Facultad de Económicas y CC Empresariales

The use of new technologies applied to teaching has led to a qualitative leap in education due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. This chapter describes the experience of converting an intensive program that had been celebrated in person since 2014, into an online event. Thus, through a project-based learning process, students of different nationalities were able to expand their knowledge related to ethics and finance, as well as other skillsets, such as autonomous and collaborative work, working in a multicultural environment, or the development of technological and language skills. All this was possible thanks to recent developments in software and applications that allow students and teachers to collaborate simultaneously while being separated by hundreds of kilometers in different European cities.

In assessments of modern Spain’s economic progress and living standards inadequate natural resources, inefficient institutions, lack of education and entrepreneurship, and foreign dependency are frequently blamed for the poor performance up to mid-twentieth century, but no persuasive arguments are provided to explain why such adverse circumstances reversed, giving way to the fast transformation of the last half a century. It makes sense, hence, to inquire firstly how much economic progress has Spain achieved and what impact had on living standards and income distribution since the end of the Peninsular War to the present and, only then, to provide an interpretation. Recent research supports the view that income per person has improved remarkably, driven by increases in labour productivity, which derived, in turn, from a more intense and efficient use of physical and human capital per worker. Exposure to international competition represented a decisive element behind growth performance. In European perspective, Spain underperformed up to 1950. Thereafter, Spain’s economy caught up with advanced countries until 2007. Although the distribution of the fruits of growth did not follow a linear trend, but a Kuznetsian inverted U pattern, higher levels of income per capita are matched by lower inequality suggesting that Spaniards’ material well-being improved substantially during the modern era.

El presente texto ha pretendido, engarzar paralelismos entre la España actual y la Argentina del Centenario sin pretensión de forzar las comparaciones históricas. Más bien, el objeto de estas reflexiones ha sido mostrar, utilizando un ejemplo histórico como en toda realidad social existe un divorcio evidente entre las percepciones sociales que generan estos tópicos y el conocimiento científico producido por los especialistas.

El propósito del presente trabajo ha sido retomar las cuestiones planteadas por Antonio Miguel Bernal hace 25 años sobre la emigración andaluza a América. En este lapso de tiempo la investigación realizada ha contribuido a resolver, siempre tentativamente, algunas hipótesis y preguntas de investigación planteadas entonces. Una de las mayores aportaciones del trabajo pionero de Bernal fue romper la asociación entre latifundio-emigración que venía presentándose como premisa indiscutible. Igualmente relevantes fueron las páginas dedicadas a la relación entre miseria campesina y emigración. Su intuición, rompiendo tópicos y visiones preconcebidas, de que en las condiciones míseras de vida del campesinado andaluz “no puede centrarse la motivación principal del proceso emigratorio” han quedado refrendadas por la investigación posterior, aunque cueste deshacerse del tópico miseria-emigración.