Spanish Money and Banking A History

by Tortella, Gabriel; García Ruiz, José Luis

• ISBN13: 9780230347656
• ISBN10: 0230347657
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-31
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Spanish Money and Banking provides new insights into recent advances in financial and monetary history and theory, and demonstrates the significance of Spain to modern banking, monetary, and development theory. Using a comparative approach, it brings together a substantial amount of research carried out in Spain and abroad. It also contributes to scholarly debates on aspects of monetary and banking history, topics such as free vs regulated banking, metallic vs fiduciary money, specialized vs universal banking, bank- vs market-led finance, banking repression vs liberalization, the contribution of banking and money to growth, and the role of the state in financial and economic development. It also shows how financial and monetary mismanagement contributed to the decline of Spain in the early modern era, and how the development of the banking sector later on contributed to the first stirrings of development in modern Spain, especially in the 20th century, throwing light as well on the causes of the recent European crisis and the part Spain played in it.

Author Biography

Gabriel Tortella is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid), Spain. He received the King Juan Carlos Economics Prize (1994), and has been President of the International Economic History Association, of the Spanish Economic History Association, and Chairman of the Academic Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History. He is also a member of the Academia Europaea (London) and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Salzburg). Among his many publications, recent books include The Development of Modern Spain (2000), The Origins of the Twenty-First Century (2010), and (with Gloria Quiroga) Entrepreneurship and Growth (2013).

José Luis García Ruiz is Associate Professor of Economic History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He has been Visiting Scholar at the European University Institute (Florence) and Harvard University. He has published several books and articles in the fields of financial history and business history. His main contributions are related to the history of big banks (Hispano, Banesto) and big industrial firms (Mahou, Barreiros) in Madrid.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Money and Banking in the Twilight of Empire
3. Banking in War and Peace
4. Banks and Railways: From Boom to Bust
5. The Peseta and the Bank of Spain
6. A Renewed Banking System
7. From Dictatorship to Republic: Spain and the Great Depression
8. Banking under Franco
9. Transition to Democracy, Oil crisis, and Further Bank Reforms
10. The Challenge of the European Market
11. The Bursting of the Bubble: Savings Banks, a Death Foretold
12. Conclusions