ENIRA and the 1952 Plan for Agricultural Waste Exploitation. The history of an industrial failure

Abstract

This paper studies the main features of the conduct of the "Instituto Nacional de Industria" (INI) in one of its oldest and most important firms (ENIRA, S.A.). This firm was created in the context of two of the most ambitious projects of the first stage of the Francoism: the Plan for Agricultura1 Waste Exploitaction ("Plan de Aprovechamiento de Residuos Agrícolas") and the Plan Jaén. Both plans were introduced in 1952. Although the INI compromised its prestige and entrepreneurial capacity in this firm for more than 20 years, the large industrial factory built by the firm in Linares with a cost of almost 1 billion pesetas, never went into production. This is the history of the circumstances and causes that made this industrial failure possible.