Con la muerte del historiador cubano Manuel R. Moreno Fraginals a los ochenta años el pasado mes de mayo, la profesión ha perdido una de sus voces más singulares. Empresario, académico, abogado y revolucionario, la carrera de Moreno Fraginals abarca una variada gama de profesiones y países. Con 22 años obtuvo su título de Derecho en la Universidad de La Habana y poco tiempo después se marchó a El Colegio de México, donde se graduó en Historia en 1948. Volvió a Cuba al año siguiente y durante un tiempo trabajó en la Biblioteca Nacional. En ese período comenzaron a aparecer sus primeras publicaciones sobre la historia nacional cubana. De esos primeros trabajos, el más sobresaliente es su ensayo José Antonio Saco. Estudio y bibliografía, publicado en 1953. En los primeros años cincuenta dejó por un tiempo su actividad académica y se convirtió en empresario en Venezuela, pero a raíz del triunfo de Fidel Castro en 1959 volvió a Cuba y se dedicó ya totalmente a la investigación histórica.

The distinctive character of the Spanish monarchy all along the modern age was the domination on the main producing zones of silver and mercury in the planet, which provided practically uncontestable a comparative monetary advantage to her, specially during the period of century and a half following the introduction of the silver-standard in the Ming's China, during which the bimetallic relation was extremely favorable for the silver. This allowed the imperial power to rest on an very simple combination of extractive, logistic and financial policies, whose privileged indicator is the market of the mercury, that reconstructs in this work.

The present paper deals with regional grain market integration in Spain during the Old Regime. Using mostly published price and production series, the author employs straightforward statistical techniques, ranging from correlations and standard deviations of detrended series to distributed lag models. These techniques show the existence of a clear covariation in the price of grain on different regional markets, as well as both simultaneous and delayed effects of grain production on prices both locally and at considerably greater distances. The author concludes that regional grain markets on the peninsula were modestly but increasingly integrated over the period, especially during the eighteenth century, and that existing institutions were a partial buffer for the immediate effects of harvest failures. The paper concludes by suggesting the potential timing for the progressive intergration of grain markets taking place throughout much of the nineteenth century in Spain.

The article is divided into three parts. In the first one we test for the hypothesis of existence of a “weak definition” of “mining-Ied-growth” in the New Spain economy in the 18th century and a “moderately optimistic” version of the relationship between mining expansion and economic growth is defended. In the second part, we analyze the determinants of the silver production, among them we include economic policy variables (mercury price and consignaciones for the Mines of Almadén, as well as the stock of mercury available in New Spain and the price of corn; we also show some of the positive effects of the new role of mercury Monopoly in the Crown's finances. Finally, a quantitative exercise intended to estimate the economic cost for Mexico of the Independence is presented. This cost seems to have been high and attributable, following Coatsworth's terminology, no only to “the achievement of the independence” but to the “independence in itself.”

The telegraph has been of great importance in the development of commerce, both as a technical support of railways and as a means of accelerating the transmission of information and of cutting transaction costs in the firms. This article places the Spanish case, seldom considered by the literature, in a European context. It outlines the economic and institutional factors which affected the first Spanish telegraphic system. Unlike what happened with the railways and the telephone, the telegraph was state constructed and owned. For different reasons, Spain lagged behind other European countries in the evolution of the telegraphic service.

This article is a novel study on previously unedited data regarding employment in the Spanish Railway sector between the years 1893–1935. The Annual data published by the well know Annals of the Spanish Railways have been closely scrutinised and checked against document referring to the two major companies: Norte y MZA. The resulting findings show the dynamic nature of this labour market! Between 1893 and 1935 employment figures tripled. The documents examined further reveal the existence of a labour market which was quite diverse and consisted of numerous different segments.

This paper discusses the price collusive behaviour of the main Spanish banks from the end of the Civil War to 1975. The second purpose of this paper is to obtain quantitative and qualitative indicators of the degree of effectiveness of these cartel agreements. I conclude that in spite of the existence of collusive pacts to fix price conditions, the main banks broke cartel agreements and they competed in prices in the deposit market side, and especially from the mid-1950s onward.