Energy, industry and rural areas: the case of Spanish mountain zones (1850-2000)

Abstract

The article deals with the connections between energetic resources, industrial activities and rural economies in the context of the development of contemporary Spain, taking as study-cases its 84 main mountainous counties. The article presents a reconstruction of statistical series about coal mining, electrical production and industrial intensity for mountain areas. The results show that, in the era of modern economic growth, mountain areas got specialized in the production of coal and electricity; their industrial poles were not so relevant, but neither were they negligible from a local viewpoint. Coal mining and most of the manufacturing activities contributed to postpone or soften the demographic decline of the corresponding mountain economies, but electrical specialization did not promote significative effects in this sense.