Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 218 Labor and Food

After inspecting the construction of the Barcelona industrial base, Carlo took a train from Barcelona and returned to the capital Madrid via Zaragoza.

The railway construction in Spain has been quite smooth so far. Important cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Zaragoza and Valencia have all been connected by railways. The railway between Madrid and Barcelona also uses a double-track railway with greater transportation capacity.

Although this has increased Spain's railway costs, the effect is quite good. Every once in a while, there will be a train from Madrid to Barcelona, ​​and after a while, there will be a train from Barcelona to Madrid and back.

The Madrid to Barcelona train line is also currently the busiest train line in Spain and is hailed by the Spanish government as a bridge for Spain's economic exchanges.

The construction of railways in Spain is made more difficult by the influence of the Meseta Plateau in northern Spain. Spain's railway network must bypass towering mountains and plateaus and pass through the valleys between the mountains.

This not only increased the difficulty of Spain's railway construction, but also increased the casualties rate in Spain's railway construction.

Building railways in this era was very important to the development of industry, but it also meant the death of a large number of workers.

In this era when all transportation depends on manpower, the construction of railways has never been so gentle. Spain has built a large number of railways in recent years, and has also suffered a large number of worker casualties.

The main reason for introducing a number of immigrants from abroad every year is to use these foreign immigrants to build railways.

Spain has a small population, and casualties from railway construction should be avoided if possible. Since these immigrants do not have Spanish nationality, they can only build railways or work as miners if they want to earn enough money.

Although these jobs are hard, the Spanish government has banned the practice of deducting workers' wages in these places. As long as they are willing to work hard in these places, they can definitely make money.

It is also for this reason that Spain's mines and railway construction sites attracted a large number of workers, a considerable number of whom were foreign workers.

Spaniards have more opportunities. They can enter factories or other businesses and naturally will not compete with foreign workers for these jobs with higher mortality rates.

Carlo and the Spanish government also limited the number of foreign workers to a certain proportion to ensure that these workers would not have too serious an impact on Spain's unemployment rate.

Although using foreign workers to fill the gap in casualties caused by railway construction is a good choice, it would be a loss if too many foreign workers affected the opportunities for Spaniards to find jobs.

This is also the reason why Spain strictly limits the number of foreign immigrants. If the number of foreign immigrants is too large, it will be difficult for real Spaniards to find jobs.

Carlo is the king of Spain, so he should give priority to the interests of the Spanish. As for these foreign immigrants, unless they quickly convert to Catholicism and recognize themselves as Spanish, who would care about their feelings?
Although Carlo signed relevant population introduction agreements with both Italy and Russia, these introduced Italians and Russians all did hard labor.

Carlo will not let them compete with the Spaniards for jobs. This will not only arouse conflicts between native Spaniards and immigrants, but will also make Carlo, an outsider, in an even more embarrassing situation.

Carlo knew the meaning of the saying "When in a position, one should do his job". When he became the King of Spain, Carlo should forget the fact that he was Italian and consider the interests of the Spaniards as much as possible, so that he could sit firmly on the throne.

The railway from Barcelona to Zaragoza is mostly plains and low hills, so the train can still move very quickly.

But after reaching Zaragoza, the railway entered the Iberian Mountains and the train's progress slowed down a bit.

After entering the Iberian Mountains, Carlo often saw workers building and repairing railways around the railway line. A small number of these workers were Spanish, but most were immigrants and laborers from outside.

Although building railways is difficult and the casualty rate is high, the wages of railway workers are also quite high.

The average annual income per capita in Spain is only 131 pesetas, but the average salary of railway workers has reached around 145 pesetas, which is why these immigrants and workers are willing to be railway workers.

If they were injured or died while building the railway, their families would also receive some compensation. Although the compensation was not much, it was much better than those capitalists who only knew how to exploit and did not know how to compensate.

The general background of this era was exploitation and slavery. For these immigrants and laborers, railroad workers were the highest-paying jobs they could find.

Unless they have a higher level of education and knowledge, or have special abilities in some areas, they can only make a living by selling hard labor.

Carlo will still treat those real talents well, no matter they are scientists or technical talents. As long as they have a skill, Carlo will put them in suitable positions and let them give full play to their abilities.

After entering the Iberian Mountains, you will first pass through a valley, and then the highest points of the Meseta Plateau, the Central Cordillera and Cuenca Mountain. After passing through these two mountains, you will arrive at Madrid, the capital of Spain.

The geographical limitations of Madrid cannot be seen from the topographic map alone, but if you take a train from Barcelona to Madrid, you can clearly feel the stark difference in the geographical locations of the two cities.

