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FROM DEVELOPMENT TO DEPENDENCY: REGIONAL ELITE FORMATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN LA RIOJA, SPAIN, 1860-1975 [1]

Timothy Parrish

In the late nineteenth century, the Rioja wine district of Spain emerged as a major supplier of fine table wines to both the national and international markets. Although Spanish wine enjoyed a boom in sales during this period due to the destruction of French vineyards by the phylloxera [2]. The Rioja not only exported wine in bulk but had a specific regional development with the founding of sixteen aging and exporting wineries (criadora exportadora bodegas) by the turn of the century.

By the 1960s, this regional economic enclave was experiencing difficulties. True, the large bodegas of the Rioja remained among the best known Spanish wine pro- ducers. The vineyards, however, were owned by small and medium holding wine-growers. These vineyards were aged, unmechanized, and increasingly, uneconomical (Tamames, 1972) [3]. Both the bodegas and the wine- growers were facing severe capital shortages.

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a major wine boom for Rioja wine and a renewed interest in establishing and consolidating wineries. A major crisis in 1973 signalled the end of the boom and the region's wine- growers discussed dumping the years harvest in the Ebro river rather than "mal vender", sell below the cost of production. It also

Timothy Parrish has a PhD in Anthropology from the Graduate Faculty, New School For Social Research.

became increasingly evident that outside a handful of the traditional wineries, the bodegas were increasingly under the control of either Spanish capitalists with no historical ties to the region, or transnational corpora- tions. As capacity and production of the bodegas increased geometrically, one of the region's better known wines was stigmatized in a quality scandal. Many wine-growers, both large and small, began to wonder about the future of their enterprises.

There is always a danger in talking about development in bipolar terms. The Rioja's economy has had numerous fluctuations and I would emphasize that such uneveness is a known but neglected feature of capitalist development (see Hymer, 1972; Mandel, 1976 for some exceptions) [4]. Anthropologists have long been aware of the regional and ethnic diversity in Spain, as well as differences in regional agricultural systems and economic development. Yet studies continue to be focused on the village rather than regional dynamics and the relationship of locality and region to the nation-state. Regions, I propose, can be defined by the uneven accumulation of capital and I will discuss two moments of regional development in the Rioja, one of autonomous development and the other of dependent development.

I want to discuss the "regional elite," the owners of the major wineries of the Rioja, in the period of autonomous development and

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their fate in a period of dependent devel- opment (Schneider, Schneider, and Hansen, 1972) [5]. A regional elite is a geographically distinct class segment linked to a specific development sequence, what others have called "strategic heights" or "growth poles" [6]. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Rioja experienced autonomous development which, although linked to Basque capital, was focused upon the region. In the 1970s, the Rioja was again in an economic boom period, but one which resulted in dependent development, that is economic growth occurred but the previous regional integration and control was lost.

In these two moments, it is important to understand that the Rioja is still populated by small and medium holders of vineyards. In the vineyard area, land fragmentation is great with an average holding of 0.7 hectares which is usually in several smaller parcels. The survival of over 18,000 vine-workers and wine-growers is in many ways an anthropol- ogist's paradise, but this traditional sector obviously contradicts the development of modern industrial bodegas [7]. Unlike many other areas of wine-production, the Rioja has retained a large independent sector. As recently as 1976, 67 percent of the basic stocks of either grapes or wine for the in- dustrial bodegas were produced by small and medium holding wine-growers [8]. The non- transformation of basic relations of produc- tion is then a common theme of these two periods.

Autonomous development and the forma- tion of a regional elite were partly the result of local initiatives, already begun in the late eighteenth century, and partly a response to opportunities offered by the destruction of French vineyards by the phylloxera in the 1870s and 1880s. Spanish vine-cultivation was a source of agricultural innovation in the early nineteenth century, but the continued expan- sion to meet French demand in the late nineteenth century created a retarding mono-

culture in many regions (Carnero i Arbat, 1980). In 1892, the French vineyards were replanted and in production, and tariff barriers were vindictively raised against Spanish imports to France. The result for most wine and grape-growing areas, many of which were now being devastated by the phylloxera, was massive emigration. As Vicens Vives notes: " . . . by 1893 the rural com- ponent of the emigratory group, which had risen from 11,173 in 1892 to 20,791 in- dividuals, had increased from 54.4% to 73.6%" (1969: 651). The Rioja, particularly the Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa, did not experience such a disastrous decline, in part due to the quality wine industry which still commanded an internal Spanish and colonial market. The treaty of 1892 was much less disruptive than either the oidium plague of 1885 or the phylloxera of 1900 (de Garmo, 1975).

