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‘This timely book places Spain in its European context yet highlights the
distinctive role of territorial tensions in explaining the chronic political
instability of recent years. A valuable contribution to the literature on political
competition in Spain, doing justice to the Catalan and Basque dimensions.’
Richard Gillespie, Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool

‘This perceptive book is essential reading for anyone who wants to make
sense of the political changes Spain experienced in the aftermath of the Great
Recession. Caroline Gray provides great insight into how territorial politics
shaped and then was shaped by the new party system.’
Bonnie N. Field, Professor of Global Studies, Bentley University
Territorial Politics and the Party System in
Spain

Across Western Europe, the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath
not only brought economic havoc but also, in turn, intense political upheaval.
Many of the political manifestations of the crisis seen in other Western and
especially Southern European countries also hit Spain, where challenger par-
ties caused unprecedented parliamentary fragmentation, resulting in four
general elections in under four years from 2015 onwards. Yet Spain, a decen-
tralised state where extensive powers are devolved to 17 regions known as
‘autonomous communities’, also stood out from its neighbours due to the
importance of the territorial dimension of politics in shaping the political
expression of the crisis.
This book explains how and why the territorial dimension of politics con-
tributed to shaping party system continuity and change in Spain in the after-
math of the financial crisis, with a particular focus on party behaviour. The
territorial dimension encompasses the demands for ever greater autonomy or
even sovereignty coming from certain parties within the historic regions of the
Basque Country, Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, Galicia. It also encom-
passes where these historic regions sit within the broader dynamics of inter-
governmental relations across Spain’s 17 autonomous communities in total,
and how these dynamics contribute to shaping party strategies and behaviour
in Spain. Such features became particularly salient in the aftermath of the
financial crisis since this coincided with, and indeed accelerated, the rise of
the independence movement in Catalonia.

Caroline Gray is Lecturer in Politics and Spanish at Aston University in Bir-

mingham and Deputy Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe. She spe-
cialises in the politics of Spain and wider Europe, focusing on nationalist
movements, political decentralisation and the party system. She studied
Modern Languages at the University of Oxford for her BA and MSt degrees,
before later completing an ESRC-funded PhD in Politics at the University of
Liverpool.
Europa Country Perspectives

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Wil G. Pansters, Benjamin T. Smith, Peter Watt

Greece in the 21st Century

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The Basque Contention

Ethnicity, Politics, Violence
Ludger Mees

Barcelona, the Left and the Independence Movement in Catalonia

Richard Gillespie

Political Party Dynamics and Democracy in Sweden

Developments since the ‘Golden Age’
Tommy Möller

Territorial Politics and the Party System in Spain

Continuity and Change since the Financial Crisis
Caroline Gray

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Europa-Country-Perspectives/book-series/ECP.
Territorial Politics and the Party
System in Spain
Continuity and Change since the Financial
Crisis

Caroline Gray
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Caroline Gray
The right of Caroline Gray to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gray, Caroline (Lecturer in politics and Spanish), author.
Title: Territorial politics and the party system in Spain : continuity and
change since the financial crisis / Caroline Gray.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series:
Europa country perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019059093 (print) | LCCN 2019059094 (ebook) | ISBN
9781857439830 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429290060 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Regionalism–Spain. | Political parties–Spain. |
Decentralization in government–Spain. | Central-local government
relations–Spain. | Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009. |
Spain–Politics and government–21st century.
Classification: LCC JN8231 .G73 2020 (print) | LCC JN8231 (ebook) |
DDC 320.946–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059093
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059094

ISBN: 978-1-85743-983-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-29006-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents

Acknowledgements viii

1 Territorial politics and the party system in Spain 1

2 The political consequences of the 2008 financial crisis: Spain in
European context 20
3 Decentralisation and its discontents: The role of the financial
crisis in accelerating the Catalan independence movement 41
4 Basque nationalism: A longer-term quest for co-sovereignty 70
5 Territorial politics and the evolution of the Spanish left 92
6 Territorial politics and the evolution of the Spanish right 124
7 Conclusion: Continuity or change? 157

Index 168
Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I wish to thank the many current and former politicians
in Spain and those close to them who allowed me to interview them for this
project. I also wish to thank my employer, Aston University, for the financial
support it provides to early career lecturers that made some of the research
trips possible.
I am very grateful to Richard Gillespie, my former PhD supervisor, for his
continued interest in my work since I completed the PhD in 2016. The
beginnings of the idea for this book came to me while I was researching and
writing my PhD on Basque and Catalan politics, and the extent to which
regional politics shapes national politics in Spain became increasingly appar-
ent to me. I am also very grateful to Bonnie N. Field, whose work has taught
me so much about politics in Spain, for her support and encouragement in
recent years, and to the Spanish academics who took time to meet with me
during my research trips and provided invaluable insights that helped to shape
some of my thoughts in this book. Finally, I wish to thank Cathy Hartley,
Europa commissioning editor for Routledge, for her support and guidance
throughout the process.
1 Territorial politics and the party system
in Spain

