The tails of two cities: living conditions in Burgos and Bilbao in the first half of the 20th century

This paper compares the living conditions of two Spanish cities during the interwar period: Burgos, provincial capital of one of the important grain-producing provinces, and Bilbao, also a provincial capital and an emerg-ing industrial center. The two cities, opposed in productive character, were well-connected by a railway span-ning 194 kilometers. We contrast whether these neighboring cities experienced similar changes in their living standards over time. Specifically, we analyze the effects of changes in prices and income on household con-sumption, mortality rates, causes of death, and pawning. To conduct our analysis, we have collected homoge-neous comparable data series from the official monthly statistics of both municipalities. We find that the im-pacts of price and wage changes during and after World War I and the Great Depression differed significantly between the two cities. & COPY; 2023 Asociacion Espanola de Historia Economica