Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Domestic migrations in Spain during its first industrialisation, 1840s–1870s

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Cliometrica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Using an original microeconomic database with information for around 200,000 individuals, this paper creates new estimates of internal migrations in Spain in a key moment of its economic history. Our analysis shows that internal migrations were not a linear process including both periods of stagnation and also rapid growth, and that the 1850s were a decade of surprising high mobility in the absence of modern transportation. We also conclude that the rise in mobility was geographically asymmetrical with traditional urban centres losing ground against the rise of Madrid and Barcelona. The modernisation of the country also had significant social impacts with the migratory gender gap being significantly reduced prior to 1870. An analysis of the determinants of internal migrations suggests that traditional push and pull factors described by the literature in the early twentieth century seem to be also behind the early migrations of the mid-nineteenth century. The modernisation of the country provided new opportunities in urban areas that, combined with falling transport and information costs, created the perfect conditions for the ‘democratisation’ of long-distance migrations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Source 1877 census and marriage records

Fig. 3

Source Marriage records

Fig. 4

Source marriage records

Fig. 5

Source Marriage records

Fig. 6

Source Marriage records

Fig. 7

Source Marriage records

Fig. 8

Source Marriage records

Fig. 9

Source Marriage records

Fig. 10

Source Marriage records

Fig. 11

Source Marriage records. (Ceuta and Melilla are not shown in the map. In 1841, their first choice were Malaga and Madrid, respectively. In 1870, they were Madrid for Ceuta and Malaga for Melilla)

Fig. 12

Source Estimates from marriage records population censuses 1877–1930. See online appendix for a detailed description

Fig. 13

Source Same as Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. At regional and local-level, Catalonia has been one of the most studied regions with studies like Fabré (1991), Camps (1992, 1995), Recaño Valverde et al. (1996), Llonch (1996), Marfany (2001) and Ros Navarro (2003). Florencio and López Martínez (2000) studied internal migrations in Andalusia as did Florencio Puntas and López Martínez (2000) focusing on temporary emigrants. Other papers include the seminal work by Reher (1990) in Cuenca, Sarasua (1994b) for emigrants from Cantabria to Madrid, Dubert (1998) in Galicia, Pallol Trigueros et al. (2010) for Madrid or Collantes Gutierrez (2001) in mountainous regions.

  2. He concluded that the latter could be consequence of using individual-level data to capture the effect of location-level factors like distance and the stock of migrants.

  3. A list with the location of the sources for each location is presented in the online appendix.

  4. The 1877 census identified immigration as those inhabitants who were born in a different province.

  5. We must take into account that the records of the first civil registry that are used in this paper finish in 1870, and that for some locations, the closest available dates are in the late 1860s.

  6. The percentages of internal migrants estimated by the census for Barcelona and Seville males were 43 and 30%, respectively, exactly the same values that we obtained using marriage records. In the case of females, the census estimated 41 and 23%, respectively, and our calculations using marriage records were 43 and 19%.

  7. In the case of Igualada, using the information provided by Marfany (2001) from the local recounts, we estimated that the average distance from the places of origin of the migrants was around 23 kilometres, while our estimations using marriage records yield 22 kilometres.

  8. For example, if the records indicated that the migrant arrived from Extremadura, we gave 0.5 migrants to each one of its two provinces, Cáceres and Badajoz.

  9. The percentage of international migrants that we estimate in our sample was 0.84% for women and 0.90% for men. They were mainly located in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Zaragoza that represented 71% of international female migrants and 72% of international male migrants.

  10. There were many cases when the marriage records provided the province of origin but not the municipality, not being able to distinguish locals from migrants who arrived from short distances within the province.

  11. Instead of total population, we interpolated female and male populations for each benchmark and location to obtain migration estimates by gender that were later aggregated to obtain the national average.

  12. The existence of growth poles draining resources from the rest of the country is a usual feature at the time in industrialising peripheral economies like Eriksson et al. also show in the case of Sweden and its main three cities (Eriksson et al. 2016:5).

  13. The maps with the provincial origins of migrants in the eight cities are available in the online appendix.

  14. We should take into account that some large recipients of domestic migrants like Cadiz are not included in our sample because the marriage records only survived for some years in the 1860s. From the available marriage records in 1865, we estimated that Cadiz had a stock of around 26,000 immigrants from a different province, a figure that would put it close to Seville and Valencia.

  15. As explained before in the text, our sample does not include some key destinations that were important in their regions like Cadiz or Bilbao, due to the disappearance or practically incomplete existence of the civil registry of marriages. We believe that if they could be included some of the provinces around them that in our sample, choose Madrid as main destination would have chosen them instead. In any case, we also believe that the pre-eminence of Madrid as major destination would not change, as Silvestre (2005a:168) proved that was the case in 1877.