Introduction
When Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, announced on Friday 15
February 2019 that he was calling early elections on 28 April, the first response
of the main Conservative opposition leader, Pablo Casado, confirmed what
observers by then widely expected: that the national election campaign was
going to revolve heavily around how to address the independence drive in one
part of the country, Catalonia. In his first press conference less than an hour
after Sánchez’s announcement, before any mention of other key priorities or
policy areas, Casado told voters that they faced a choice between ‘a model that
negotiates with [Catalan regional president] Torra or a party that spearheads
the implementation of Article 155’.1 The first of these ‘choices’ was a reference
to the weak minority Socialist government’s attempt to govern over the pre-
vious nine months by seeking to engage with other parties with representation
in the Spanish parliament, including the Catalan pro-independence parties. The
second was the alternative Casado was proposing: a conservative People’s Party
(Partido Popular—PP) government, or more likely a PP-led right-wing coali-
tion government, that would clamp down harder than any government before
on the pro-independence government and wider movement in Catalonia by
implementing the highly controversial Article 155 of the 1978 Spanish Con-
stitution in a far-reaching manner. This Article allows the Spanish government
to intervene and take control of the governance of an autonomous community
if it ‘does not fulfil the obligations imposed upon it by the Constitution or other
laws, or acts in a way seriously prejudicing the general interests of Spain’.2 It is
widely considered a last resort given its drastic and potentially incendiary
nature, and it had only ever been used once before, then for a temporary period
of a few months, by the former PP government under the leadership of Mar-
iano Rajoy, after the Catalan regional government had proceeded with an
unconstitutional referendum on 1 October 2017 and then illegally declared
Catalan independence. What Casado envisaged was a more all-encompassing,
longer-term application in which the central state would take control of more
areas of Catalan government and the public sector than previously, including,
for example, the Catalan public broadcaster.
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2 Territorial politics and the party system
That the elections were presented this way by Casado, and indeed by other
party leaders in much of the run-up to the elections thereafter, was the
culmination of a trend that had become increasingly clear over the previous
months, whereby Spanish parties were ever more firmly divided into right and
left blocs based in large part on their attitudes to the Catalan situation, with
other, more traditional left–right policy debates still prevalent but taking
second place in comparison. Broadly speaking, on the one hand, the parties
on the left – most notably, the mainstream Socialist Party (Partido Socialista
Obrero Español—PSOE or ‘the Socialists’) and new challenger party Pode-
mos (‘We Can’) – saw themselves as the progressive side open to dialogue
with Catalan pro-independence parties to seek to resolve the situation. On the
other hand, the parties on the right – the mainstream conservative PP and
new challengers Ciudadanos (Citizens) and Vox – conceived of themselves as
the only guarantors of Spanish unity through their promises to crack down
harder on Catalan secessionism. How had Spain reached this stage, where
national politics and party campaigns for a general election – the third in four
years – were so heavily dominated by political developments in one part of
the state?
Across Western Europe, the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath
had not only brought economic havoc but also, in turn, intense political
upheaval, as the widespread decline of mainstream parties went hand in hand
with the rise of anti-establishment challenger parties. These parties not only
made a significant contribution to shaping the political debate, but also went
on either to win elections or, at the very least, to cause significant parlia-
mentary fragmentation and thereby to influence (or make very difficult)
government formation, all in a context of heightened polarisation. Most of
the key ways in which the crisis manifested itself politically in other Western
European countries also hit Spain, where challenger parties first emerged at
the 2014 European elections and then caused unprecedented parliamentary
fragmentation at the 2015 Spanish general election, breaking Spain’s tradi-
tional two-party dominance and resulting in the need for new elections in
2016 after no party could form a government.
There were, however, two main exceptions to the norm in the Spanish case:
firstly, the lack of relevance of any far-right challenger party for a long time
(Alonso and Rovira Kaltwasser 2015; González-Enríquez 2017); and sec-
ondly, the significance of Spain’s territorial problematic for wider political
change, in particular with the emergence of a strong pro-independence
movement in Catalonia shaping wider Spanish politics. From 2018, Spain
ceased to be an exceptional case in regard to the first of these factors, fol-
lowing the rapid rise and electoral success of far-right party Vox at the
regional elections of Andalusia in Southern Spain, after which the polls
showed the party was also on track to win seats and enter the Spanish Con-
gress of Deputies for the first time at the next general election. While Vox had
been formed in 2013, it was not until 2018 that it rapidly gained influence and
presence in the Spanish political debate. However, rather than embracing the
 Territorial politics and the party system 3
classic Euroscepticism of the far-right challenger parties that had already
become electorally relevant years beforehand elsewhere in Europe, it focused
its attention instead primarily on Spanish domestic issues, campaigning in
particular for a tougher crackdown on the Catalan pro-independence
movement and a wider recentralisation of powers in decentralised Spain, as
part of an agenda also characterised by ultra-social conservatism and anti-
immigrationism. Thus, the emergence of Vox, while putting an end to the
‘Spanish exception’ whereby the country appeared to have resisted the scourge
of right-wing populism, actually served to further accentuate the second
‘Spanish exception’ identified above: the importance of the territorial dimension
in shaping the political expression of the crisis in Spain.
The aim of this book is therefore to investigate in what ways, and to what
extent, the territorial dimension of politics has impacted the dynamics of party
system continuity and change in Spain in the decade following the financial
crisis, with a particular focus on party behaviour. By ‘territorial dimension’, we
understand all aspects related to Spain’s decentralised territorial model com-
prising 17 regions, officially known as ‘autonomous communities’, as first
enshrined in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. One of the biggest challenges of
the transition to democracy and the drafting of the Constitution of 1978 was
how to accommodate Spain’s different regional identities within the Spanish
state following their repression under dictator Francisco Franco. In order to
satisfy different political actors spanning the Spanish right and left and also
from within the regions themselves, the final design took the form of what
Colomer (1998) describes as an ‘ambiguous constitutional compromise’ akin
to ‘non-institutional federalism’ (pp. 40–41). This compromise involved
maintaining the provinces first created in the nineteenth century and grouping
them into 17 autonomous communities or regions, with those of Catalonia, the
Basque Country and Galicia (and later on, Andalusia as well) given additional
recognition as historic regions or ‘nationalities’. Each of the 17 has its own
regional parliament and government, and its own regional autonomy statute,
akin to a regional constitution.
Spain’s parliament thus ‘shares law-making authority with 17 regional
parliaments, as well as with European institutions’ (Field and Gray 2019, p.
40). Through a gradual process of devolution, Spain developed one of the
most decentralised political systems in Europe over the period from the 1980s
through to the early 2000s in terms of spending competences. The regions
gradually acquired responsibility for spending in fundamental policy areas
such as health, education and social services, among others – though the
decentralisation of revenue-raising competences was much more limited,
except in the case of the Basque Country and Navarre, which, for historical
reasons, raise their own taxes (Gray 2016, pp. 56–59). The ambiguity of the
Constitution, compounded later by the recurring reliance of minority Spanish
governments from 1993 onwards on alliances primarily with Basque and
Catalan nationalist parties with representation in the Spanish parliament to
secure working majorities, gave these parties bargaining power to negotiate
4 Territorial politics and the party system
increasing decentralisation gains, which other regions then sought to emulate.
Ultimately, this led to a far greater degree of policy decentralisation in Spain
than some of the founding fathers of the Constitution might ever have
envisaged (Colomer 1998).
However, a by-product of the system was that it ended up sowing discord
among the regions rather than generating collaboration or consensus, as the
regional governments resorted to competitive bargaining with the central gov-
ernment for competences and resources (Colomer 1998, p. 40). Spain is not
constitutionally a federal state, and there is general agreement among academics
that ‘Spain does not meet the most important criteria found in federalist systems
generally regarded as prototypes’ (Encarnación 2008, p. 103). Most importantly,
Spain lacks a fully fledged institutionalised framework for intergovernmental
cooperation since the Spanish Senate (upper house of parliament) is not a proper
territorial chamber typical of federal systems. The handful of non-institutionalised
forums that bring together the central government and the regional governments
in Spain – primarily the fiscal and financial policy council (Consejo de Política
Fiscal y Financiera—CPFF), meetings of the national and regional education
ministers and the consultative conference on European affairs – have tended to
descend into conflictive rather than cooperative dynamics, as each regional
government has sought the best outcome for its own territory.
Moreover, although Spain is, to all appearances, one of the most decentralised
countries in Europe, with the regional governments responsible for over one third
of state spending, Basque and Catalan nationalists argue that this is only a
façade for an ultimately still centralised Spanish state.3 They see such centralism
in the fact that the traditionally dominant parties refuse to acknowledge the
existence of different nations within the state or share sovereignty with these. On
a practical level, they also see it in the fact that the Spanish government can still
introduce basic laws that override regional laws even in the case of decentralised
competences, and that it has been known to renege on promises in regard to the
devolution of competences and their financing.
The territorial dimension of politics in Spain inevitably encompasses the
demands for ever greater autonomy or even sovereignty coming from certain
parties and sectors of some of the historic regions, especially the Basque Country
and Catalonia, and the range of responses from Spanish state-wide parties, which
each have different views on how Spain’s territorial model should evolve. Yet, the
territorial dimension also encompasses where these historic regions sit within the
broader dynamics of intergovernmental relations within Spain across the autono-
mous communities in general, and how these dynamics shape wider party
strategies and behaviour in Spain. Such intergovernmental relations include
central-regional, inter-regional and also intra-regional dynamics, given that each
region contains provinces and municipalities. While the territorial dimension had
already had some impact on the nature and evolution of the party system in Spain
prior to the crisis, this book seeks to assess how the financial crisis then served to
accelerate, compound or indeed modify pre-existing trends in this regard.
 Territorial politics and the party system 5
This book is focused on the evolution of party behaviour and the research
that informs it is primarily qualitative and inductive in nature. Given the
widely different varieties of unitary, federal and decentralised states in
Europe, cross-country quantitative studies of the impact of the financial crisis
on national politics cannot adequately capture the specifics of how the var-
ious dimensions of territorial politics in an individual country like Spain
might have shaped party agendas and strategies. This makes an in-depth, case
study approach necessary. The findings presented in this book are thus
informed first and foremost by an extensive programme of elite interviews
conducted by this author with politicians and other relevant actors in Madrid
and the Basque and Catalan regions at various stages over the period
2014–2019. Over 50 in-depth interviews were held in total throughout
those years with representatives of as many of the parties (both state-wide
and regionally based) as feasible, in order to seek different perspectives
and ward against bias insofar as possible.4 In all cases, interviews were
semi-structured, with interview questionnaires being used as an approx-
imate guide only and questions being deliberately open. Such flexibility
allowed a wider range of findings to emerge from interviewees’ accounts of
their experiences, rather than the interviewer seeking to test pre-existing
ideas and theories. The information obtained in interviews has also been
supplemented by more informal conversations with academics and other
experts familiar with relevant developments and negotiations, extensive
reading of media reports and, where possible, of other publicly available
accounts of particular key junctures and negotiations.
The remainder of this chapter, together with Chapter 2, is designed to
provide the necessary background and framework for the primary analysis
undertaken in Chapters 3–6, before Chapter 7 concludes. The political con-
sequences of the financial crisis in Spain were shaped to a significant extent
by the pre-existing characteristics and specifics of the party system and poli-
tical cleavages. Chapter 1 therefore introduces Spain’s pre-crisis political and
party system evolution, before Chapter 2 does the same for the period after
the financial crisis had hit.
The next two sections of this chapter look first at the traditional party
system and governance in multi-level Spain, followed then by political clea-
vages and axes of party competition. This is designed to explain the ways in
which the territorial dimension affected the political and party system in
Spain prior to 2015, the year when the political consequences of the financial
crisis first had a serious impact on the party system. A final section then
summarises and gives an overview of the chapters of the book to follow.

