Electrical futures for a regenerated Spain: electricity, engineering and national reconstruction after the 1898 ‘Disaster’

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the multifaceted political and cultural meanings of electrical supply and technologies in a context of recent loss of an empire and a contested nation-building process. It explores how some Spanish engineers employed electricity to articulate a nationalist modernism that saw electricity as a secure path to development and industrialization, particularly following the final collapse of the overseas empire in 1898. At a time in which several groups confronted the challenges of Spanish modernization and the reconfiguration of post-imperial national identity, electricity became involved in several socio-technical (and energy) imaginaries as well as in techno-political strategies. However, conceptions of how the new ‘electrified’ future should look like varied greatly, especially when dealing with the specifics of designing large-scale electrical infrastructures. Given the diverse professional, social, and political outlooks of the different Spanish engineering communities, mobilisations of electricity were inscribed within complex and evolving social and political agendas. This article highlights the need to understand electrification – and by extension, energy transitions – as a contingent process that must be adapted to pre-existing political and socio-cultural forms to ensure the most socially inclusive and culturally nuanced account of its heterogeneity.