State, industrialization and deindustrialization. Spanish steel policies in the second half of 20th century

Abstract

Between the end of the civil war and the last decade of the twentieth century, the steel sector was the subject of major state intervention. Until the mid-1970s, the Spanish government’s primary objectives were the expansion and modernization of the sector; to the contrary, from then until the mid-1990s, steel policies were reoriented to deal with the problems of overcapacity and a lack of competitiveness affecting the main companies. The objective of this work is to analyse, from primary sources, steel policies from 1964 to 1998 and their influence on the development of the sector. The results are also compared with the prevailing ideas in historical and economic studies that have dealt with this issue.