Traditional party system and governance in multi-level Spain

From the first post-Franco democratic elections in 1977 until the political
upheaval of the 2015 elections, scholars have divided the evolution of Spain’s
party system and types of governance into three main stages: a transitional
6 Territorial politics and the party system
multiparty system (1977–1982), a predominant party system (1982–1993) and
a two-party dominant system (1993–2015) (e.g. Rodríguez-Teruel et al. 2019,
pp. 249–253; Field and Gray 2019, pp. 32–36).5 The first (1977–1982) broadly
coincided with the period of the transition to democracy following Franco’s
death in 1975. It saw the centre-right Union of the Democratic Centre (Unión
de Centro Democrático—UCD), which incorporated reformists from
previously Francoist ranks, win two elections (1977, 1979) under the leader-
ship of Adolfo Suárez. UCD formed minority governments, establishing
working majorities through alliances, which was feasible in the collaborative
era of the transition. Its main competitor was the PSOE, while two other
state-wide parties, much smaller but still of strategic importance, were the far-
left Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España—PCE) and
the right-wing Popular Alliance (Alianza Popular—AP) (Field and Gray
2019, p. 32). Some regionally based parties also became relevant actors in the
national parliament at this stage, most notably the now defunct Catalan
Convergence and Union alliance (Convergència i Unió—CiU) and the
Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco—PNV). Those two
formations would, from then on, consistently win a significant vote share and
number of seats in the Spanish general elections.
With the bases of a democratic system established, UCD had run its
course. The party’s collapse, amid the replacement of the consensual politics
of the transition with a more adversarial climate, ushered in a new stage in
Spanish politics in which the PSOE governed with absolute majorities for
more than a decade, under the leadership of Felipe González. This period of
the 1980s was characterised by the AP’s continuing struggle to gain traction,
eventually rebranding itself as the PP in 1989, and the reconfiguration of the
PCE into a new left-wing alliance named the United Left (Izquierda Unida—IU),
which remained a small force (Rodríguez-Teruel et al. 2019, p. 252). Interestingly,
however, the 1980s also featured the gradual rise of regionally based parties in the
national parliament, which accounted for more than 10 per cent of the seats by
1986–1989 (Rodríguez-Teruel et al. 2019, p. 252). As problems with corruption
started taking their toll on the PSOE, support for the PP grew in the early to mid
1990s. This coincided with the new leadership of the PP under José María Aznar
from 1990, who moved the party ideologically closer to the centre-right, making it
a serious challenger to the PSOE for the first time (Orriols and Cordero 2016,
p. 470, following Orriols and Lavezzolo 2008). This culminated in a new era of
two-party dominance in Spanish party politics that would last for nearly two
decades, becoming the longest-standing model of the democratic era to date.
While the main feature of the period of two-party dominance from 1993
and 2015 was the PSOE and the PP’s alternation in power thanks to their
high vote concentration, it also had other Spain-specific characteristics. One
of the most significant of these was the predominance of strong and stable
minority governments during this period (Field 2014, 2016). Four out of six
governments during those years were minority ones, which relied on the sup-
port of regionally based parties with a presence in the national parliament to
 Territorial politics and the party system 7
give them a working majority. In return for their support, the regionally based
parties would obtain quid pro quos in the form of further decentralisation or
economic gains for their region, or support from the relevant state-wide party
in the regional parliament if needed, via what Field (2014) describes as a
system of ‘mutual backscratching’. Before 2000, the moderate centre-right
regional parties (the Catalan CiU, the Basque PNV and the Canaries Coali-
tion (Coalición Canaria—CC)) were key to the PSOE minority government
of 1993–1996 and the PP minority government of 1996–2000. Later on, the
leftist regional parties, including the Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra
Republicana de Catalunya—ERC) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (Bloque
Nacionalista Galego—BNG), along with IU, also grew in importance for the
PSOE minority governments of 2004–2008 and 2008–2011 (Field and Gray
2019, p. 36). Those governments shifted alliances more regularly depending
on the policy in question (Field 2009, 2013). Such informal support arrange-
ments allowed minority governments to function and prevented the need for
formal coalitions. Only the PP secured absolute majorities for two terms,
2000–2004 and 2011–2015.
Spain’s electoral system facilitated such electoral outcomes and govern-
ments since the system greatly compromises proportionality, despite osten-
sibly being one of proportional representation. The number of seats allocated
per district is low and each district is guaranteed a minimum of two seats,
regardless of its population, which has typically favoured the two largest
parties (Field and Gray 2019, p. 30). While the system has not tended to
penalise regionally based parties that only present candidates in a limited
territory and concentrate their votes geographically, the story is different for
small state-wide parties with votes scattered across the country. The latter
group includes most notably IU, but also Union, Progress and Democracy
(Unión Progreso y Democracia—UPyD), which gained sufficient support to
enter parliament from 2008–2015. In the 2011 election, for example, these two
parties only achieved 46 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, of the seats
that they would have secured with perfect proportionality (Orriols and
Cordero 2016, p. 470). Beyond these aspects of the electoral system, the
longstanding absence of personalised political behaviour in Spain also
favoured two-party dominance and strong minority governments, with parties
structuring and dominating parliamentary activity (Field 2013).
Just as the behaviour of regionally based parties in the national parliament has
been significant, so too has that of the state-wide parties in regional governments
and parliaments. While regionally based nationalist parties dominated from the
first regional elections of 1980 onwards in Catalonia and the Basque Country,
regional branches of state-wide parties ended up governing in the other regions.
As mentioned above, the ambiguities of the Constitution, compounded from
1993 onwards by the recurring reliance of minority Spanish governments on
alliances with regionally based nationalist parties with representation in the
Spanish parliament (primarily CiU and PNV) to secure working majorities, gave
these parties bargaining power to negotiate increasing decentralisation gains.
8 Territorial politics and the party system
Other regions governed by state-wide parties then sought to emulate these via
what has been described as a ‘competitive bargaining’ process (Colomer 1998,
p. 40). This gradual strengthening of regional governments, and thereby of the
role and authority of regional presidents, had consequences, in turn, for the
parties’ behaviour at level central. Most notably, regional politicians in long-
standing PSOE strongholds in southern Spain – most notably Andalusia, but
also Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha – ended up acquiring a significant
influence on the behaviour of the party in the 1980s and 1990s. During the
transition to democracy, party leaders had federalised the PSOE’s structure by
reorganising it into four different layers corresponding to the local, provincial,
regional and national levels, but resources and decision-making capacity had
remained centralised in the hands of the national authorities that controlled the
process (Méndez Lago 2006, pp. 425–426). Throughout the 1980s, however, the
gradual devolution of powers to the autonomous communities, combined with
repeated electoral successes for the PSOE in certain regions (most notably in the
poorer, southern parts of the country), resulted in the emergence of regional
party ‘barons’ who acquired significant weight within the party and posed a
challenge to the traditional centrality of decision-making. Commanding
significant votes and patronage, they started to use these to exert a degree of
autonomy from the federal party authorities (Méndez Lago 2006, p. 426,
following Gillespie 1992, p. 8).
The most notable ‘barons’ from the 1980s through to the early 2000s were
José Bono, president of the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha from
1983 to 2004; Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, president of the regional gov-
ernment of Extremadura from 1983 to 2007; and Manuel Chaves, president of
the regional government of Andalusia from 1990–2009. In particular, when
the PSOE lost power at central government level in 1996 at a time of general
crisis for the party, these three ‘barons’ continued winning and remained in
office in their autonomous communities, which, in turn, gave them significant
influence on the party strategy and direction. At the time, the PSOE overall
was not only losing voters, but also undergoing a leadership crisis following
the resignation of Felipe González in June 1997. Josep Borrell unexpectedly
won the party primaries against Joaquín Almunia – a close collaborator of
González – in 1998 but resigned a year later, to be replaced by Almunia, who
then resigned in March 2000 after the party’s resounding defeat at the general
election (Méndez Lago 2006, p. 421). In this turbulent context, the three
‘barons of the south’, Chaves, Ibarra and Bono, played a fundamental role in
steering the party until the election of Zapatero as the new party leader at the
July 2000 party congress.6 While the PSOE is best known for the emergence
of regional ‘barons’ from the 1980s onwards, the PP also developed regions
where it tended to win time and time again as the party strengthened
throughout the 1990s, and which became particularly influential within the
party. Notable examples include the region of Galicia, where Manual Fraga
was president from 1990 to 2005, or Valencia, which the PP governed from
1995 to 2015.
 Territorial politics and the party system 9
Finally, in the historic regions where regionally based nationalist parties
operate, the need for state-wide parties to compete with these at the regional
level of competition has at times ended up having consequences for the
behaviour of state-wide parties overall. Most notable in this regard was the
behaviour in the first decade of the 2000s of the Socialists’ Party of Catalonia
(Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya—PSC-PSOE, hereafter PSC). For
historical reasons, the PSC is the only regional representation of the PSOE
which is a formal federation of the party rather than simply a ‘branch’ of the
latter, which gives it relatively greater autonomy (Fabre 2008, p. 320; Hopkin
2009, pp. 188–189; Van Houten 2009, pp. 176–177). The PSC gradually
‘Catalanised’ its agenda in the late 1990s and first decade of the 2000s in
order first to compete against the Catalan nationalist federation CiU, which
had been in power since the first post-transition Catalan elections; and then
to govern as head of the left-wing tripartite coalition governments in Catalo-
nia in 2003–2010, which put CiU into opposition. The PSC, under the
leadership of Pasqual Maragall, embraced the goal of a reform of the Catalan
regional autonomy statute in the lead-up to the 2003 Catalan elections.
Together with its coalition partners, ERC and the Initiative for Catalonia
Greens (Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds—ICV), it took forward the process of
regional statute reform in Catalonia from 2003 onwards, competing with the
proposals of CiU in opposition. This led to what has been described as an
‘outbidding competition’, principally between ERC and CiU, that resulted in
a ‘radicalisation’ of agendas (Barrio and Rodríguez-Teruel 2017). According
to this viewpoint, CiU, from its position in opposition, needed strategically to
outbid the tripartite coalition with its proposals, in an attempt to reassert itself
as the most pro-Catalan party and seek its return to power in subsequent
elections. The PSC’s strategy and behaviour at this time led to tensions and
competing priorities with the PSOE headquarters in Madrid and the regional
branches of the party elsewhere in Spain (Fabre 2008; Roller and Van Houten
2003; Van Houten 2009). This notwithstanding, the PSC’s decline in popularity
in Catalonia during and following the experience of the PSC-led tripartite
coalition governments in Catalonia in 2003–2010 can in part be attributed to
the fact that it became clear the regional federation, despite its extensive
autonomy, was ultimately still subordinate to the party headquarters in
Madrid. The dominant influence on the PSOE for most of this period still
came from the barons of the south rather than from Catalonia, though in
subsequent years not even they would be immune to the political consequences
of the Great Recession, as will be considered in Chapter 2.

