ScholarOne - Was the allocation of infrastructure ideologically motivated? Evidence from the Francoist dictatorship in Spain (1939-1975)

In countries with multiple cultural and ethno-linguistic cleavages, it is often difficult to reach agreements about historical relations. In the Spanish case, a scientific examination of the geographical direction of public investment may shed light on government intentions, for certain historical periods. During the Franco dictatorship, our empirical results point to an early discrimination, during the autarkic period, against the productive interests in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This situation could have been corrected later, for reasons linked both to economic liberalization and to the search for political survival, in the face of a revolutionary threat. In this sense, the significance of the ideological determinants of public investment, at the provincial level, confirms the existence of non-economic incentives behind the territorial allocation of infrastructure.