  16. The scale has been used to support the validity of different estimators of social prestige in the past like HISCAM, showing indeed a very high correlation between both indexes (Lambert et al. 2013, p. 86).

  17. The low levels of intergenerational socio-economic mobility observed during this period in Spain, especially in the lowest social classes, implies that the profession of the father is a very good proxy of the one the son would have achieved if he had not migrated (Santiago-Caballero 2018). In the case of the average SIOPS score in the destination, they are indeed the ones observed for the domestic migrants in each location and therefore more representative than an average wage of a specific sector.

References

  • Álvarez-Nogal C, Prados De La Escosura L (2013) The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850). Econ Hist Rev 66(1):1–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ayuda MI, Collantes F, Pinilla V (2010) Long-run regional population disparities in Europe during modern economic growth: a case study of Spain. Ann Reg Sci 44(2):273–295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beltrán Tapia FJ, de Miguel Salanova S (2017) Migrants’ self-selection in the early stages of modern economic growth, Spain (1880–1930). Econ Hist Rev 70(1):101–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boter C, Woltjer, P (2020) The impact of sectoral shifts on Dutch unmarried women’s labor force participation, 1812–1929. Eur Rev Eco Hist

  • Boyer GR, Hatton TJ (1997) Migration and labour market integration in late nineteenth-century England and Wales. Econ Hist Rev 50(4):697–734

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bras H (2003) Maids to the city: migration patterns of female domestic servants from the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands (1850–1950). Hist Fam 8(2):217–246

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camps E (1992) Population turnover and the family cycle: the migration flows in a Catalan town during the nineteenth century. Cont Chan 7(2):225–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Camps E (1993) Las migraciones locales en España (siglos XVI-XIX). Bol Asoc Dem Hist 11(1):21–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Camps E (1995) La formación del mercado de trabajo industrial en la Cataluña del siglo XIX. Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Madrid

    Google Scholar 

  • Camps E (1997) Las transformaciones del mercado de trabajo en Cataluña (1850–1925): migraciones ciclos de vida y economías familiares. Rev Hist Ind 11:45–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Collantes Gutierrez F (2001) La migración en la Montaña española 1860-1991: construcción de una serie histórica. Rev Dem Hist 19(1):105–138

    Google Scholar 

  • Dribe M (2003) Migration of rural families in 19th century southern Sweden: a longitudinal analysis of local migration patterns. Hist Fam 8(2):247–265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubert I (1998) Mundo urbano y migraciones campo-ciudad en Galicia, siglos XVI-XIX. Bol Asoc Dem Hist 16(2):39–86

    Google Scholar 

  • Eriksson B, Aradhya S, Hedefalk F (2016) Pushing and Pulling: Determinants of migration during Sweden’s industrialisation. Paper presented at the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting

  • Fabré A (1991) Aproximació a l’estudi de la immigració i de l’ocupació a Igualada Manlleu i Centelles segles XVII i XVIII. Postgraduate Dissertation. Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona

  • Florencio Puntas A, López Martínez AL (2000) Las migraciones estacionales agrarias en Andalucía anteriores al siglo XX. Rev Dem Hist 18(1):71–100

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganzeboom HBG, Treiman DJ (1996) Internationally comparable measures of occupational status for the 1988 International standard classification of occupations. Soc Sci Res 25(3):201–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grant O (2000) Internal migration in Germany, 1870–1913. Unpublished Ph.D, University of Oxford

  • Greefs H, Winter A (2016) Alone and far from home: gender and migration trajectories of single foreign newcomers to Antwerp, 1850–1880. J Urban Hist 42(1):61–80

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herranz-Loncán A (2008) Infraestructuras y crecimiento económico en España (1850–1935). Cua Econ ICE 7:183–203

    Google Scholar 

  • Hout M, Di Prete TA (2006) What we have learned: RC28’s contributions to knowledge about social stratification. Res Soc Strat Mob 24(1):1–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Lambert PS, Zijdeman RL, Van Leeuwen MHD, Maas I, Prandy K (2013) The construction of HISCAM: a stratification scale based on social interactions for historical comparative research. Hist Met J Quan Int Hist 46(2):77–89

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee R (2005) Domestic service and female domestic servants: a port-city comparison of Bremen and Liverpool, 1850–1914. Hist Fam 10(4):435–460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Llonch M (1996) Los canales migratorios en la Catalunya del primer tercio del siglo XIX. Algunas hipótesis de trabajo. In: Zarraga Sangroniz K, González Portilla M (eds) Los movimientos migratorios en la construcción de las sociedades modernas. Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, pp 337–346