Traditional political cleavages and axes of party competition in Spain

This section is concerned with what exactly it means to be right- or left-wing in
Spain, and where the territorial dimension fits within the left–right dimension
of politics. When scholars started to devise analytical frameworks for the study
of party systems and competition in Western Europe in the 1950s, the focus
10 Territorial politics and the party system
was almost exclusively on the level of the nation-state and the left–right axis of
competition (Alonso et al. 2015, p. 851). When others then looked for evidence
of the resurgence of territorial identities in the 1960s and 1970s having a
significant impact on state-wide party systems, ‘they did not find it’ (Jeffery
2009, p. 640). Nationalist–regionalist parties were largely dismissed at the time
as ‘niche’ or ‘single-issue’ parties concerned with the territorial rather than left–
right dimension, which commanded too little support to have an impact on the
main pattern of competition (Alonso et al. 2015, p. 851). The outlook would,
however, start to change as the sub-state level in Western Europe was strengthened
with the introduction of regional elections in Belgium, France, the UK and newly
democratised Spain in the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in the gradual devolu-
tion of powers to the regional or substate government level. As the number of
regionalist–nationalist parties began to grow, so did their electoral and political
success at substate level. Thereafter, a substantial number of regionalist–nationalist
parties began to successfully gain control at substate level as majority or minority
governments, or to contribute to substate governments through coalitions or more
informal parliamentary support arrangements and alliances. In turn, the increased
success of regionalist–nationalist parties at substate level would lead to many
entering government coalitions at the state level (in Italy, Belgium and Germany)
or supporting the central government through alliances, as seen in Spain, usually
in return for concessions at the regional level.
This prompted political scientists to start to develop new analytical frame-
works for the study of party systems in Western Europe to account for their
multi-level and multi-dimensional nature. Swenden and Maddens (2008)
describe how reconceptualising party systems as multi-level requires taking
into account the nature of regional party systems as well as the state-wide one;
how regional party systems within a state interact with each other; and how
they interact with the state-wide system via both top-down and bottom-up
processes. Similarly, new frameworks sought to account for the fact that party
systems operate in multidimensional policy spaces where the left–right divide is
only one among various axes of competition. Spain is a particularly interesting
case in this context, due to Spanish specifics regarding the way in which the
centre–periphery or territorial axis of competition fits into the Spanish political
space. The centre–periphery axis does not crosscut the left–right axis of com-
petition but rather is incorporated within it, as right- and left-wing ideologies
among the state-wide parties in Spain have broadly become synonymous with
centralist and decentralist positions, respectively (Dinas 2012, p. 477; Verge
2013). Not only that, but the main issues driving left–right party competition
in Spain have, in fact, traditionally been non-economic ones such as this ques-
tion of centralisation–decentralisation, alongside others such as the role of the
Church and the question of immigration. These have been more important
than the classic left–right economic divide over the desired level of state inter-
vention in the economy and size of the welfare state (Sánchez-Cuenca and
Dinas 2012; Dinas 2012). The rest of this section explains these Spanish
characteristics and their implications in more detail.
 Territorial politics and the party system 11
Firstly, it is important to consider why the classic left–right divide over
economic policy and the size of the welfare state has not been a major source
of partisan conflict in Spain for much of the democratic period. Studies have
long shown that from the transition to democracy onwards, the PSOE and
the PP alike were strongly in favour of EU membership and integration,
sharing an ambition for Spain to play a leading role in the EU and support-
ing the project of an ever-closer Union. This helps to explain why the PSOE,
when first in power from 1982 to 1996 under Felipe González, very quickly
shifted towards a classically liberal economic agenda in supporting privatisa-
tion to modernise the Spanish economy and allow for its successful European
integration (Chari 1998). The PSOE’s embrace of economic liberalism was
also a reaction to the old reality of public ownership and state bureaucracy
under Franco. When the Socialists later returned to power in 2004 under
Zapatero after eight years of PP government, Royo (2009) shows that
continuity in the sphere of economic policy remained a persistent theme, as
the PSOE did not significantly diverge from the policies of the previous
conservative governments, which had themselves been a continuation of those
of the PSOE earlier in the 1990s. This leads Royo (2009) to describe macro-
economic policy as ‘one of the few policy areas that seem to be largely above
partisan politics, with little dissension between the two leading parties’
(p. 435). He attributes this not only to personnel continuities in the upper
ranks of economic policy making at the time, but also longer-lasting trends
such as the importance of social bargaining in that policy area, in addition to
the afore-mentioned constraints that EU membership imposed on it.
Spain, however, has presented an unusually strong case of convergence
among the two major parties on the role of the state in the economy among
EU member states, and Fernández-Albertos and Manzano (2012) identify
further reasons for this. They observe that it is not only the positions of the
two main parties themselves that have been almost indistinguishable on the
size of the welfare state, but also those of their respective voters – thereby
ruling out the idea that the parties could simply have been converging to
please the median voter (pp. 429–430). Through an analysis of questions
about redistribution in surveys conducted by Spain’s renowned Centre for
Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas–CIS) in 2009,
they explain this apparent anomaly by demonstrating that in Spain, pre-
ferences for redistribution are not necessarily the same as preferences for the
welfare state. In other words, both left- and right-wing parties and their voters
alike support the expansion of the welfare state as it is perceived by many as
having a universal benefit for all, and not merely a redistributive one that
benefits the poor. While there are some differences in preferences specifically
about redistribution among PP and PSOE voters, the most common preference
among voters for both parties – at least according to the afore-mentioned 2009
CIS survey results – is for a combination of welfare state expansion and
universal policies.
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12 Territorial politics and the party system
In the absence of any significant divide over classic left–right economic ques-
tions, Fernández-Albertos and Manzano (2012) demonstrate that the main dri-
vers of left–right party competition and voting patterns in parliament instead
became other more divisive, non-economic issues. When the PSOE returned to
government in 2004 under the new leadership of Zapatero, polarisation between
the PSOE and the PP grew significantly due to differences on non-economic
policy issues. This period quickly saw the PSOE effect a transition from tradi-
tional social democracy, typically concerned across Europe with economic
redistribution, social welfare and workers’ rights, to focus on new left-wing issues
including gay rights, environmental protection and multiculturalism (Encarna-
ción 2009). Specific laws that the PSOE rapidly introduced included same-sex
marriage, gender equality in government and the workplace, and an amnesty for
illegal immigrants. The Spanish Socialists’ transition to ‘new-leftism’ came in the
wake of a wider cultural shift towards post-material values that had already been
taking place within the Western European left. This was hugely significant for
Spain, given the level of opposition Zapatero faced from the traditional Spanish
right, still heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. The left–right divide thus
became primarily one between social progressiveness and social conservatism.
Another explanation for the incorporation of this sociocultural dimension of
competition within the left–right axis in Spain can be found in a recent study by
Rovny and Polk (2019). It convincingly argues that the extent to which the eco-
nomic and cultural dimensions of party conflict are interrelated or separate in
Western European party systems can still be attributed in part to the nature of his-
torical religious conflict. In traditionally Catholic countries, those authors argue,
the state–church cleavage was historically more divisive, and thus the sociocultural
divide ended up embedded firmly in the economic left–right dimension. This
contrasts with traditionally Protestant countries, where sociocultural and economic
divisions have tended to become distinct, usually cross-cutting dimensions of
competition. Even if religious beliefs have rapidly declined in the majority of
modern European states, that historical explanation still helps to explain today why
economic and sociocultural dimensions of competition tend to be aligned in one
left–right divide in historically Catholic countries such as Spain.
Beyond a characteristically socially progressive agenda, two other Spain-
specific features of this period of evolution of the Spanish left during the Zapa-
tero years, which provoked the ire of the right, were: (1) the revisiting of the ‘pact
of silence’ agreed during the transition to democracy, in order to provide
reparations to Spanish civil war victims; and (2) further decentralising measures,
with the PSOE spearheading a wave of reforms of regional autonomy statutes
initially approved in the early 1980s, in order to update them. It is the latter
question that is of particular interest to us here. According to the afore-mentioned
analysis conducted by Fernández-Albertos and Manzano (2012) of CIS data
from 2009, the question of whether the Spanish state should be centralised or
decentralised came second on the list of main sources of divergence between
PSOE and PP party and voter preferences, only behind the question of what role
the Church should have in the state (pp. 428–430).
 Territorial politics and the party system 13
The PP has long been known for its strong ideological centralism, following
the historic association of the Spanish right with the vision of a unitary and
centralised state (Grau Creus 2005, p. 264). This has come to the fore in
particular in times of PP absolute majority government, when the party has
not needed the support of regionally based parties with presence in the
Spanish parliament. In contrast, the PSOE has long supported decentralisa-
tion throughout Spain via a broadly symmetric federal-type model, with its
stance being a hugely influential factor in the division of Spain into 17
autonomous communities during the transition to democracy. The PSOE’s
view stems first and foremost from its left-wing desire for an egalitarian
model that treats all Spaniards the same; in other words, it advocates the use
of a federal-type model to ensure equality of opportunities in different regions
of the country. Its vision in this regard has been strengthened over the years
by the fact that the party has electoral strongholds in many of the non-historic
regions and in particular the relatively poorer regions in the south of Spain
(Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura), and thus it has needed to
fight their corner.
Of course, we should clarify here that the distinction between the PP and the
PSOE on the territorial question is only relative in the sense that both have con-
sistently defended the idea of one Spanish nation and sole Spanish sovereignty.
Thus, the PSOE has remained clearly in favour of a symmetric form of decen-
tralisation to ensure equality for all Spaniards, in contrast to the Basque and
Catalan nationalists who have traditionally sought a greater degree of asymmetric
decentralisation to give their regions something approaching a more confederal
arrangement (Balfour 2005, p. 5). The PSOE advocates first and foremost the use
of cross-regional multilateral fora to address issues affecting all regions, reserving
bilateral fora between the state and individual regions only for specific issues that
affect certain regions only. It also strongly supports the centralisation of compe-
tences in cases where it believes centralised management will best ensure equal
treatment of all Spaniards. Most notably, the Socialists have therefore opposed
calls from regionally based nationalist parties to devolve the caja única (single
fund) of the social security system.7 Basque and Catalan representatives of
regionally based nationalist parties have therefore argued that the PSOE’s vision of
federalism is a ‘distortion’ of the reality of federalism in other countries and its
theoretical conception in political science, where they suggest federalism is not
subordinated to the ultimate purpose of ensuring equality of outcomes for all
citizens, but rather is designed to allow for a proper level of self-government at
substate level.8 These important caveats notwithstanding, for our purposes here, a
clear distinction can be established between the PP which favours a more centralist
model, and the PSOE which favours one of decentralisation.
The fact that support for decentralisation is associated with the left in Spain
has, in turn, contributed to shaping perceptions of what the left and right stand
for in Spain in the regions where regional identities are particularly strong. Dinas
(2012) shows that citizens of both Catalonia and the Basque Country, the two
regions where regionally based parties ‘have consistently won a significant vote
14 Territorial politics and the party system
share’ (p. 468), appear to identify themselves as ‘remarkably more left-wing than
those from other regions of Spain’ (p. 471). This at first might appear an anom-
aly given that both regions are among the richest in Spain, and indeed the two
traditionally dominant nationalist formations in those regions (PNV in the
Basque Country and CiU in Catalonia and its successors) are more orientated
towards the right than the left on economic matters. However, it makes sense
when we consider that the left in Spain is strongly associated with support for
decentralisation. Indeed, in this context, Dinas (2012) also shows that ‘people
from Catalonia and the Basque Country perceive the PP to be more to the right
than do people from other communities in Spain’, and that ‘the only reason that
seems to independently account for this gap is people’s perceptions about the PP
on the issue of regional devolution’ (p. 474). The difference between the PP and
the PSOE in their approach towards the question of centralisation versus
decentralisation has affected, in turn, the structure of party competition at the
regional level (p. 482). During the first 30 years of democracy, the two main
competitors in the Catalan regional parliament were the centre-right regionally
based nationalist party alliance (CiU) and the regional federation of the PSOE.
The same is broadly true of the Basque region in that period, though there was
slightly more variation there due to the issues surrounding the terrorist group
ETA that had further consequences for party competition. New regionally based
parties that have emerged in those regions both during that period and since then
have tended to be further to the left than the PSOE.
That the left in Spain rejects centralisation, seeing it as an expression of right-
wing Spanish nationalism, is not surprising given Spain’s recent history of Franco-
ism. Moreover, left-wing ideologies are usually universalistic, in contrast to
nationalism, which advocates distinctiveness and rights for a specific group of
people only. That said, support in the 1990s and 2000s for identity politics in the
form of multi-culturalism saw the New Left across Europe become not only
accepting, but also supportive of democratic forms of cultural nationalism (Ruiz
Jiménez et al. 2015, p. 488). This move saw the PSOE in Spain attempt to articulate
a form of ‘democratic patriotism’ in the 1990s, but this concept was quickly
appropriated instead by the Spanish right from the early 2000s onwards (Ruiz
Jiménez et al. 2015, p. 489, following Nuñez-Seixas 2010). Thus, the Spanish left
has long struggled to articulate a strong Spanish identity. Meanwhile, certain ele-
ments within the left have become quite close to or supportive of regional identities
or nationalisms, which may seem somewhat of a paradox but has to be understood
within the Spanish context. This trend would become clearer in the aftermath of the
financial crisis in the behaviour of new party Podemos and other new left-wing
parties at local level that it associated with. Their emergence created a divide within
the left in Spain between those within the PSOE who continue to see decentralisa-
tion as serving a primarily administrative function designed to foster equality and
solidarity among Spaniards, regardless of their region; and those within certain
sectors of Podemos and its allies that embrace different regional identities to the
point of supporting the notion that Catalonia should have the right to self-
determination. Later chapters of this book will address this.
 Territorial politics and the party system 15
Conclusion and book structure
While the Great Recession served as a ‘critical juncture’ in the transformation of
party systems across Europe, one of its main effects in most countries was the
acceleration of pre-existing processes of political de-/realignment and party system
change (Hernández and Kriesi 2016, p. 204). This chapter has therefore focused
on the specific nature of Spain’s traditional party system and political cleavages
from the transition to democracy onwards, in order to provide the necessary
background to begin to assess, from Chapter 2 onwards, how the consequences of
the financial crisis have impacted them and where the territorial dimension fits
within the wider dynamics of political continuity and change in Spain.
Prior to the financial crisis, the main issues driving left–right party competi-
tion in Spain had, in fact, long been non-economic ones, with the territorial
cleavage proving one of the most important. The centre–periphery axis was
incorporated within the left–right dimension, as left- and right-wing ideologies
among the state-wide parties in Spain became broadly synonymous with
decentralist and centralist positions, respectively. Moreover, due to the nature of
Spain’s electoral system, which favours not only the largest state-wide parties but
also the regionally based parties whose votes are geographically concentrated in
one area, the latter were often crucial to central government formation and sur-
vival. In the two decades before the parliament fragmented in 2015, minority
governments supported by regionally based parties were the most frequent mode
of governance in Spain, far outnumbering absolute majority governments. Such
informal alliances between state-wide and regionally based parties – as opposed
to formal coalitions – became the main means by which the Basque and Catalan
nationalist parties secured decentralisation gains.
Having established the importance of the territorial dimension to the tradi-
tional party system and cleavages in Spain, the remainder of this book seeks to
assess why exactly this dimension was so salient in the period of party restruc-
turing following the 2008 financial crisis, and what the consequences of that
were for politics in Spain. In order to do so, it is structured as follows. Chapter
2, which is also introductory in nature, situates Spain within the wider context
of party system change in Western and Southern Europe in the wake of the
financial crisis. It outlines some of the main findings of the comparative and
theoretical literature in this regard, as a starting point to assess Spanish simi-
larities and differences with the political consequences of the crisis as mani-
fested in other countries, and where the territorial dimension fits within the
wider dynamics of party system continuity and change in Spain.
The following chapters then assess the regional level of politics (Chapters 3
and 4), followed by how this has shaped national politics (Chapters 5 and 6). The
chapters on regional politics focus on Catalonia and the Basque Country, since
they are the two regions in Spain that have usually been governed by regionally
based nationalist parties throughout the democratic period, and from where the
strongest challenges to Spain’s territorial model have emerged.9 Specifically,
Chapter 3 investigates in what ways, and to what extent, the consequences of the
16 Territorial politics and the party system
2008 financial crisis contributed to the rise of the Catalan pro-independence
movement, which broadly coincided with the years of the Great Recession.
Chapter 4 then investigates the evolution of nationalist politics in the Basque
region, investigating how the aftermath of the financial crisis, at the same time as
the reincorporation of the ‘abertzale left’10 into the political arena, shaped the
development of Basque politics.
Moving from the regional to the national level, Chapters 5 and 6 investigate
the evolution of party agendas and alliances on the left and right in Spanish
politics in the wake of the financial crisis, and the extent to which the territorial
question influenced this evolution, in comparison with other factors. The chap-
ters focus particularly on the period of the new multi-party system in Spain first
fully evidenced at the general election of 2015, up to and including the general
elections of 2019. A seventh and final, shorter chapter concludes.

