The Andalusian Railway Company in the 1920s and the 1930s

The Andalusian Railway Company, established in 1877, was the third largest during the private exploitation of railways in Spain. Although funded in substantial part by French private capital, like its competitors Norte and MZA, the company's managerial evolution was troubled and led to its seizure by the Frente Popular Government in May 1936, motivated by partial paralysis of the service on several of the company's lines, a result of serious economic problems that prevented the company from acquiring fuel for its locomotives, among other issues. Significant studies on the economics and management of Andalusian have been conducted by Pedro Tedde (1978 and 1980) and Albert Broder (1981), although they both limited the scope of their work to the years of the First World War. Hence our interest in the company's most contradictory period, from its apparent success in the 1920s to ultimate crisis in the 1930s. From the naturalization of titles in 1920, it is evident there were substantial changes in the company and, indeed, we can talk about a new company from which French investors withdrew and different interests took control, including bankers and Catalan industrialists.