Agricultural History Review, Volume 64 Part 2 (2016), p. 277

The publication of a book that incorporates the Catalan viticulture memory within the great European history puzzle from the seventeenth century until today is always good news. From different perspectives and throughout the period, we find 15 contributions that help us to understand the agrarian development of Catalonia, the Spanish industrial locomotive. The authors tell us about the chronology of a ‘frontier vine-producing expansion’ founded on forest and waste-land ploughing, with large investments in labour and capital (new vines), under the rabassa morta contract, which guaranteed the farmer ‘useful domain’ – that is, actual possession and use of the land until the death of the vine and the owner, providing him with rents with little effort in return.

Enric Tello and Marc Badia-Miró begin the first chapter questioning the Hecker-Olin model and the logic of relative prices: the increasing international demand (Smithian effect) and the population density intensified vine planting in two waves (Boserupian effect); the first, more egalitarian, focused on brandy (in the eighteenth century); the second in the nineteenth century was more unequal and focused on low-quality wine, under some specific agrarian, climatic and socio-institutional conditions. Analysing the Francesc Sunyer supply chain, Josep M. Grau Pujol and Francesc Valls-Junyent show the control of the great traders in the brandy market in Tarragona, dominating the entire logistics chain, both in the domestic market and export, leasing manorial and church rights, making unfair loans in exchange for future forced productions. However, as Francisco J. Iglesia Berzosa shows, they failed to extend their business to the rest of Spain. According to Llorenç Ferrer Alòs, the existence of these great traders would explain why the Tarragona areas better resisted the devastating phylloxera plague whereas their absence (and other factors) plunged the Barcelona area (focused as it was on local consumption) into a permanent crisis, very well analysed by Pere Pascual Domènech in his research on the sharp decline of the wine railway traffic and by Ricard García Orallo through his detailed comparative research on the rural loan market in the areas of Alt Empordà (Girona) and Conca de Barberà (Tarragona).

Regarding the areas of Girona and Vallès Occidental, Rosa Congost, Enric Saguer and Pere Roca Fabregat confirm the rise of the vineyards, but also explain how things differed geograhically. Girona was less dependent on the vine due to the different uses of the soil, farmers with a greater bargaining power and the existence of other emphyteutic contracts. In Vallès Occidental a symbiosis between industrial development (Sabadell and Terrassa towns) and wine-growing development occurred and a new group of farmers ploughed new lands. These farmers were the founders of the so-called pobles de carrer (‘street villages’).

This book also shows us how the Spanish liberal state did very little to promote the sector. Josep Colomé Ferrer describes the social fight of the rabassaires against a minority of landowners who controlled most of the land. These landowners used the rabassa morta contracts to assure themselves new rents and took clear advantage after the phylloxera plague. This fight continued until the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Whereas the yeomen’s collective capital was the driving force of the first agrarian revolution in England between 1650 and 1750, in Catalonia it appeared as a defensive reaction at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this respect, Jordi Planas Montserrat Cucurella, Josep M. Vallès and Raimon Soler Becerro describe the successful and unsuccessful experiences of the new wine cooperatives. Although in some cases they managed to reduce costs and improve the production process they did not have enough resources or government support to improve quality, to bottle, distil and above all, to sell (unlike the French case and despite the Mancomunitat Catalana). All this was achieved from 1942 during Franco’s regime (Francisco J. Medina-Albaladejo) and especially since 1980 (Miquel Àngel Bové Sans), a period which saw the third wine-growing wave and a revolution in quality.

However, there are some issues pending. It is difficult to understand where we are without framing the sector in the context of economy as a whole. It lacks an introduction about the evolution of the vine since the Black Death. ‘International market integration’ is mentioned, but what was the market share? How did the international and domestic prices develop? If demand was a decisive force, the role of the population is not clear enough: was it the cause or the consequence? A Catalan wine-growing area has been left out: El Maresme, where the population had a different history. I also wonder if the theory of the relative prices should be applied to lands that are ill-suited to growing cereals. The cash-crop character of the vine as well as income expectations could be also be considered. Given the high degree of dependence of the farmers, it could be claimed that the expansion of wine production was almost colonial or extractive. Neither the expansion of wine (which cannot be eaten) nor the supposed lack of productivity guaranteed a greater urban demand or a change of the agrarian labour force to other activities so, did the vine expansion slow down the Catalan industrial development? What do we know about productivity, rents, wages and long-term elasticities? If in two hundred years the yield of the land did not grow, the expansion was simply extensive. If it happened this way, could it not depend on the climatic conditions? Until the nineteenth century, Catalonia suffered a little ice age and the ‘Maldá Anomaly’ – a significant increase in weather variability (droughts, floods and unusual frosts) and a more humid and unstable environment – factors which could have favoured all kinds of fungal plagues. Finally, brandy and wine are mentioned in the book, but, as Llorenç Ferrer Alòs questions, how were they made? Who made them? How did the market go from brandy to wine given the grape used for the former was of worse quality? Definitely, such questions can only arise in a high-quality book like this, a book that will be essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the evolution of Mediterranean agriculture.