Agricultural History Review, Volume 57 Part 2 (2009), p. 294

In the middle of the Spanish Civil War the nascent Franco regime first signalled its intentions to pursue an interventionist approach to economic and social affairs with the creation of a new body, the Servicio Nacional del Trigo (National Wheat Service). The SNT was originally conceived as a response to a ‘wheat crisis’ of fluctuating supply and prices, which became acute after 1932 when overproduction caused a downturn in the incomes of growers, and as a means to secure the support of Spain’s numerically and politically significant cereal producers. Along with its successor organizations during the ensuing dictatorship, policies were initiated to control the wheat market in order to regulate supply and to guarantee prices and incomes to consumers and producers. This short book by an eminent economic historian charts the development of one of the most prominent strands of this activity in the creation between 1945 and 1984 of a national network of silos and granaries, under the slogan ‘not one Spaniard without bread’.

As the author makes clear in the introduction, though the scale and the commitment of the dictatorship to the construction of such a network were unprecedented, the plans drew upon long-standing proposals for state-led measures to conserve harvests, prevent deterioration of flour and provide a reserve to meet periods of want or price inflation and deflation. Although plans for a 70day flour reserve were drawn up under the democratic Republic, it was from foreign, Catholic and right-wing circles – including the future Francoist agriculture minister, Rafael Cavestany – that the dictatorship drew its own inspiration. Not surprisingly, the regime’s predilection for economic autarchy in the 1940s and a limited liberalization in the 1960s, allied to its general favouritism towards producers and employers, was perfectly demonstrated in its policies. In a succinct section of the book, Barciela outlines the basic lines of policy towards wheat production, and eventually to cereals as a whole; from the launch in 1937 of the first policy document (The wheat problem and national- syndicalism) with its plans for ‘totalitarian intervention’ (p.19) to the final denouement with a law of 1984 which re-established a free market in cereals in line with a new era of economic liberalism and political democracy. In between, the state directly purchased an ever-increasing proportion of the national cereal crop at set prices, matched by a corresponding storage requirement for grains and flour.

As a result 949 silos and granaries were created; the largest number in the 1960s and 1970s. The majority were new buildings in concrete but others were adaptations of existing structures, including existing granaries but also converted castles and señorial houses. A selection of photographs makes clear that many were purposefully monumental in scale, dominating surrounding landscapes and serving as visual symbols of the regime and its policies. While Barciela touches on this physical as well as economic statement of ‘progress’ under the Franco regime (p.10), he largely steers clear of such cultural considerations in a study strongly based on telling quantitative data that is usefully presented in a range of figures and tables. Likewise, tables, maps and graphs demonstrate the regional distribution of the network which naturally saw the majority of installations built in the wheat-growing heartlands of Castile, Extremadura and Andalusia. In two further sections, the author outlines the costs of building the network, which actually consumed a relatively small part of the total budget spent on agriculture, and on its final abandonment and dismantlement.

In Barciela’s view the effectiveness of the network was mixed and varied over time, but was largely paradoxical in terms of stabilizing supplies and prices. The real need was clearest in the 1930s and 1940s when, ‘… the socio-economic circumstances of the country, made necessary the construction of a network of storage …’ (p.101), but also when the capacity did not yet exist. The rejection of a private solution was, the author suggests, technically and economically unjustified; yet the ideological assumption that a state solution was automatically preferable was not matched by performance, enabling an era of black-markets and scarcity of staples. By the 1960s and 1970s, when the network was largely completed, the need was less justified as problems of scarcity subsided. A more liberal market would have benefited consumers who were forced to pay higher prices for a staple than they should have done. Continuing the network became unjustifiable when protection of producers ceased to be at the heart of public policy and the needs of consumers became politically and electorally predominant. Alongside a very effective technical analysis, this book neatly demonstrates that the rise and fall of the state system of cereal storage mirrored in concrete form, in many ways, literally, the economic trajectory of Spain since the Civil War.