Notes
1 My translation from Spanish. The press conference is available to view here: http
s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNv5KSz8Wys (accessed 9 September 2019).
2 An English version of the Constitution is available here: https://www.boe.es/legisla
cion/documentos/ConstitucionINGLES.pdf (accessed 9 September 2019).
3 Personal interviews conducted with current and former Basque and Catalan poli-
tical representatives from 2014–2016. See also Tremosa i Balcells 2007, pp. 8–12.
4 Some of the interviews conducted in the Basque Country and Catalonia through-
out the period 2014–2016 formed part of my doctoral research funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the UK [ES/J500094/1]. The
remainder of the interviews, conducted in Madrid and Barcelona at various stages
in 2018 and 2019, were funded by an Aston University research start-up fund.
Aston University provides such funds to early career researchers appointed to their
first lectureship. I am very grateful to both the ESRC and Aston University for
their support.
5 For an overview of Spain’s previous experiences of parliamentarism, see Field and
Gray 2019, pp. 26–27.
6 Personal interview with Ignacio Sánchez Amor, longstanding PSOE politician and
Secretary of State (UK Junior Minister equivalent) for Territorial Policy for the
2018–2019 PSOE government, 31 October 2018. Bono himself ran for the party
leadership but came second to Zapatero, who was seen as a ‘new face’.
7 Personal interviews with Basque Socialists conducted in 2014.
8 Personal interviews with Basque and Catalan nationalists conducted throughout
2014–2016. Some Catalan Socialists also question the ‘federalist’ vision of their
Madrid counterparts (personal interview with Antoni Castells, former Catalan
regional economy minister (2003–2010) representing the Catalan Socialist Party,
25 March 2015).
9 Beyond the Madrid Community (the region which houses the capital, Madrid), the
four regions in Spain which are of greatest systemic impact to national politics are:
the three regions first recognised as ‘historic nationalities’, namely the Basque
Country, Catalonia and Galicia; together with Andalusia, the region with the
highest population. While the role of Andalusia will be considered in certain
chapters where relevant to the analysis of the behaviour of state-wide parties, this
book chooses to focus on the Basque Country and Catalonia, rather than Galicia,
since the nationalist movement in Galicia has never gained the same level of
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York, who is deeply interested in electrical enterprises, read a very
able paper at the convention of the National Electric Light
Association held in Buffalo in February, 1892. In his paper he
devoted considerable attention to the Niagara Falls tunnel scheme,
and among other things he said:
“How vast is the internal commerce that throbs and pulsates over this
fair land we may not now stop to estimate, and how important a part this
great city of Buffalo is destined to play in it, electrically, we can only
dimly guess. * * * The whole electrical community are watching with
intense interest the possibility of the development in this city of Buffalo
electrical transmission arising out of the successful effort which is now
being made to harness the power hitherto latent in the Niagara River.
The boldness of the proposal, the extent and character of the enterprise
which is now nearing completion in this effort, the pluck and push in the
work, challenge alike the attention of the engineering and the
commercial world. The relation of this enormous power of nature to the
transmission of electricity is the most important consideration which now
occupies the thoughts of those most interested. The success which has
attended the three-phase current from Lauffen to Frankfort in the
transmission of power 112 miles, without material loss, comes just at the
right moment to make it seem possible that the enormous potentialities
in the forces of Niagara can be made to reach a degree of usefulness
never dreamt of in the past and hardly realized in the wonderful present.
It seems fortunate, therefore, that the convention which is here
assembled should, as it were, be in the presence of the most stupendous
event possible in the history of the science of electricity. In the
development of the next few years will be found ample food for thought
and effort, out of which may grow a relief for electric lighting plants of
the greatest possible consequence. If in the city of Buffalo and from the
Niagara River there can be transmitted power in such enormous
proportions as are now contemplated, sub-divided and reduced, so that
into every factory and almost into every house the force and energy can
be controlled and operated, there is latent in every central station the
possibilities that may come to every town in the country and to all
electric light plants now lying idle during the day, an imitation in modified
form of the power that of all forces in the world, Niagara is the best
example.”
 “THE MANUFACTURING CENTRE OF THE NATION.”
Within the past year or two, and particularly during 1892, Buffalo
has received a great deal of attention from the press in all parts of
the country. The leading newspapers of the large cities have
discussed the question of Buffalo’s future growth, and the general
concensus of opinion has been that it will be phenomenally large.
Among the newspapers that have entered into this discussion is
the Chicago Tribune. It stands in the front rank of the great journals
of the United States. It is very ably edited, is a sterling, conservative
newspaper, and its editorial utterances carry great weight. In its
issue of March 13, 1892, it printed a leading editorial about Buffalo,
and it is here produced in full:
“A recent article in the Tribune setting forth the prospect that this city
will ere long be the centre of operations in the United States for the
largest electrical company in the world has incited more than one good-
humored protest that the people here are expecting too much. The New
York Tribune and the Buffalo Express both call attention to the fact that
Buffalo has great expectations in this matter of being the electrical centre
of the world. With Niagara Falls behind it, and a consequence of the fact,
Buffalo is claimed to be looming up as the chief manufacturing and
shipping centre of the interior.
“In the course of a few months from now the practicability of
converting the Falls into a source of power, light, heat, and refrigeration
is to be demonstrated. A company is now constructing tunnels and
setting a series of turbine wheels in position from which it is expected to
obtain 120,000 horse-power without the combustion of a single pound of
fuel. If it succeeds in this, every wheel in Buffalo can be turned and every
building lighted and heated at the lowest possible cost. With this
enormous electrical power transmitted to the city and distributed through
it coal will no longer be burned there, and the steam engine will be
dispensed with in manufacturing processes. By virtue of having the
cheapest power for turning its machinery Buffalo will inevitably become
the manufacturing centre of the nation. This is the forecast made by
practical electricians and endorsed by shrewd business men as a sound
deduction, warranted, too, by a glance at the remarkable progress
achieved by the city during the last decade.
“In that period the city at the foot of Lake Erie increased its coal traffic
387 per cent., its iron receipts 226 per cent., its population by 89 per
cent., and fully doubled its grain receipts and lumber shipments. It is
already the largest grain-receiving and coal-distributing center in the
world, the principal lumber port in the country, and one of the greatest
markets for live stock and fish. Its number of manufacturing
establishments increased 200 per cent. from 1880 to 1890, and it is now
considered certain that they will more than treble again by the end of the
century with the conversion of the Falls into a source of electrical power,
while the population will increase from 300,000 to 1,000,000. And it is
said ‘Buffalo now seems destined to gain steadily upon Chicago in the
race for commercial supremacy.’

