Chimeneas en la aldea: las transformaciones inducidas por la instalación de Nestlé en La Penilla de Cayón (Cantabria), 1902-1935

Abstract

In 1905 the most important industry milkmaid in Spain was settles in a small village of Cantabria (Penilla of Cayón): the Swiss Nestlé. Important changes were induced speedy and not only the immediate district, but practically the whole region was transformed in hardly 30 years: Changes in the economic orientation (specialization in milky production, introduction of new bovine races), in the social formation (end of the rural communities and consolidation of the small family production) and changes in the landscape (communal appropriation and diffusion of the dispersed settlement pattern). From the beginning, the company attempted to control the process of these changes to its own profit mainly that related to the orientation of the production and to the prices trying to impose its monopoly and the vertical integration of the producers.