The entire journey from Barcelona to Zaragoza is fairly flat plains and hills. As you follow the Ebro River, you can see the development of European countries at a glance.

But after entering the Iberian Mountains from Zaragoza, it is difficult to find such a flat and prosperous area. Before reaching Madrid, most of the way is sparsely populated mountains and plateaus, without even a decent medium or large city.

This is not an exaggeration. There is a vast "no man's land" between Zaragoza and Madrid. It is definitely an exaggeration to say that it is a no man's land. There are still some people living in this mountainous area and plateau.

But compared to Madrid in the south and the line from Zaragoza to Barcelona in the north, it is not far-fetched to compare these mountains in the middle to no-man's land.

The area of ​​this uninhabited area is not small. The area from Zaragoza to Madrid alone has tens of thousands of square kilometers of mountains. The exploitable value of these lands is extremely low, which is why Spain's development potential is far less than that of France in the north.

The land area of ​​Spain is as high as 50.6 square kilometers, while the land area of ​​France is only 54.9 square kilometers. The gap between the two is not that big.

What really sets off the gap between Spain and France is the type of land in their land area.

The northwest of France has the extremely vast Western European plains, and the capital Paris is located in the Paris Basin, which is extremely suitable for the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

Although there is the Central Plateau in the south, the Aquitaine Basin is located to the west of the Central Plateau. Most of France is plains and hills, with only a small part of it being mountainous.

Nearly half of Spain is covered by the Meseta Plateau, and the south also has mountain ranges such as the Penivetico Mountains, the Morena Mountains and the Toledo Mountains.

Only a small part of the country has plains and hills suitable for developing agriculture and animal husbandry, which makes Spain lag far behind countries like Britain, France and Germany in terms of potential.

Countries like Britain, France and Germany can achieve self-sufficiency in food even if they have a population of tens of millions because they have large plains.

But for Spain, it would be difficult to achieve self-sufficiency in food if it had a population of tens of millions.

Unless Spain can annex Portugal and reclaim Portugal's vast plains into arable land, or completely annex Morocco and expand its territory, it will be difficult to achieve food self-sufficiency with a population of tens of millions.

Whether a country can achieve self-sufficiency in grain production is extremely important to it. People are like iron and food is like steel. If you don’t eat, you will be hungry. If there is no food, no matter how well the country is governed, it will eventually fall into chaos when there is a shortage of food.

Although domestic food needs can be met by importing food in peacetime, who can guarantee that their country will always be in peacetime?

When war comes, countries that need to import food in peacetime will have to pay a higher price to buy those high-priced foods.

This also needs to take into account whether those grain-producing countries are willing to sell grain to themselves. Therefore, achieving self-sufficiency is also Carlo's requirement for Spain's development. No matter at any time, Spain's grain production must keep up with the rate of population growth. Fortunately, for Spain at present, there is still a lot of land that can be reclaimed. Spain also has a large area of ​​land that can be reclaimed. After all, the population at that time was only more than 1800 million, which had not yet reached the upper limit of the population that Spain could accommodate.

Outside of the Spanish mainland, Guinea, Congo Territory and the Philippines can all be used to grow food, so Spain will have no problem achieving self-sufficiency in food.

Not to mention self-sufficiency, Spain is also one of the food exporters in Europe, exporting large amounts of food every year in exchange for foreign exchange to purchase other industrial equipment or technical means of production.

According to estimates by the Spanish agricultural department, Spain will have no problem maintaining food self-sufficiency until its population reaches 2500 million.

After the population reaches 2500 million, we must either find a way to increase food production or open up more land.

The good news is that Spain still has a long way to go before it reaches a population of 2500 million. If we really want to say that the population reaches 2500 million, we have to wait until the 20th century at least.

This period of time was also the time for Spain to look for more arable land, develop more effective fertilizers, and find ways to increase food production.

After the train left the mountains and entered the area of ​​Madrid, Carlo's frown finally eased a little.

The Meseta Plateau has always been a pain for Spain and one of the most important factors affecting Spain's development.

If this area could be turned into a vast plain like the Western European Plain or the Po Plain, Spain's development potential would be greatly enhanced, and it might even have the opportunity to become the world's hegemon.

Unfortunately, this was just a dream. The Meseta Plateau completely prevented Spain from becoming a world hegemon. After the 19th century, Spain was at most a regional power and an upper-middle power.

After returning to Madrid, Carlo summoned the Minister of Agriculture, Jovillar Soller, to inquire about the current development of agriculture in Spain.

Although most of the land in Spain is not suitable for agricultural development, there are still some areas that are excellent arable land suitable for growing crops, vegetables, fruits, etc.

Although Portugal has a larger area of ​​plains, its grain production is actually inferior to Spain.

