Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Manuel Talamante Pérez Author-Name: Fernando Largo Jiménez Title: Las cámaras de comercio de Huelva y Sabadell, 1886-1910. Una comparativa institucional Abstract: Resumen:Las cámaras de comercio en España se sitúan dentro del marco de modernización institucional y económica del último cuarto del siglo XIX. El presente trabajo aporta un enfoque institucional a la numerosa bibliografía previa. Se realiza una comparativa entre las cámaras de Huelva y de Sabadell entre 1886 y 1910. A través del análisis de la participación de los distintos sectores económicos y de la composición de las juntas directivas pretende observarse en qué medida el contexto socioeconómico condicionó el desarrollo y la distribución de poder en ambas entidades y su carácter extractivo o inclusivo. Abstract: During the Restoration period (1874-1923), Spain experienced a process of economic modernization that consolidated the liberal political and economic system. Among those regulatory advances, we are interested in highlighting the Royal Decree of April 9, 1886, which legalized the so-called Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Navigation in Spain, granting legal status to a typology of business associations that already existed in neighboring countries. and whose antecedents were rooted in the Middle Ages with the consulates and trade boards and in the Modern Age with the royal economic societies of friends of the country.

The paper starts with a general overview about the chambers in Spain, and about institutional changes produced during their first 25 years. In section II, the comparative study between the Huelva and Sabadell chambers takes place. In the first place and briefly, some of the main socioeconomic aspects of both geographical enclaves are reviewed, to place the context in which the entities under study were created and evolved. In the case of Huelva, we find an economy based on the primary export sector. in the case of Sabadell, an industrial economy based on the wool textile sector focused on the Spanish market. Subsequently, a comparative institutional analysis as organizations of collective action takes place on aspects such as its size, the sectors represented and their participation in the boards of directors. Emphasis is placed on the internal dimension of the chambers, their organization, and the distribution of power within them to determine whether their character was extractive or inclusive. This section allows answering questions such as: were the Huelva and Sabadell chambers representative of their places at a socioeconomic level? And were they tools at the service of some economic elites or of the society and economy in which they were integrated? The comparative study highlights legislation, the different productive specializations, the structure of social capital and the power relations between the economic elites conditioned the composition, the functioning and the policies defended by both chambers. In the case of Sabadell, the wool textile industry, through its employer organization, the  Manufacturers’ Gild of Sabadell, maintained total control of the chamber until the reform of 1911 incorporated the mandatory membership of a greater number of merchants and industrialists and promoted increased diversity among associates. This, despite the importance of the textile sector in the Sabadell economy, excluded slightly more than half of the local economic activity. In the chamber of Huelva, on the other hand, the representativeness of the three sectors (also including Navigation) was greater from the beginning, both if the partners by sector and the members of the board of directors by sector are analyzed. However, it cannot be concluded that the chamber of Huelva was a more inclusive organization than that of Sabadell. In the first place, the absence of other businessmen and merchants in the Catalan chamber was a consequence of the configuration of 1886 law, which intended to leave control of these organizations to the local elites. Second, when analyzing the boards of directors in more detail, it is observed that in the Chamber of Huelva one person, Manuel Vázquez López, monopolized the presidency from 1886 until his death in 1903. The fact that he financed the chamber during that period and that the rest of the positions with power having a low turnover may indicate that a small group of prominent men controlled the entity. Although it is true that there were prominent figures, there is no comparable personalism in the case of Sabadell, which has a much higher turnover on its board of directors. As analyzed, the Sabadell chamber would be at the service of a single industry, represented by a pre-existing organization (the Manufacturers’ Guild) that also took charge of the expenses and provided its infrastructure for decades, while the Huelva chamber would be at the service of a few people with diversified economic interests, with the figure of Vázquez López as the maximum exponent, whose commitment to the camera leads to think about how decisive it was not only for their economic interests but also for the image that he intended to offer about His person. These differences fit, on the one hand, in a more horizontal social capital structure in the case of Sabadell, in which all members of the same group were considered peers, and on the other hand, in a more clientelist networks configuration in the case of Huelva, where within whose collective mentality (also institutions, after all) the accumulation of power and influence was something normalized. Finally, belonging or not to the chamber of commerce was more decisive for obtaining economic benefits in the case of Huelva than in the case of Sabadell, since the businessmen of this Catalan city already had the Manufacturers’ Guild, a relevant organization since an economic, political and relational point of view. To confirm these hypotheses more rigorously and with a view to future research, it would be convenient to estimate more precisely the involvement of the members of the boards of directors in the economic and social networks of their respective areas of influence over time, that is, To what extent by forming part of the nucleus of their chamber they accessed new businesses or improved their economic position. The importance of the present comparison lies in the similarities and differences between the two cases. In the first place, both are secondary in their geographic areas. The importance of Seville and Barcelona conditioned the economic and pressure capacity of the Huelva and Sabadell chambers. On the other hand, notable differences in economic structures stand out. In the first place, Huelva was dependent on the primary sector and exports and a Sabadell with a powerful textile industrial sector and a limited export capacity that would make it bet on protectionism. Secondly, the different configurations of social capital, with a relevant weight of vertical and clientelist relationships in Huelva and with more horizontal relationships in Sabadell. The aforementioned factors conditioned the composition and distribution of power within both chambers in a period in which the legislation opted for the predominance of the elites instead of more participatory entities. After 1911 reform the government such entities became more participatory Classification-JEL: R1 Keywords: Cámaras de Comercio, Institucionalismo, Capital social, Huelva, Sabadell, Chambers of Commerce, Institutionalism, Social capital Pages: 55-84 Volume: 1 Year: 2023 File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2644.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:1:y:2023:p:55-84