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From revolution to our days.
Industrialization: the canning
industrial sector
The first industrial sector that stood out was the canning industry, of which
Galicia was, already at the end of the 19th century, its main producer
in Spain. The starting situation was a long tradition of sales and exports of
sardine and other fish, which through different conservation techniques were sent
to nearby markets, such as the Portuguese. The arrival of the Catalans, at the
end of the 18th century, introduced important novelties, both in the fishing and
the conservation techniques, up to the point of causing a certain mass use of the
fishing grounds. The proliferation of the new industries spread precisely in those
places that the Catalan promoters had already reached, although among the
new promoters there were also new people.
Undoubtedly, one of the places where the origin of this emerging industry is
best noticed is in the ría of Arousa, where some of the first factories were
installed, such as the canning factory of Goday in the Arousa Island. It
is recommended to visit the Sálvora Island, in Riveira, currently part of the
National Maritime-Terrestrial Park of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia, where
the remains of one of the few salt mines that existed in Galicia in the Modern
Age can be visited. At the end of the 18th century, a factory dedicated to this
activity was built there.
The growth of this sector continued in a favourable way until the First World War,
especially taking advantage of the war situation to grow in an exponential way.
But the end of the fight and the drop of the demand brought a relative crisis. It had
to wait until Franco’s regime and the development plans, among which it stood
out the city of Vigo, where the Citröen factory was installed.
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