Infrastructure and nation building: The regulation and financing of network transportation infrastructures in Spain (1720–2010)

Abstract

This paper analyses Spanish infrastructure policy since the early 1700s: road building in the eighteenth century, railway creation and expansion in the nineteenth, motorway expansion in the twentieth, and high speed rail development in the twenty-first. The analysis reveals a long-term pattern, in which infrastructure policy in Spain has been driven not by the requirements of commerce and economic activity, but rather by the desire to centralise transportation around the country's political capital. As commerce has been unable to sustain the development of this policy, regulation and subsidies from the national budget have regularly been used to decide the priorities regarding infrastructure creation and to fund the development, maintenance, and operation of the networks.

When high roads, bridges, canals, etc. are in this manner made and supported by the commerce which is carried on by means of them, they can be made only where that commerce requires them, and consequently where it is proper to make them. Their expense too, their grandeur and magnificence, must be suited to what that commerce can afford to pay. They must be made consequently as it is proper to make them. A magnificent high road cannot be made through a desert country where there is little or no commerce, or merely because it happens to lead to the country villa of the intendant of the province, or to that of some great lord to whom the intendant finds it convenient to make his court.

Adam Smith, The wealth of nations (1776, vol. III.V.I, pp. 95–96)

Keywords:

• infrastructure
• transportation
• railroads and other surface transportation
• government policy

Acknowledgements

This research has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ECO2009–06946/ECON), from the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (SGR2009–1066), and from ICREA Academia. I have benefited from comments by Daniel Albalate, Joan Calzada, Judith Clifton, Xavier Fageda, Alfonso Herranz, Pedro Pablo Ortúñez, Ramon Perelló, and Emili Rosales. Comments received through the editorial process have been extremely helpful.

Notes

 1. The effects of the radial railway network in the nineteenth century in Spain have been discussed in Nadal (1975) and Casañas Vallés (1977). However, they do not specifically discuss the issue of centralisation.

 2. The early development of telegraphic communication systems was primarily driven by military purposes in most countries (Flichy, 1995, p. 19). France was an outstanding example of this trend, which resulted in a highly centralised network. However, the initially centralised design of the French network was soon seen as inefficient, and from the early 1830s on junction lines were built in the French telegraph network, so that a ‘multi-connection’ network could be created (Flichy, 1995, p. 30).

 3. Note as well that on 16 January 1769 a Royal Order was issued establishing that distances in each road would be counted from Madrid. This constitutes the historical origin of the ‘kilometer zero’, which still exists in Spain.

 4. It is worth noting that the first operating railway in Spanish territories was that between La Habana and Güines, in Cuba, which began service in 1837 (de Diego García, 1983).

 5. The opinions expressed and recommendations made are available in Información parlamentaria hecha por la Comisión de Ferro-carriles nombrada por el Congreso de los Diputados en 10 de enero de 1850.

 6. The way in which radial and transversal lines were combined in the development of the French network can be seen in Dunham (1941).

 7. Tortella Casares (1973, pp. 168–173) estimates that public aid represented 49% of the capital paid out by railway companies until 1867. Researchers believe that it is impossible to evaluate all the subsidies awarded by the state (Comín Comín et al., 1998, p. 93).

 8. Indeed, these first concessions have been highly profitable (Albalate & Bel, 2009).

 9. See Boletín Oficial de la Cortes Generales (Congreso de los Diputados), Serie E, n. 160, 1March 1986, pp. 1853–1882 (p. 1873).

10. In the same period, well under a hundred kilometres of new toll motorways were franchised by the state.

11. Detailed information on the routes and years in which stretches of free motorways were opened can be found in Bel (1994).