During the 1870s and the 1880s massive amounts of Spanish wine were exported to France, rising to a high of 9 million hecto- liters in 1891 (Huetz de Lemps, 1967:I:526). The Rioja was a major source of export and French-financed railroads connected the re- gion with the port of Bilbao in 1864. The 1870s were the height of merchant's capital- ism in the region, and one town acquired cafes, bars, a theater, nightlife, and the mot to of "Haro, Paris, and London." Another, more important, French influence was the adoption of Bourdeaux techniques of making wine, and the Rioja's bodegas were already making wine "in the style of bourdeaux" in the 1850s [9].

Although the French were primarily interested in bulk new wine for blending, sixteen bodegas producing fine bottled wines were established between 1868 and 1900. These were founded by Riojanos -- Basques, who often owned land or had commercial interests in the Rioja - and French wine merchants. These founders composed a distinct regional elite, fusing elements of the regional class structure and external capitals,

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but all with a vested interest in the wine district. Unlike the French wine merchants (the majority of whom were soon to leave) who relied upon unequal exchange for their profits, the bodega owners not only pur- chased wine and grapes but elaborated, aged and blended wines for final commercialization, often by their own agents on the international market.

Commitment to the region can be seen in the size and planning of these enterprises. For example, one owner - Rafael Lopez de Heredia - was an indio, that is, a Spaniard born in the New World and returned to Spain. His bodega established in Haro, the center of the Rioja wine industry, in 1877 was a model of the ultimate in nineteenth century wine making. The initial capacity of 400,000 liters in fermentation has been constantly expanded and the aging is accomplished in a cave, thP main tunnel of which lies 15 meters below the surface and is over 200 meters long. Since supporting industries were not available, or in high demand, Lopez de Heredia established barrel-making and machine shops as well. During the phylloxera crisis, the bodega purchased vineyards which now produce special reserve wines and, unlike many of the Rioja's bodegas, Lopez de Heredia can depend upon its own vineyards for roughly half of its needs. The other half is purchased from growers with a long-standing relationship to the firm.

More important for regional development was the growing political presence of this reigonal elite on the national and interna- tional levels in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Several of the region's bodega owners were active in the major trade association, the Associacion Nacional de Viticultores - both as founders and pres- idents (Llano, 1974). These bodega owners used effective lobbying and a threat to withdraw from the province of Logrono to obtain an agricultural station, the Estacion

Enologica de Haro, from the central govern- ment in 1892. This technical station was crucial in the later replanting of the vineyards following the phylloxera devastation in 1900, and in providing basic oenological education to a wide cross-section of bodega owners and wine-growers.

Active bodega owners included the pol- itician and journalist, Felix Martinez Lacuesta, who proposed the creation of a regional self-government to eliminate political bossism, caciquismo, and to promote local produce on the European market. The Rioja was known for its over-all liberal republican pursuation, but this does not mean a unity of political opinion among the region's upper classes. In fact, a large and powerful group of traditional landowners with Carlist and Catholic conservative ties opposed any reforms and resisted the abolition of political bossism. This caciquismo served to supply cheap day-laborers, as day wages and the vagrancy laws were controlled by the town halls.

Small and medium holders were also politically active. Here an important split occurred roughly along property lines. The distribution of holdings in the Rioja shows two clusters, one of holdings between 5 and 20 hectares, and the other larger group with holdings less than 5 hectares, roughly 5 0 - 6 0 percent of the exploitations [ 10]. The larger landowners, 5 to 20 hectares, were more likely to join Catholic action groups which were particularly influencial in the Rioja Baja. These Catholic action groups, with the aid of upper-class reformists, established agricultural syndicates, rural credit associa- tions, and eventually a cooperative bodega [ 11 ]. The small holders of less than 5 hectares formed the mass of support for socialist and anarchist unions. These unions also promoted plans for regional reforms and engaged in strikes, demonstrations, and political actions. While the activities of these unions, in partic-

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ular the CNT, are poorly documented, their wide base of support was demonstrated in an abortive uprising in 1934.