BUFFALO AND ITS ELECTRIC POWER HOUSE.

“That is a noble ambition, and the Tribune sees no reason to find fault
with it. But it should not be forgotten that Chicago will also grow, so that
Buffalo may still be a long way behind when her promise of a million
inhabitants will have been realized. Yet it may be said that the prospects
of growth are set forth only in a mild way by either of the papers named.
If the transference of electrical power be performed as cheaply and
efficiently as is now expected the result may be a speedy removal thither
of much of the manufacturing industry of New England, a large share of
the ‘Yankee notion’ business that now flourishes in those Eastern States,
and no little of the manufacturing energy that at present exhibits itself in
the smaller cities of New York and New Jersey. Possibly the silk industry
of the latter will be found seeking the propinquity of the Falls. Troy and
Rochester, particularly the latter, are likely to be injuriously affected,
unless it be found that the power can be transmitted to them with but
little loss, and Cleveland may be a great loser, while even the woolen
mills of Philadelphia may be unable to compete with those of the new
center. In short, the possibilities for paper mills, flour mills, cotton and
woolen manufactories, and a host of other hives of industry clustering
there is limited only by the quantity of power available from the
descending waters, and this great prosperity will not bring with it the
smudge of coal-burning, which has defiled the buildings and polluted the
atmosphere of other cities that have attempted greatness by changing to
more useful forms the raw products of nature. But it is hard to see how
any or all of this can materially hurt Chicago, and the people of this city
can well afford to wish those of Buffalo success in their new departure.”
 “ANOTHER MANCHESTER.”
In a very able leading editorial, printed in the New York Tribune of
February 7, 1892, the future of Buffalo was glowingly mirrored. Such
utterances from such a source speak volumes, and show the
commanding position to which Buffalo has risen--a position that
attracts the attention of the newspapers of national eminence as
well as of the greatest capitalists of the country. The article referred
to is herewith printed entire:
“Chicago has been so intent upon rivaling New York in population and
commercial importance that it has overlooked the chances of competition
from another city in the Empire State. Buffalo, with Niagara Falls behind
it, is looming up as the chief manufacturing and shipping center of the
interior. In the course of a few months the practicability of converting the
Falls into a source of power, light, heat and refrigeration is to be
demonstrated. If the company which is now constructing tunnels and
setting a series of turbine-wheels, succeeds in obtaining 120,000 horse-
power, every wheel in Buffalo can be turned and every house lighted and
heated at the lowest cost. With this enormous electrical power
transmitted and distributed throughout the city, coal will no longer be
burned and steam engines will be dispensed with in manufacturing
processes. Buffalo, by virtue of having the cheapest power for turning its
wheels, will inevitably become the manufacturing center of the nation.
This is the forecast made, not only by sanguine electricians, but also by
shrewd, practical business men, who have watched the remarkable
progress of the city during the last decade.
“Even without the successful operation of the tunnel plant at Niagara,
Buffalo since 1880 has increased its population 89 per cent., its grain
receipts 101 per cent., its lumber shipments 125 per cent., its iron
receipts 226 per cent., and its coal business 367 per cent. The commerce
of the great lakes has involved exchanges of wheat and coal. All the coal-
carrying corporations have made Buffalo their shipping point for the West
because the grain-laden fleet is available for return cargoes. The city is
not only the largest grain-receiving and coal-distributing center in the
world, but it is also the principal lumber port of the country and one of
the greatest live-stock and fish markets. With coal, iron, lumber and salt
available for the founding of new industries, it has increased its number
of manufacturing industries over 200 per cent. during the last decade.
These are substantial results which warrant the conclusion that the
success of the project for converting Niagara Falls into a source of
electric power will raise the population of Buffalo from 300,000 to
1,000,000 in another decade. The manufacturing interests of the country
will inevitably center where electric power costing a fraction of either
water or steam power can be supplied together with all raw materials.
With the help of Niagara, Buffalo now seems destined to gain steadily
upon Chicago in the race for commercial supremacy.
“It has been fortunate for Buffalo that prosperity has not overwhelmed
it suddenly, and that it has had leisure for preparing for its good fortune.
Already it is the handsomest residence city in America, with broad,
heavily-shaded streets paved with asphalt, with a well-designed series of
beautiful parks, and with public buildings, hotels, libraries and music halls
worthy of a great town. If its wealthy class live in luxurious palaces
incomparably finer than the residences of Eastern millionaires, its poor
and humble artisans are housed in neat and tasteful cottages. It is a
charming city of homes and domestic comfort, which is gradually being
transformed into one of the busiest hives of American manufacturing
industry. It is at least a pleasant thought that through the transmission of
power now going to waste at Niagara this well-kept and wholesome town
may escape the smudge of coal-burning which has fouled Chicago and
impaired the freshness and beauty of Cleveland. If by the end of another
decade every wheel in it from the trolleys on the electric railways to the
largest iron lathe in its engineering works be turned by power generated
by the turbines at Niagara, it will be another Manchester, but without
smoke and grime.”
 AMERICA’S HANDSOMEST CITY.
The latter portion of the Tribune article draws attention to some
very noteworthy facts connected with Buffalo. When the Tribune
says that Buffalo is “the handsomest residence city in America,” it
tells the exact truth. All Buffalonians are deservedly proud of the
beauties of their city. Many times has the writer heard exclamations
of surprise and delight from the lips of strangers who, for the first
time, were being driven through our beautiful avenues and park
roads. Our streets are exceptionally wide and well-paved. Care in
tree-planting has led to magnificent results. Well-kept, velvety lawns
of spacious extent are the rule, and make fine setting for the
thousands of architectural gems of homes with which the city is
studded. It has been said over and over again by traveled strangers
that Buffalo has more fine architecture in residences, more beautiful
homes than any other city of its size in the world.
We had, at the close of the summer of 1891, about 105 lineal
miles of asphalted streets. It is hard as a rock and smooth as a floor
and full of restful delight to those who drive over its smooth, clean
surface. Personal pride taken by the property-owners in its trim
beauty leads to its being swept and cleaned daily, which is done at
trifling expense. Asphalt is being laid in this city at the rate of about
twenty lineal miles per year, and we have now more miles of
asphalted streets than any other city in the world.
 VIEW OF AN ASPHALTED RESIDENCE STREET.

The park system of Buffalo contains about 900 acres of handsome

land, which has been laid out by Frederick L. Olmsted, the eminent
landscape artist, and its natural beauty wonderfully added to. It lies
close to the finer residence portion of the city, and is readily reached
from all sections. Land for new parks on the south side of the city
and along the lake has recently been bought, making splendid
additions to the park system.
The school system of Buffalo ranks deservedly high. We have over
fifty grammar schools, one high school, another large school building
used for the overflow and a new high school projected. We have a
State Normal School, Kindergartens, dozens of parochial and private
schools, and we have taken steps to establish manual training
schools.
 We have medical colleges of high standing, business colleges of
national reputation, some splendid public libraries, several of the
finest theaters in the country, and handsome churches without
number. No city has more right than has Buffalo to be called the city
of churches. We have about 150 of them.
The social atmosphere of Buffalo is delightful, and visitors to this
city always carry away with them very pleasant memories of our
social life.
In short, there is in Buffalo every refinement of civilization of the
highest type. The busy man of affairs who seeks, at the same time,
investment for his capital and charming social advantages for his
family, can find in Buffalo all that he desires.
 A CITY OF HOMES.
And there is still another phase of this subject that should be
touched upon. Buffalo is a city of homes for the humble as well as
the rich. It is a city full of the sweet content that belongs to the
home-builder. Building and loan associations, of which we have a
great number, have materially helped to bring about this result. But
it is a fact that these associations thrive only in soil suited to them.
They are the outgrowth of sterling worth, sobriety and manly
ambition. Where they thrive we find good workmen of conservative
instincts, who are averse to taking part in labor troubles. This is
believed to be the chief reason why Buffalo has always enjoyed a
singular freedom from strikes. Be the cause what it may, it is a fact
that strikes are of a rare occurrence here; and when they have
occurred they have been quickly settled. The firebrands of labor
agitations have had very little encouragement here.
It is the more easy for workmen to own their own homes in
Buffalo from the fact that land values here are remarkably low. We
stretch over a large section of territory and have plenty of room for
our people.
A first-class electric street car service gives easy and swift access
to the suburbs; while the New York Central Railroad runs trains
every hour each way on a Belt Line encircling the city and tapping
residence portions all around the fifteen-mile circuit.
Nowhere is there a more conservative, prosperous and contented
community of workingmen than in Buffalo, and this is a fact that
builds up a bulwark of safety for industrial enterprises and
investment of capital.
FAR-FAMED DELAWARE AVENUE.
 OUR ELECTRIC RAILROAD SYSTEM.
Rapid transit is one of the essentials in the busy life of a great city.
Buffalo has outgrown the horse car system and has now swift
electric cars speeding in all directions. All the great arteries of travel
leading from the heart of the city are equipped with electric cars.
The work of putting in the electric system has been one of great
magnitude, as there was no cessation in the traffic while the change
was being made.
Though electric cars have been in operation in some of the park
roads for several years, the work of changing the system in down
town streets was not started until the fall of 1890. Work was then
begun on Niagara Street, and on July 4, 1891, the first electric cars
were run in that important thoroughfare. Within four months traffic
on the line was tripled, and it has steadily increased ever since. Elk,
Seneca, Washington and Sycamore streets, all thoroughfares leading
to the suburbs, were next equipped with electric cars, and at this
writing (June, 1892) the work of changing the system in Main Street
is progressing rapidly, and is almost completed. The system is, of
course, being changed in the most important thoroughfares first,
and the less important lines will undergo the same treatment in
rapid succession, so that it will not be very long before horse cars
will be remembered in Buffalo as the vanished symbol of a slower
era. The total length of the street railroad tracks of Buffalo is over
100 miles.
Through the chief thoroughfares the electric cars run every three
minutes. A single fare of five cents is charged from one end of the
city to the other, with the privilege of changing from one line to
another. There are no transfer charges. The company pays to the
city a percentage on its earnings of two to three per cent., graded in
proportion to the amount of the gross receipts. This arrangement,
which was entered into during the early part of 1892, was a very
welcome one to the people, particularly to workingmen, who
consequently are enabled to reach their work in any part of the city,
even the most distant, for a five cent fare. The swiftness of the
electric cars, from eight to eighteen miles an hour, is a great factor
in time-saving, and it is much appreciated by working people, as well
as by business men, and all who are impatient of delay in getting
from one part of the city to another.
The Buffalo Railway Company, which operates all the lines of
street railroad in the city, has a capital of six million dollars, so that it
is financially strong and able to carry out any improvement desired.
Cheap electric power from Niagara will, of course, be available in
the running of street cars in Buffalo; and as it can be bought very
much cheaper than it can be produced by the evaporation of steam
it will have a potent influence in making it possible for the company
to grant still further concessions to the public. The citizens’
committee which recently arbitrated between the company and the
public and brought about the present satisfactory agreement had full
and free access to all the books of the company, and figured out to a
nicety the cost of carrying each passenger, and the amount of profit
in the business. If the cost of the motive power had been cut in two,
as it will be cut by the introduction of Niagara’s power, the
committee would certainly have reported in favor of even better
terms for the city. Thus it is a fair conclusion that the beneficent
effects of cheap power generated at the Falls will be felt by every
person who rides on the street cars of Buffalo.
This subject is here dwelt upon at considerable length because the
writer feels that it is of great importance. Every manufacturer whose
eyes are turned in this direction, and who is considering whether he
shall take advantage of the peerless opportunities now offered in
Buffalo, wants to know about the street car service. He wants to
know, in case he should locate his plant here, how quickly and how
cheaply he and his employees could get to and from their business.
It is a pleasure to assure him and all others interested that the
electric street railroad system of Buffalo is pronounced by experts to
be the best in the United States, and also that its management is of
the most liberal and progressive kind.
The street car service of a city is part of its throbbing life, part of
its pulse, and by it the business health and prosperity of the city can
be gauged.
 SUBURBAN ELECTRIC ROADS.
Within a radius of a few miles from Buffalo there are many thriving
towns. Naturally, with so many steam railroads running in all
directions from this point, residents of these towns enjoy excellent
railroad accommodations in traveling to and from the city. But the
swift pace of present progress is all too rapid for the old way. Electric
lines to suburban towns are being built or projected in surprising
number. An electric line to the city of Tonawanda, connecting with
the Buffalo street railroad system, and in fact being an extension of
it, has been in successful operation since early in the present year
(1892). It will be extended through to Niagara Falls. Two other lines
of electric railroad to Tonawanda have been surveyed and active
preparations are being made to build them. Both will connect with
the Buffalo system, and in time will be extended to Niagara Falls.
One of these has secured a very favorable route, out Delaware
Avenue in a direct air line to Tonawanda, through a delightful
residence district.
An electric railroad is being built to Lancaster and Depew, the
latter being the new city of the New York Central Railroad just
outside of Buffalo, where the Central’s locomotive shops, the Gould
Car Coupler Works and other great industrial enterprises are in
progress. This line will be in operation by September of this year.
Still another electric line is to be built to East Aurora, the prettiest
of Erie County villages, where the famous Hamlin and Jewett stock
farms are located. C. J. Hamlin, the millionaire horseman, and owner
of Belle Hamlin, is one of the prominent men interested in this line.
Strong companies have also been formed to build electric lines to
Hamburg, Williamsville and other suburban towns.
All of these enterprises indicate the profound belief which
capitalists have in Buffalo’s future. Most of them were brought into
life through the stimulating influence of cheap electric power from
Niagara Falls. Those interested in these enterprises knew that cheap
electric power meant tremendous and rapid growth for the city, and
that the tide of prosperity would sweep out far enough to reach all
towns lying contiguous to the city, and whose prosperity is part of
the prosperity of Buffalo. They also knew that cheap electric power
from Niagara Falls meant cheap motive power for their roads and
greatly reduced cost of operation.
It is a modest assertion that the silent, swift, all-powerful currents
of electricity flowing into Buffalo from Niagara will touch every craft,
every branch of industry. It will quicken all these into renewed
activity and point a thousand new ways for the employment of
money, brains and muscle. It will give us light, heat and
refrigeration, and power for the mightiest and most delicate
machinery.
The smoke cloud of industry that hovers over and shrouds the
manufacturing district of every great city, will gradually lift from ours
as the consumption of coal gives place to smokeless electric power.
In a few years it will be all gone, and Buffalo, the “Electric City,” will
be famed as the cleanest and healthiest city in the world.
 “BUFFALO’S GOLD MINE.”
Some years ago, Mr. James B. Stafford, of this city, then president
of the Buffalo Business Men’s Association, conceived the idea of
offering a prize of $100,000 for the best plan of utilizing the current
of Niagara River. He and over one hundred others subscribed $1,000
each to a fund for the purpose, and the attention of scientific men in
all parts of the civilized world was directed to the problem. This
problem has been solved in the development of the tunnel project.
Mr. Stafford is a keen, shrewd, level-headed business man, and
has made a large fortune by judicious investments in Buffalo real
estate. He believes that Buffalo will have a million population within
ten years, as a result of an industrial revolution in this city that will
amaze the world, the chief and controlling reason for which will be
the introduction of cheap electric power.
 THE BUFFALO LIBRARY.

