The restructuring of the Spanish integrated steel industry in the European panorama (1971–86): A lost opportunity

Abstract

Spanish steelmaking policy in the 1970s and early 1980s was not especially different from that of the main European countries. The political transition was a tense experience that heightened the problems and made economic policy decisions harder to reach, but it did not cause a fundamental divergence from the rest of Europe. What made the steel restructuring policy fail and forced a new and costly restructuring in the 1990s, was the decision of the Socialist government, newly elected in 1982, to opt for maintaining the inland steelworks instead of the coastal steelworks. Its motives were related to the locations of these steelworks in socially and politically sensitive areas. The closure of Sagunto marked the end of the only real possibility of Spain having a competitive integrated steelworks in terms of its integration into Europe.