    Google Scholar 

  • Long J (2005) Rural-urban migration and socioeconomic mobility in Victorian Britain. J Econ Hist 65(1):1–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marfany J (2001) Migración e industrialización en Cataluña a mediados del siglo XIX: Igualada 1847–59. Papers de demografia (Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics)

  • Nogues-Marco P, Herranz-Loncán A, Aslandinis N (2019) The making of a national currency. Spatial transaction costs and money market integration in Spain (1825–1874). J Econ Hist 79(4):1094–1128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pallol Trigueros R, Carballo Barral B, Vicente Albarrán F (2010) Inmigración y mercado de trabajo en el Madrid de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Rev Dem Hist 28(1):131–166

    Google Scholar 

  • Peña D, Sanchez-Albornoz N (1984) Wheat prices in Spain, 1857–1890: an application of the Box–Jenkins methodology. J Eur Econ Hist 13(2):353–373

    Google Scholar 

  • Prados de la Escosura L (1994) Terms of Trade and Backwardness: Testing the Prebisch Doctrine for Spain and Britain during Industrialization. Universidad Carlos III Working Papers Series 94/46

  • Prados de la Escosura L (2017) Spanish economic growth, 1850–2015. Palgrave Macmillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Prados de la Escosura L, Santiago-Caballero C (2018) The Napoleonic wars: a watershed in Spanish History? Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Instituto Figuerola, Working Paper 26737

  • Prados de la Escosura, L, Álvarez-Nogal, C, Santiago-Caballero, C (2020) Growth recurring in preindustrial Spain: half a millennium perspective. CEPR Discussion Paper DP14479

  • Reher DS (1990) Town and country in pre-industrial Spain, Cuenca, 1550–1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ros C (1997) Les famílies menestrals a la Catalunya moderna. El cas dels menestrals d’Igualada 1615–1750. Treball d’Iniciació a la Recerca Institut d’Història Jaume Vicens Vives Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

  • Sánchez-Alonso B (2000a) Those who left and those who stayed behind: explaining emigration from the regions of Spain 1880–1914. J Econ Hist 60(3):730–755

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sánchez-Alonso B (2000b) European emigration in the late nineteenth century: the paradoxical case of Spain. Econ Hist Rev 53(2):309–330

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santiago-Caballero C (2018) Social mobility in nineteenth century Spain: Valencia, 1841–1870. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Instituto Figuerola, Working Paper 18-08

  • Sarasúa C (1994a) Criados, nodrizas y amos: el servicio doméstico en la formación del mercado de trabajo madrileño, 1758–1868. Siglo XXI de España Editores, Madrid

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarasúa C (1994b) Las emigraciones temporales en una economía de minifundio: los montes de Pas, 1758–1888. Bol Asoc Dem Hist 12(2):165–179

    Google Scholar 

  • Silvestre J (2005a) Internal migrations in Spain 1877–1930. Eur Rev Econ Hist 9(2):233–265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silvestre J (2005b) Las migraciones interiores durante la modernización económica de España, 1860–1930. Cua Econ ICE 70:164

    Google Scholar 

  • Silvestre J (2010) Las emigraciones interiores en España: 1860–2007 (1). Hist Pol: Ide Proc Mov Soc 23:113–134

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman DJ (1977) Occupational prestige in comparative perspective. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Valero Escandell JR (1986) La implantación del registro civil en España (problemas de utilización en estudios demográficos). Ana Uni Ali. Hist Cont 5:87–100

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Financial support from the project “Los orígenes de la desigualdad regional en España, 1840–2015” funded by Fundación Ramón Areces is acknowledged. I am grateful for the comments received by the participants at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Danish Society for Economic and Social History in Sonderborg, Denmark and the III Congress for Economic and Social History in Regensburg, Germany. I would like to thank the collaboration of the members of the Economic History Department at the LSE in this project, the research assistance and support from Alejandro Fernández-Roldán Díaz, and finally, the insightful comments and suggestions from two anonymous referees and editor Claude Diebolt. All errors and conclusions are entirely mine.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, CP: 28903, Getafe, Madrid, Spain

    Carlos Santiago-Caballero

Authors
  1. Carlos Santiago-Caballero
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlos Santiago-Caballero.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 615 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Santiago-Caballero, C. Domestic migrations in Spain during its first industrialisation, 1840s–1870s. Cliometrica 15, 535–563 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00213-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00213-2

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation