of primary education investment across provinces from 1902 to 1922. Our results show that voting for minority parties and the extensive political patronage at the provincial level hindered public primary schooling outlays. We argue that the government punished “rebellious” provinces to preserve the regime, and that education was not well suited to support patron–client relationships. We also show that these effects diminished after World War I, as government control over electoral outcomes declined. Accordingly, by the end of the period, political voice gained a more salient role.

Since the 1950s, Catalonia has remained one of Europe’s most popular tourism destinations. Throughout this period, however, Catalonia’s presentation to the world has changed dramatically. In this article, I explore claims to authenticity in Catalan tourism attractions and promotion, which emerged as shrewd marketing language in the increasingly competitive tourism market of the 1980s and 1990s. The resulting Catalanisation of the region conditioned the international projection and reception of the region as historically, linguistically, culturally, and politically different from Spain and, indeed, the rest of the world. This new image of the region relied on and sustained an ontology of marketable and consumable national difference that resonates far beyond Catalonia’s borders. This research shows how ideas of consumable authenticity functioned as an important mediator between nationalism and globalisation, popularised nationalist thinking without the influence of committed nationalist actors, and helped scholars to understand the sustained importance of the nation-state as a unit of international politics despite its shifting meaning, function, and power from the 1970s to today.

Radical right behavior and support for radical right parties have increased across many countries in recent decades. A growing body of research has argued that, similar to the spread of other extremist behaviors, this is due to an erosion of political norms. This suggests that re-stigmatizing radical right parties might be an effective way of countering their growth. We use a survey experiment in Spain that compares the effectiveness of three theory-driven interventions aimed at increasing political stigma against a radical right party. Contrary to expectations, we fail to validate the efficacy of vignette-based attempts at stigmatization, instead identifying some backlash effects. Methodologically, our findings underscore the importance of validating treatments, as we show that simple attempts at re-stigmatization can produce null or opposing effects to their intended purpose. Theoretically, our results support the idea that normalization is a “one-way street,” in that re-stigmatizing parties is difficult after a party has become normalized.

Research on the political consequences of terrorism often finds a rally around the flag effect: terrorist attacks, as other types of threats, tend to produce spikes in popularity and support for the incumbent, as citizens turn to those in power seeking protection. Most research, however, is based on single case studies that analyze very salient attacks from international terrorist organizations. Even if these studies are well identified, the question of generalizability remains, as the studied attacks are often very idiosyncratic. In this paper, we explore the rally around the flag effect in an arguably difficult context: a sustained terrorist campaign held by domestic terrorist groups in a parliamentary democracy (Spain). To overcome the limitations of the single-attack studies, we use a multiple unexpected event approach: we developed a systematic process of matching the occurrence of terror attacks during the fieldwork of official public opinion surveys in Spain, through which we identified 142 valid attack-survey pairs. We find that in the attacked region support for the incumbent increases, on average, around 4 percentage points right after an attack, while support for the opposition decreases in a similar amount. These effects seem to occur mostly for the conservative incumbent and are especially relevant for the attacks that target civilians. We use a survey experiment to provide additional evidence in support for our interpretation of the findings.