In the Buffalo Commercial of December 22, 1891, the following

interview with Mr. Stafford was printed, under the heading “Buffalo’s
Gold Mine:”
“If the richest gold mine in the whole world were discovered in a
suburb of Buffalo, what effect do you suppose it would have on our
people?” asked Mr. James B. Stafford of a Commercial reporter.
“There would be tremendous excitement, of course,” was the reply.
“There would,” returned Mr. Stafford; “but do you know that the richest
gold mine in the world would be a mere bagatelle compared with the
wealth that will spring from the Niagara Falls tunnel? Do our people stop
to think what it means? It means prosperity for Buffalo beyond the
wildest present expectation. I believe I speak entirely within bounds
when I say that it will make Buffalo the second greatest city in the whole
United States, and that you and I won’t be very old when our city
reaches that place. Looking into the immediate future, I will prophesy
that we will have a million population within ten years.
“Just look about you and see what electricity has already done for the
world, and yet we are scarcely entered up in the Electric Age. We are at
the dawn of a new era, and electricity, now in its infancy, will grow and
develop until it revolutionizes the world. It will give us power, light, heat,
refrigeration. It will do everything for us that steam now does, and here
in Buffalo it is going to cost less than water power.”
“What does it cost manufacturers for power now?”
“The water power of the country now in use costs from $16.67 per
horse-power per year at Lockport to $56.25 at Manayunk, Pa., while
steam costs all the way from $35 to $175 per horse-power per annum.
“When we consider that the entire power going to waste at the Falls is
one-seventh of the entire power of the world one can comprehend what
an inexhaustible mine of wealth we are on the eve of developing. Already
the problem of transmitting electricity long distances without much waste
has been solved. Other companies are in the field, and before many
years instead of 125,000 horse-power there will probably be a million.
Buffalo being the nearest large city to the great cataract, it will be the
first to receive the benefits.
“Just let your mind run forward a dozen years. Electricity running
through cables from the Falls will act on our city like the warm blood
running through a human body, will permeate every part of the city,
running 2,000 horse-power engines as easily as the dentist’s drill or the
family sewing machine. Every wheel in Buffalo will be eventually turned
by electricity. It will light and heat our houses. It will be cheaper than
anything else. The impetus that it will give our manufacturing enterprises
will be incalculable.
“Add to all this our great natural advantages and no wonder our
expectations should be great. We are midway between the great
producing regions of the West and the more thickly populated sections of
the East, with its continually increasing export trade. What better point
could be found for the manufacturing centre of the country? Here all the
shipping from the western chain of lakes discharges its cargoes of grain,
lumber, ore, etc., reloading with up-cargoes of coal (and all the great
coal-carrying transportation corporations have branches that now
terminate in this city), laying at the door of the manufacturer the raw
material at the lowest possible freight rate, with twenty-six lines of
railroads leading from here in every direction (many of them trunk lines),
with a canal and waterway to the seaboard giving the manufacturer the
finest shipping facilities possible.
“Buffalo already boasts of the largest coal distributing point in the
world, the largest sheep and fresh fish market in the world; one of the
largest horse markets; the largest grain distributing point in the world;
the second largest cattle market in the world; we are destined to be the
largest flour milling city in the world, and with our suburban port of
Tonawanda we have the largest lumber market in the world.
“In the last ten years we have increased our population 89 per cent.,
and with this new and wonderful factor that no other city in the world’s
history has ever had, it is not a wild statement to make, but one that the
present outlook would warrant, that Buffalo and not Chicago will be the
second American city.”
 ELECTRIC POWER ON THE CANADIAN SIDE.
Col. Albert D. Shaw, formerly U. S. Consul at Montreal, Canada,
and later at Manchester, England, is at the head of a company which
proposes to produce electricity on the Canadian side of the Niagara
River. This company has secured the passage of a bill through the
Ontario Parliament permitting the incorporation of a company with a
capitalization of $3,000,000, and a privilege of bonding to the extent
of $5,000,000, with the object of producing electricity by means of a
tunnel upon the Canadian side.
In conversation with a writer for the Philadelphia Press, in April of
this year, Col. Shaw said the Canadian company had not been
organized to compete with the American company, but rather to
supplement and act in concert with it. He explained that as the land
on the Canadian side is devoted to park purposes, it cannot be used
for the location of manufactories, and therefore the power produced
must be transmitted to other points. In this connection he went on
to say:
“Such power can certainly be carried to Buffalo. An electrical plant has
been established about 16 miles from the city of Rome, N. Y., and the
power there furnished is conveyed to Rome with perfectly satisfactory
results. Buffalo is only a little more than 20 miles from Niagara, and with
the higher voltage which can be obtained there is no doubt that city can
be furnished with electric power sufficient to run all the manufactories of
New York State were they located there. After our company is organized
in harmony with the New York company we shall begin work, and I think
can complete it within a year.”
“The water power furnished by the Niagara River above the Falls,”
continued Col. Shaw, “is estimated to be equivalent to 3,000,000 horse-
power. When we recollect that the Connecticut River at Holyoke only
furnishes about 24,000 horse-power, and the river at Minneapolis only
18,000, some idea can be obtained of this enormous power which has
hitherto been going to waste. The American company has built a tunnel
8,000 feet long. The entrance to it is a long distance above the Falls, and
 the exit where the waste water flows into the Niagara River is just below
the suspension bridge. This tunnel is capable of furnishing power
equivalent to 140,000 horse-power, an amount of power which vastly
exceeds anything furnished anywhere else in the world. The Niagara
River never runs dry. There never is an appreciable diminution in its body
of water. Everywhere else where water power is used manufactories are
compelled either to have a steam plant which can be relied upon in dry
weather, or else to run the risk of shutting down for lack of power. That
can never happen on the banks of the Niagara.”

Col. Shaw went on to speak of the plans of the American

company, with which he is familiar. After stating that manufacturers
from all parts of the country have been in communication with the
American company with a view of locating plants in the city of
Buffalo, and that expert engineers estimate that the electric power
which can be developed and furnished will be practically illimitable,
he said:
“The Canadian company will be able to furnish tremendous voltage
whenever wires properly insulated are ready to receive it. The New York
capitalists who virtually own the American company, and will be in
harmony with the Canadian, are even more enthusiastic than they are in
Buffalo. I have talked with a number of them since I have been in the
city. They are careful men, not likely to be carried away with false
enthusiasm, and who look at such things purely from a commercial point
of view. They are of opinion, as I am, and as everybody else is who has
made a study of this matter, that the great manufacturing city of the
future is to be located upon the bank of the Niagara River, and the time
is not far distant when the city of Buffalo will extend from its present site
full twenty miles to the north. The number of manufactories which have
already decided to move from various other towns, some of them in the
far West, to Buffalo, is an indication of what the future will be.
“The power is permanent and is dependent upon no changes of the
weather. Moreover, it is cheap power, and will always be sufficient, no
matter how greatly any manufacturer may desire to increase his plant.
Furthermore, the contiguity of this place to convenient transportation is
another temptation to manufacturers. For instance, it has been
demonstrated that the grain of the West can be brought there and
manufactured into flour at least 10 cents a barrel cheaper than in the
great milling cities of the West, and that of itself is a handsome profit.
 “Furthermore, transportation charges, such is the relation of Buffalo
and its vicinity to water and rail routes, will be cheaper there than at any
other manufacturing center in the United States. The raw material can be
brought either by the lakes or by rail to the doors of the mill, and the
finished product can be sent out by lake, by the Canadian Canal to the
St. Lawrence River, by the Erie Canal during the season when water
transportation is open, and there are 26 different lines of railway
centering there. The manufacturers have been figuring pretty closely.
Competition is so great that it is frequently the economies which
represent the difference between success and failure, profit and loss. All
those of them who have already decided to locate in that vicinity and
utilize this great power are of opinion that the saving in expenses will of
itself represent a fair profit on the capital invested. Within 20 years it
would not be surprising to see a city, or a link of cities practically one,
containing 1,000,000 people, and perhaps the largest capital investment
in manufacturing in the United States, with perhaps one or two
exceptions.
“It is strange that this magnificent power which has been wasted
heretofore should not have had earlier development. Several attempts
have been made to develop it, but capital has been timid until some of
the great financial geniuses of New York City became interested.”
 ELECTRICITY IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
It is certain that electricity will be so cheap and plentiful in Buffalo
that it will come into general use in the homes of our people. It will
be cheaper than gas for light, and coal for heat. It will run the family
sewing machine. The electric motor will become a part of every well-
ordered household.
The Scientific American, speaking of the new uses of electricity
coming in the train of its cheap production, says:
“Domestic life will be attended with many comforts and conveniences.
The cook will only need to touch a button, and presto, her electrical stove
will be in full operation, the pot will boil, the oven bake, the turkey roast,
the pump move, the washing machine turn; while the electric refrigerator
will freeze the water, preserve the meats, vegetables, milk, butter, eggs,
and other supplies. No coal, no wood, no dust, no dirt, no oil, no gas.
The lady of the house will be relieved of care. She presses a button, and
every nook and corner of her dwelling glows with cheerful light. Touch
another and the electric fire glimmers in every room, diffusing genial
warmth. The electric lift takes her up or down stairs. The telephone
conveys her orders to market, and distributes her social commands
among friends and neighbors.”
NATURE AT HER LOVELIEST — THE PARK LAKE.
 ELECTRICITY’S MANIFOLD USES.
In the same article occurs a concise statement of the varied uses
to which the incoming low-priced power will be applied in Buffalo. It
is as follows:
“Near to Niagara, only twenty-two miles distant, is Buffalo, already a
large and prosperous city, the head centre of lake navigation. The simple
extension of conductors over the short distance above mentioned will
bring to the people of Buffalo direct share in the economic and other
advantages of the new and great enterprise. Light, heat and motive
power for streets, vehicles, works, shops, factories, stores, churches,
dwellings, can be supplied from the dynamos at Niagara more
economically, probably, than by any other means. Local steam engines
may be dismissed; their occupation, for Buffalo, will be gone. Even the
steam fire engines may retire. The electric pump will beat them out of
sight.”
 PLENTY OF BANKING CAPITAL.
Buffalo is blessed with splendid banking facilities. There are now
nineteen banks of deposit in the city with a total capital of nearly
five million dollars and a reserve of nearly eleven millions. Five new
banks have been started here since the spring of 1891. Our bankers
are cautious, conservative business men, and banking business in
this city has always been conducted on conservative lines. The solid
financiers who control these great barometers of our business life
have never invited disaster by loose, speculative methods. Like the
arch in the foundation wall of a massive structure, gaining strength
from increased weight, has been the prudence of our bankers, and
to-day our banking institutions rest upon secure foundation and are
ready for the branching out and growth that will come to them with
the rapid increase in industrial enterprises resulting from the world’s
cheapest power. Prudence has been the watchword of success in the
past, and it will continue as the governor in the greater transactions
of the greater future.