Los debates en torno al ferrocarril en España anteriores a la creación de RENFE: el camino hacia el monopolio de Estado

Abstract

From its birth until the fall of Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the railroad emerged as an industry creating wealth doubly: by one hand stimulating the existing wealth and impelling economic development on the other. Because of their technical, economic and market peculiarities, the different governments adopted interventionist solutions in greater or lesser degree. Simultaneously, in its early development, the classical paradigm based on free competition was abandoned, which led to the conversion of railroad in a rhetorical focus of anti-competitive and interventionist practice.

In this paper we track the birth and development of the railroad, focused exclusively on political and economic evolution of this sector within the historical evolution -parallel to the nationalist path of Spanish capitalism- and in the descriptive theory and practice of development of interventionism and restrictions to free market.