ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of the so-called German Historical School in Spain up until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The late nineteenth century characterises the indifference towards the new advances experienced by economic science, such as marginalism and historicism. German neo-historicism plays a crucial role in the catching-up process experiences by political economy during the early twentieth century. The long-standing influence of French, Italian and British economic traditions in Spain, there are strong indications that Spanish economists did not overlook the advances made by political economy in the German-speaking territories from the second half of the nineteenth century, precisely when political economy emerge as a relatively autonomous discipline. The political elite in Spain turns its attention to the agrarian and economic reforms promoted by Frederick II the Great and Austrian empress Maria Theresa, the remarkable institutionalisation of economic knowledge in Vienna, Uppsala or Milan, and particularly the treatises of the cameralists.
