El Eje del Ebro, protagonista del polarizado crecimiento económico moderno del Valle Medio del Ebro

Abstract

In this article we show, first, what were the main features of modern economic growth (MEG) in the Middle Ebro Valley, the macroeconomic results achieved in the long run and the evolution of productive specialization (initially agrarian subsequently shared with a new industrial specialization). The following are the main features of the economic trajectory followed by two territorial components (the Mountain Areas regressive and progressive Axis Valley), with particular attention to the analysis of economic developments in its progressive component, Axis Valley, very localized in (part of) the three provinces bordering the Ebro.

Population growth and productive, increasingly concentrated in this Axis, which during the first half of the twentieth century supported the creation of a virtuous circle through a food export base. A MEG that in the second half of the century has managed established a new export base metal initially linked to auxiliary industry and, later, starring the automotive complex (with a more diversified industrial structure in the case of La Rioja), in a context of increasing globalization and economic integration in the EEC.

Its location in the center of the NE quadrant of the Peninsula and expansive use of the infrastructure connecting the main centers of the Spanish economy (and the European continent) has played an important role in the consolidation of this industrial trajectory and achievement late twentieth-century efficiency levels higher than the average Spanish.