Agricultural History Review, Volume 62 Part 1 (2014), p. 183

Agricultural cooperation has been an important subject for European agricultural history. Cooperatives arose principally in response to the challenges posed by agricultural modernization and the difficulties farmers had in facing them individually. Numerous books and academic articles have been published in Spain on this topic, many of them concentrating on explaining the relative failure or scanty development of this model prior to the Civil War (1936–39).

Against this background, the principal objective of this book is to analyse the development of agricultural cooperation in the field of grape and wine production in the first third of the twentieth century in Catalonia, the Spanish region where cooperation was most highly developed. To this end the district of Igualada, in the province of Barcelona – which clearly specialized in wine production – has been chosen as a case study; at the end of the nineteenth century over two thirds of the agricultural land area was dedicated to vines. It was a district in which the replanting of vines, following the arrival of the phylloxera blight, was of great importance, with the area under vines eventually reaching almost the same land area as before the coming of the disease.

The study is principally based on documentary sources that in many cases were generated by the cooperatives studied, which on occasion have even maintained a historical archive to conserve them. The methodology of the research is, therefore, to analyse local cases, using them in an attempt to extract conclusions that can be of more general application. On the other hand, the author, who has published a wide body of work in the field of agricultural history, has conducted this research with a deep knowledge of the Spanish literature on agricultural cooperation. This makes it far easier for the study of local cases to be correctly inserted into more general debates.

The historical context in which the subject is studied has two principal features. First, following the golden age of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as a consequence of problems of overproduction, there were successive crises for grape and wine producers, which generated sharp price fluctuations and fairly low price levels that had a tendency to decrease. Second, social conflict was also intense in the agricultural areas that specialized in vines, as the result of the opposition between landowners and the farmers who cultivated the land under long-term contracts (rabassaires).

Although the book analyses all the agricultural experiences of association, and most particularly those of cooperation, which took place in the district of Igualada, attention is focused on the two of greatest importance and impact: the Cambra Agrícola d’Igualada (Igualada Chamber of Agriculture), founded in 1908 and having over 2,000 members, and the Sindicat de Vinyaters d’Igualada (Igualada Wine Producers’ Trade Union); the latter, founded in 1921, only reached a membership of 200 members, yet possessed greater assets than the former and displayed greater continuity in the post-war period.

The two experiences represent two completely different models of agricultural cooperation that coexisted in harmony in Catalonian. The Cambra Agrícola d’Igualada is a perfect example of cooperatives created by well-off proprietors, in many cases encouraged by the Church within the framework of Catholic agricultural associations. Its objectives were dual. On the one hand, it sought to diffuse new agricultural technologies and facilitate farmers’ access to them. Thus, it supplied chemical fertilizers, fungicides and other inputs to farmers, and distilled surplus wine to obtain alcohol and spirits. On the other hand, it also attempted to reduce social conflict by avoiding the need for tenant farmers to have their own organizations: the important owners occupied a social position that would permit them to channel tensions and maintain their hegemony. The affiliation of small owners or tenants to this cooperative can be understood by the advantages they obtained from having access to new inputs, techniques or means of transforming production. By contrast, the Sindicat de Vinyaters d’Igualada was an initiative of small farmers and tenants which, thanks to the financial support of the municipal savings bank, controlled by left-wing republican politicians, was successful where the Cambra Agrícola was not, since it created a cooperative winery.

This is a valuable book, one that performs a meticulous analysis of the actors participating in these experiences, the methods of organization and working of the cooperatives, their principal results and their links to the social conflicts that existed in the rural environment in those years. It is an important study in local history, undertaken by a researcher well versed in the principal debates of agricultural history in that period, but who should perhaps have used his excellent knowledge of the contexts outside the district analysed to explain the problems tackled. This would have given non-specialist readers a better understanding of the importance of these experiences. Similarly, somewhat broader conclusions, explaining the contribution of this study to wider knowledge of cooperation in European agricultural history would have been interesting.