Autonomous development ended in the region when it fell into the hands of Franco's nationalist movement in 1936. Until that time, the region had seen the founding of 25 major exporting bodegas, and the devel- opment of related agro-industries, such as canning, and a small center of light industry. In the late Second Republic, the province fell under the control of rightest politicians, but strong left and center political movements existed until the repression of the Franco regime. As mentioned earlier, the existence of a quality wine sector had cushioned the impacts of the French tariff treaty of 1892 and in a host of other ways provided the Rioja with an enviable history of regional development. The organization of the regional elite to obtain technical services, such as the oeneological station in Haro, agricultural credits, and to establish a government control agency, the Consejo Regulador [12], to prevent adulteration, had created a true Rioja wine. This Rioja was perhaps not the equal of the finer French bourdeauxs and burgundies, but commanded a market both inside Spain and internationally.

What did not change were the basic social relations of production, as is evidenced by the dislocations and impoverishment of numerous small and medium holders in the phylloxera and oidium plagues (de Garmo, 1975). As Carnero has shown for other regions, regional elite organization was important in preventing even larger emigration and disruption (Carnero i Arbat, 1980) but the Rioja con- tinued as a small holding area. Perhaps most important of all for the region's continued autonomous development was that, until 1936, active political agitation for changes in the land-tenure system and the relations of production were sought by Catholic, re- publican, anarchist, and socialist political movements. This political dialogue was

subordinated to the nationalist self-sufficiency development policies of the Franco regime, which left the small and medium holders decapitalized.

The second period, that of dependent development, occurred almost thirty years after the Franco regime had come to power. In the late 1960s, the Rioja experienced another "wine boom," but this time with a far different outcome. I term this outcome dependent development because although economic growth occurred, regional control and integration were lost. Throughout this period vineyard production continued to be in the hands of small and medium holders. Significantly, few new bodegas were estab- lished, and the industry remained dominated by the 25 firms established prior to 1936.

The wine boom of the late sixties was a relief to the small-holders and medium- holders whose vineyards had aged excessively during the long periods of low prices and capital shortage. The boom also saw the consolidation of traditional bodegas which had also suffered from de-capitalization. Three major bodegas fused to form A.G.E. Bodegas Unidas, one of the largest complexes in the world, resembling an oil refinery more than a winery [13]. The region's production increased almost ten-fold as new bodegas were founded and old bodegas expanded to take advantage of the boom.

The weakness of the boom was first re- vealed in the crisis of 1973-1974. Wine from previous harvests filled the bodegas of small and medium holders. Large bodegas were also full, and sought only to buy wine at low prices, often below the cost of production. Sales of quality wine increased, providing more income for the large bodegas, but bulk sales declined. The region's wine growers were forced to destroy wine rather than sell at a loss, and excellent wine was burned for industrial alcohol under the government's price support plan.

Dependent development describes this

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period for several reasons. First, there was a loss of control over the regional industry. Second, the traditional sector of small and medium-holders has become marginalized. Finally, these marginal and formerly in- dependent wine-growers had been channeled into either rural proletarianization, or emigra- tion to already overburdened industrial centers.

First, who now controls the wine industry of the Rioja? This is a complex issue. Several traditional Rioja wineries have maintained family control but many of the famous wineries have lost control to outsiders. The new owner's names reveal their external origin. Rapid American Corporation, Pepsico, Grand Metropolitian Ltd., and Seagrams are hardly Spanish, and the Spaniards, such as Domecq, Osborne, and RUMASA, are Andalucian sherry interests, now transna- tional corporations based in Spain. The participation of Spanish banks [14] and credit societies has also led to a loss of control over time as capital demands have increasingly brought banks into the boards of major wineries.

