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Guillermo Antuña, professor in the Business Department of the TecnoCampus and coordinator of the Center for Analysis and Development of the Social Economy of Catalonia (CADESC), has published the article "Unintended Cluster Emergence: Revisiting Francoist Industrial Policy in the Steelmaking Pole of Asturias (Spain), 1939–1985" in the magazine Enterprise & Society, published by Cambridge University Press.

Based on the Asturian case, the paper analyses the political economy of Francoist industrial development and its long-term territorial influence. More specifically, the article makes a relevant contribution to the debates on the origin of clusters and, in particular, on the role —direct or indirect— of public policies in the early stages of the formation of industrial ecosystems. Specifically, the article analyses the relations between the State and the regional business fabric in the period 1939–1985, with special attention to the trajectory of the metalworking sector linked to the steel industry. 

The results suggest that Asturias presented favorable conditions for the formation of a cluster since the end of the 18th century. However, the decisive trigger was the creation of Ensidesa in 1950, which generated self-reinforcing dynamics and indirect externalities capable of boosting the growth of the local metalworking fabric. The article concludes that this process was not part of the Francoist industrial agenda, which prioritized strategic basic industries and systematically ignored demands for direct support for companies in the metalworking sector. 

These decisions ended up weighing down the region's position in the face of industrial reconversion, as well as conditioning its productive and institutional capacities when it comes to joining the reindustrialization of Europe. The full version of the article is available in EarlyView format from December 1, 2025. Enterprise & Society is one of the leading journals in business history worldwide, considered among the top five in this field and the reference publication of the Business History Conference. In 2024 it was ranked Q1 in the JCR and SJR indexes.

Interview on the podcast "It all started yesterday"

Antuña has been interviewed on the informative podcast of the Spanish Association of Economic History, in which he explains how the Asturian industrial fabric was formed, evolved and transformed around the metalworking sector over almost eight decades. You can listen to here.

 

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