ABSTRACT
Although few Spanish economic historians make it explicit, most of them seem to take for granted the importance of protectionism for Spain’s economic growth in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century. Broadly speaking, it can be argued that most of the literature favours a positive assessment of the incidence of protectionism on economic growth, although this is expressed with several nuances. On the one hand, and coinciding with Flores de Lemus, most are critical of excessive protectionist measures that the rhetoric proposition of ‘integral protection’ would imply. But, on the other hand, they suggest that a more free-trade alternative was too risky. In their opinion, the lack of development of the Spanish economy implied serious difficulties for initiating specialisation processes, and, consequently, both factors and resources could disappear if they were forced to face international competition (instead of moving to other productive sectors with comparative advantage).2