Lack of commitment to quality is some- times all too evident. Pepsico produces the popular YAGO sangria in the Rioja while selling off the vineyards of the once highly respected "Rioja Santiago." The Spanish transnationals also show little regional com- mitment: RUMASA, the mammoth creation of Ruis Mateos, includes 17 sherry firms in Andalucia, several Catalan "Champagne" houses [15], vineyards in La Mancha, and in the Rioja, Bodegas Franco Espanolas and Fedrico Paternina. Paternina, founded by one of the most famous families of the Rioja, has grown into the largest winery in the world. These various wines are distributed through a RUMASA-owned chain of stores throughout Europe, or Paternina's London office, as well as the usual channels of commercialization. Instead of a regional elite, there is a con- stantly circulating body of managers with the

latest in French fashions, a cosmopolitan outlook, and generally believed to be tied to Opus Dei, the Catholic fratemity so well represented in the later governments of Franco [ 16].

Second, the small and medium holders are now losing vineyards for lack of capital, and are facing increasing competit ion from vineyards planted by the transnationals. The failure of the Franco regime's cooperatives, which were the only alternative to the wide range of political movements, has left these wine-growers dependent on the large bodegas. The temporary wine-boom helped, but the high prices encouraged the breakdown of traditional "pa t ron-c l ien t" type ties between small growers and bodegas, some of which had endured for three generations. With the boom over and the glut on, the traditional sector suffered in another way. Almost entirely de-capitalized by the Franco regime's economic policies, the ability of this sector to replant vineyards and mechanize, now neces- sary to compete with transnational vineyards, has been extremely limited.

Contrary to the prior structure of regionally-owned bodegas, the well-financed transnationals and sherry interests have begun massive land purchases and plantings of vineyards. Several thousand hectares of externally controlled vineyards will soon come into production, lowering prices and demand for small-holder wine and grapes. With their own vineyards going out of produc- tion and with the rising costs of cultivation, the wine-grower is often forced either to sell out or find supplementary employment.

Finally, the fate of the small and medium holders is another illustration of the de- pendent nature of this development. Where do these newly created wage workers find employment? Often, in other transnational corporations located in the area to take advantage of the "green labour," obreros verdes, the unorganized nonmilitant, recent peasants. Large factories have been con-

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structed in the midst of the Rioja's vineyards, away from the urban centers for ease of labour control. The next major recipient of this displaced rural labor is expected to be General Motors, which is building plants both in Logrono, the capital of the Rioja, and in nearby Zaragoza.

This I contend is dependent development. But I would like to emphasize that the region can, and is, fighting back. Even before the death of France, agriculturalists were meeting in secret and after 1975 organized the "Union de Agricultores y Ganaderos de la Rioja," a largely socialist agricultural union. This union is particularly concerned with democrat- ization of the government wine regulatory agency, the Consejo Regulador, which has remained in the control of the large firms. In the part of the Rioja which lies in the now autonomous Basque province of Alava, cooperatives and agricultural credits are available for the modernization of family holdings. A notion of "riojanismo" or re- gional identity has been created with success and demands for regional autonomy for the province of Rioja, formerly Logrono, have been presented to the central government. Finally, there is increasing activity by the descendents of the earlier regional elite and like-minded people with plans for the regional wine industry.

In closing, I would like to fullfil a promise to my informants and state that there is still lots of good Rioja wine. Quality is often quite high and the price low. But because of the lack of commercialization and the dependent position of many of the Rioja's wine-growers, you will find them selling their wine to tourists for less than a dollar a liter [ 17].

NOTES

1. The following is a slightly expanded version of a paper read at the Northeastern Anthropological Association in Princeton, March 20, 1982. Fieldwork in La Rioja was sponsored by the Social Sciences Research Council and

while expressing appreciation for this support, all views and opinions expressed are solely my own.

2. Phylloxera is a plant aphid native to the Eastern United States which was imported to Europe as a part of grafting experiments in the 1850s or 1860s. Unlike the American varieties, which were relatively immune to the parasite, European vines (vitis vinifera) were incapable of surviving attacks and died within three years of infestation. Beginning in France in 1865, the slow but steady progress of the phylloxera destroyed approx- imately 85,000 hectares of vines a year (Iglesies, 1968: 8).

