THE PROCESS OF SPREADING THE POTATO IN CATALONIA. A REVIEW OF THE ELITIST OR INSTITUTIONALIST THESES

In Catalonia, as in many European regions, the idea that the successful introduction of a new food product, like any other innovation, requires the intervention of an institution or elite that propagates it among the set of the population is deeply rooted. Catalan historiography has applied this thesis to the dissemination of the potato at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, despite the scant empirical evidence available. However, the rereading of the texts used as the basis for this thesis, the testimonies written by some travelers and enlightened thinkers of the late eighteenth century and, in particular, by the physician Juan Francisco Bahi, from 1815 to 1821, as well as the silent character of the actual diffusion process of the tuber, suggest that, unlike what we had tended to think, the small peasantry could have played an important and decisive role in this process.