ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on it is principally on the factor, state intervention, in the Spanish industry, and in particular in the industry of Barcelona. The role of the state in the development of the Catalan calico-printing industry has been the subject of dispute among Spanish historians. Clearly the importance to be attached to the possible effects of state intervention in the Spanish case would depend on the extent to which they endured into the post-1760 period when, as has been noted, there was some relaxation in the extent of interventionism. The national monopoly given to the nascent Spanish industry was not kept intact throughout the eighteenth century. There are signs too that the contact between printers and crown occasioned by the franquicia system influenced organization, as well as scale, of production. Barcelona's position on the table, would suggest at a first glance that it possessed an average industrial structure.
