The Failure of Spanish agricultural cooperatives in the first third of the 20th century. Agricultural unionism in the province of Salamanca (1906-1936).

Abstract

This article provides an explanation for the weakness of the agrarian cooperative movement in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century using the province of Salamanca as a case study. Historians have usually argued that the failure of agrarian cooperatives was due to ideological and social factors. This article, on the contrary, contends that the cause was mainly economic. In order to support this idea, it first studies the evolution of the agrarian cooperative movement over the first four decades of the twentieth century. Then, it examines the agrarian policy put into practice by the government, which had a negative impact on the fertilizer and credit demand. Finally, it looks into the services offered by the agrarian cooperatives, whose faults adversely affected their fertilizer and credit supply. The central thesis of the article is that agrarian cooperatives were unsuccessful in Spain because of both a lack of demand and a failure of supply.