The electricity "miracle" and the local elites: the Sociedad Eléctrica Castellana (Valladolid, 1887-1907)

Abstract

In this article we address the start of the electric power’s production in the town of Valladolid (Spain), in 1887. An entrepreneurial development that could be focussed as a model for other middle-size Spanish towns at the end of the Nineteenth century. In our contribution we are concerned both with the history of the company that assumed this challenge in Valladolid, the Sociedad Electricista Castellana and with the bourgeois elite that invested its capital in it; a minority from which we emphasize its links with the flour mills and its commitments with the main Castilian politician at this time, Germán Gamazo. Its substitution by an apparently new local elite, led by a young and ambitious politician and businessman, Santiago Alba accounts for the decline of the Electricista and its absorption by a much more dynamic company, the Electra Popular Vallisoletana, in 1907.