Too many workers or not enough land? Why land reform fails in Spain during the 1930s

James Simpson and Juan Carmona ()

Documentos de Trabajo de la Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria from Sociedad de Estudios de Historia Agraria

Abstract: On the eve of the Second Republic there was a broad consensus among most contemporaries that some form of land reform was necessary for Spain’s southern provinces. Enormous estates were believed to be under-cultivated by their absentee owners, denying landless workers employment, and leading to widespread rural poverty. The slow implementation of land reform deeply divided Spanish society, and is often cited as a cause of the outbreak of the Civil War. This paper, using a large sample of farm level information collected by the Institute of Agrarian Reform for the estates expropriated in the region of Extremadura, questions the possibilities of land reform as a means to raise farm output to solve rural poverty.

Keywords: land reform; rural conflict; Extremadura; Spain; Second Republic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N54 O13 Q15 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2015-12
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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