The 3rd Railway History Conference Was Held in Valladolid

      On June 20, the Third Conference on Railway Historywas held at the School of Economics and Business at the University of Valladolid. Organized by ASIHF, the event was held in collaboration with the aforementioned school, the Simancas University Institute of History, and the Economic History Research Group.
   The conference was opened by María del Valle Santos Álvarez, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, who emphasized the value of organizing collaborative events of this nature; and María Concepción Porras Gil, Director of the Simancas Institute of History (University of Valladolid), who highlighted the importance of the railroad in shaping the nineteenth-century imagination of modernity that gave rise to the modern world.
    For ASIHF, the theme of this meeting is justified because the 1924 Railway Statute—the 100th anniversary of whose enactment on July 12 via a royal decree issued by Miguel Primo de Rivera’s Military Directorate is being commemorated—marked a significant turning point in Spanish railway history. Indeed, the “Statute” sought to resolve the crisis that the Spanish railway system had been facing since 1914 by transferring to the State significant powers that, since their inception, had been held by private concessionaires, thereby unilaterally breaking the “concession agreement” of 1848. Although this made it possible to address the main problems in the short term, in the long term it set in motion a process of state control over the Spanish railway system that culminated in 1941 with nationalization and the creation of the public company Renfe.    

María del Valle Santos Álvarez, dean of the School of Economics and Business, María Concepción Porras Gil, director of the Simancas Institute of History, and Pedro Pablo Ortúñez Goicolea, director of the Department of Economic History, at the opening of the conference.
The historians participating in the conference: Francisco Polo, Sofía Rodríguez Serrador, Pedro Pablo Ortúñez, and Miguel Muñoz Rubio.

   The conference began with a presentation by Sofía Rodríguez Serrador, a professor at the University of Valladolid,titled “Primo de Rivera’s Dictatorship and Society in the 1920s,” in which she explained the political, economic, and social context in which this new legislative framework for the railways took shape.
    Next, Pedro Pablo Ortúñez Goicolea, a professor at the University of Valladolid, presented his lecture“Primo de Rivera’s Dictatorship and the Railroad Sector: A Marriage of Convenience and Misunderstanding,” explaining the nature of the Statute and emphasizing that it brought an end to the framework established in 1844 and ushered in, thereby ushering in a new era characterized by the central role played by the State in railway operations.
After a brief break,Francisco Polo Muriel, a historian at ADIF, presented his paper“The Guadalhorce Plan: A Failed Regenerationist Attempt,” in which he explained the plan, highlighting its objectives and the achievements attained. And finally,Miguel Muñoz Rubio, a historian with the FFE and president of ASIHF, presented the paper“The Consolidation of the Railway Rolling Stock Manufacturing Sector under the Railway Statute,” in which he explained how this sector emerged in Spain and the decisive role the Statute played in its consolidation.
And finally, following a lively debate, the conference came to a close.