Ann Reg Sci (2007) 41:189–208 DOI 10.1007/s00168-006-0096-0 ORIGINAL PAPER The spatial distribution of Spanish transport infrastructure between 1860 and 1930 Alfonso Herranz-Loncán Received: 20 October 2005 / Accepted: 8 September 2006 / Published online: 21 October 2006 © Springer-Verlag 2006 Abstract The origin of Spanish regional economic divergence can be traced back at least until the seventeenth century, although its full definition took place during industrialisation. Historians have often included uneven regional infrastructure endowments among the factors that explain divergence among Spanish regions, although no systematic analysis of the spatial distribution of Spanish infrastructure and its determinants has been carried out so far. This paper aims at filling that gap, by offering a description of the regional distri- bution of the main Spanish transport infrastructure between the middle of the nineteenth century and the Civil War. In addition, it estimates a panel data model to search into the main reasons that explain the differences among the Spanish regional endowments of railways and roads during that period. The outcomes of that analysis indicate that both institutional factors and the phys- ical characteristics of each area had a strong influence on the distribution of transport infrastructure among the Spanish regions. JEL Classification H54 · L92 · N73 · O18 1 Introduction The Spanish economy is nowadays characterised by huge differences in income per capita among regions. Although their origin may be traced back at least A. Herranz-Loncán(B ) Department of Economic History and Institutions, University of Barcelona, Diagonal, 690, Barcelona, Spain 08034 e-mail: alfonso.herranz@ub.edu