3. That is uneconomical by capitalist farming standards. For a discussion of peasant cultivation in such un- economic conditions see Iszaevich's work on Conca de Barbara where a successful cooperative provided a focus for vine cultivation (1979).

4. There is no clear expression of the law of uneven development in Marx's Capital, but there are numerous references to the unevenness of capital accumulation (see esp. Capital vol. I, chap. XXV). The importance of this unevenness is that it allows conceptualization of a region, or other unit of analysis, not as a static geo- graphical area but as part of the process of capital accumulation.

5. Schneider, Schneider, and Hansen have discussed these categories for Sicily and Catalonia and linked them with respective types of elites: "... Modernization refers to the process by which an underdeveloped region changes in response to inputs (ideologies, behavioral codes, commodities and institutional models) from already established industrial centers; a process which is based on that region's continued dependence upon the urban industrial metropolis. Development refers to the process by which an underdeveloped region attempts to acquire an autonomous and diversified economy in its own terms" (Schneider, Schneider, and Hansen, 1972: 34). I have changed "modernization" to dependent devel- opment to avoid confusion with the large body of largely discredited sociological/development theory of this name. Some criticisms of the Catalan case appear in Pi-Sunyer, 1974.

6. Growth poles are not to be confused with the "devel- opment poles" promoted in the Planes of the France government. Development poles were designed to counterbalance the existing concentration of industry and economic development in the Basque and Catalan regions.

7. The transition from artisan to industrial production of wine occurred in many areas of the Mediterranean during the late nineteenth century and comparison of studies shows interesting parallels and contrasts. Kaplan's study of Jerez de la Frontera is a good example of full scale transition to industrial wineries (1977), the Rioja simply did not complete this process and not only did vineyards remain in small and medium holders control but wine itself was elaborated in small bodegas prior to its sale to the larger industrial wineries.

8. This 67% is what is directly tracable to small and

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medium holders and merchant middlemen also buy wine from small and medium holders for sale to the large industrial wineries. The actual percentage may have been as high as 75%.

9. First experiments with French wine-making techniques were conducted by Manual Quintana in Labastida in the late eighteenth century but, for reasons of commercial- ization and peasant resistance, failed to catch on. The 1850s saw the rapid and widespread adoption of this technique, which is still used to make many of the fhier wines.

10. This is estimated from the Censo agrario of 1962, since statistics are collected on the provincial level it is difficult to break out the specific region but such an analysis is being completed for the dissertation. The distinctions here draw upon the observations of J. Harvey Smith about Cruzy, a southern France wine- growing village, and his notion of the development of a "landed proletariat" (1975).

11. This bodega was established in Haro and failed in one year (1922-1923). The plant was then sold to Fedrico Paternina and remains the heart of that company's Haro facilities.

12. The Consejo Regulador was first established in 1926 for the Rioja, the second such agency to be established in Spain. While its need has long been acknowledged there are long periods for which it did not function, particularly between 1933 and 1945.

13. A.G.E. combined two Fuenmayor bodegas with the Navarette operations of the Entrena Family, while extremely successful, it was purchased by a combination of Spanish banks and an American transnational. The Entrena family then moved on to Bodegas Berberana in Cenicero. These two enterprises show that local capital could still initiate and respond to changes in the struc- ture of the international capitalist system.

14. Spanish banks have a much larger financial role than their American counterparts. Banks are also highly concentrated, Ruis Mateos controls 18 banks in ad- dition to his numerous wineries and each of these banks has operations throughout Spain.

15. "Champagne" is a protected trademark of that region in France and although the Catalans make sparkling wine by the same methods it can not be called Champagne. Martinez Lacuesta was one of the lawyers who at- tempted to defend the Catalans in this trademark dispute.

16. Ruis Mateos is a known member of Opus Dei and the existence of this society, which is secret, continues to cast a pall over democratic Spain.

17. Wine in the Rioja is usually sold in the traditional cantata of 16 liters and prices were as low as 200 pesetas a

cantara in the commercial market. Most small wineries and many cooperatives sell to tourists for between 800-1,200 pesetas a cantara. Exceptionally fine bottled wine sells for 2,000 pesetas a case (1 dollar = 96 -98 pesetas) and even in the United States prices for good wine range from $4.00 up.

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