ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century, private banking activity was developed in Spain by two types of agents. On the one hand, entities constituted under individual form or, on occasion, as collective or limited partnerships, such as bankers, merchant-bankers, and banking houses. On the other, those organized in the form of a public limited company, such as banks and credit companies. In Andalusia, the banking legislation of the middle of the century promoted the creation of four issue banks and five credit societies. However, their lives were short-lived as a consequence of the crisis of 1866 and the Echegaray Decree of 1874. Since then, the region remains without any native bank. The financial needs of the population were then covered by private bankers and the large national banks that began operating in this territory in the early years of the twentieth century.
