The Real Junta Particular de Comercio of Barcelona: A Model of Mediation between Central Power and Local Economic Bodies (18th-19th Centuries)

Abstract

Economic development is the result of various factors operating in space and time. For some time now, economics has been looking more closely at the role played by institutions as a driving and propelling force behind economic development. More recently, the action carried out by intermediate institutions has been highlighted, i.e. those bodies placed between government institutions and social actors, often originating from below. The case of the Real Junta Particular de Comercio (Royal Council of Commerce) in Barcelona, represents quite accurately the functioning and role of an intermediate institution, the result of the centralising action of the Spanish monarchy in the 18th century, but constituted through absorption of instances and elements of the urban social fabric. In particular, the study tries to highlight the action carried out by this institution to redistribute public goods such as knowledge, technology and rights to an audience made up of enterprises that wouldn’t otherwise have obtained them.