Madera para RENFE. El aprovisionamiento ferroviario de madera en los montes españoles (1942-1953)

Abstract

During the period of extreme autarky later to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), RENFE (the Public Enterprise of Railway) had to provide itself from Spanish mountains of most of wood that it needed to reconstruct railway and to manufacture coachs. So, the Government issued legal measures that guaranteed this important strategic mission, essential for a territorial articulation. A group of mountains, most of them of public ownership, located all over the nation contributed efficiently to this objective. As much the saw up workings and extraction of trees, as the manufacture of pieces were usually carried out by a division created by RENFE, Forest Exploitations, that reached a negative economic evaluation in first years, although it had a beneficial social effect on the regions where it intervened.