In later generations, Spain became one of the largest exporters of vegetables and fruits in Europe, and its food self-sufficiency rate reached about 70%, which is a relatively good level.

The Minister of Agriculture, Jovillar Soler, soon arrived at the Royal Palace of Madrid, and Carlo summoned him to the reception room of the palace.

"Minister Jovillar, how is our agricultural development going now?" Before Jovillar saluted, Carlo couldn't wait to ask his question.

For any country, agricultural development is definitely one of the most important links. For Spain, a country where most of the population are farmers, agriculture is an important factor related to the survival of the country.

"Because we have used a lot of chemical fertilizers on the farmland in Andalusia, the grain yield per mu has increased significantly.

We expect that our grain production will increase by at least 5% this year, and the production of vegetables and fruits will remain at the same level as last year." Agriculture Minister Jovillar saluted first, and then answered Carlo's question.

Spain's total grain production is about 400 million tons, with wheat, corn and rice being the largest. Because of Spain's complex geographical environment and climate, Spain also produces other grains including barley, oats, rye and potatoes, but they are all grown in small quantities and the production is not large.

In addition to these 450 million tons of grain, Spain also produces a large amount of vegetables, fruits and other crops, including olives, grapes, etc.

There are also many cash crops for industry, such as cotton, sugar beets and tobacco.

Although the grain output is only 400 million tons, it can barely meet the food needs of more than 1800 million people in Spain because it also produces a lot of vegetables and fruits.

To put it bluntly, this is not the era of later generations, when people had so much food that they could not finish it and even wasted it.

People in this era had a relatively scarce food supply and basically had no right to choose. People basically ate whatever they had, as long as they could barely fill their stomachs, and they would not ask for anything else.

400万吨粮食在后世只能养活1500万到1800万人，但在1877年，差不多能养活接近2000万人口。

Add to that domestically produced vegetables and fruits, and the food produced in Spain alone is enough to feed 2200 million people for a year.

Of course, although ordinary people do not waste food, it is still common among the nobles and capitalists.

This also means that Spain's food production can only guarantee the consumption of about 2000 million people, and there is also the worry of large-scale famine caused by natural disasters that destroy agricultural production.

霍维利亚尔部长所说的粮食产量提高5%，这对西班牙来说绝对是一件好事。按照西班牙粮食产量大约400万吨的总量来估算，提高5%就相当于提高了20万吨的粮食产量，这20万吨的粮食可以确保100万人吃一年。

Spain's population increases by only about 30 people each year, which means that Spain's food self-sufficiency rate will become higher and higher, and it will be less likely to experience famine and food crisis.

After hearing Minister Hovillar’s ​​report, Carlo nodded and was quite satisfied with the development of agriculture.

Although Spain's grain production is not much compared to countries such as Britain, France and Germany that have large plains, fortunately, Spain's population is not large and the demand for food is not that great.

Although Spain's food self-sufficiency rate is not several times that of France and Germany, it is a very good result for Spain to maintain a food self-sufficiency rate of around 100%.

At least it can ensure that Spain will not rely on foreign food imports and can use more funds on other more important areas.

Although importing food is not that expensive in peacetime, the costs accumulated each year are still a significant expense.

There are four important grain-producing areas in Spain, namely the Seville grain-producing area in western Andalucia, the central grain-producing area around the capital Madrid and Toledo, the Zaragoza grain-producing area in Zaragoza, and the Leon grain-producing area near Leon.

The region with the largest grain production is definitely Andalusia, which has the largest population. The grain-producing areas near Seville alone contribute about 25% of Spain's grain production, which is already a very exaggerated level.

It is no exaggeration to say that the grain production in the Andalusia region is always related to the total grain production and grain prices in Spain.

If there are problems with agriculture in the Andalusia region, it will seriously affect the food production of the whole of Spain, triggering a food crisis affecting the whole country or even a large-scale famine.

Unlike grain-producing areas, livestock-raising areas are generally concentrated on the western border of Spain, especially in the Extremadura region, which has the largest livestock-raising area in Spain and is the main supplier of meat for Spain.

This also shows the superiority of Portugal's geographical location. Spain's largest grain-producing and livestock-raising areas are relatively close to the plains and hills of Portugal. The inland mountains and plateaus are weaker than the plains and hills in terms of grain production and livestock.

If Spain could conquer Portugal, it would have a large area of ​​plains and hills that could be used for grain production or livestock breeding. The overall development potential of the entire Iberian Peninsula would far exceed that of Spain before. This would also be an opportunity for Spain to break through the upper-middle powers ceiling and become a regional hegemon or even a superpower.

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(End of this chapter)