Chapter 219: Inspecting Barcelona

Good times are always fleeting; after staying in Italy for a few days, Gao Da ultimately had to leave.

After all, Gao Da was now the King of Spain, and matters concerning Spain were the most important to him.

Aside from visiting his father, Victor Emmanuel II, Gao Da had also intended to sign further cooperation agreements with the Italian government, which was the reason he had stayed for several days.

Now that the cooperation agreements between the two governments had been signed, Gao Da no longer had any reason to linger in Italy.

When parting with Victor Emmanuel II, Gao Da still felt some reluctance. But there was no help for it; state affairs took precedence over everything. That Gao Da could spare some time to come to Italy for a visit meant he had already set aside a portion of his official duties.

Although the current Spanish government appeared stable, Gao Da dared not gamble on even the slightest possibility of trouble. Only by personally presiding over Spain could he ensure its stability and development.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Guard, Qiao Di, also returned to Rome from Garibaldi's residence, waiting at any time to follow Gao Da back to Spain.

Come to think of it, Qiao Di and Gao Da could be considered companions in misfortune. Victor Emmanuel II was suffering from illness compounded by overwork, while for Garibaldi, the primary reason was simply his advanced age.

Although they knew both old men did not have much time left to live, it was a pity that Qiao Di and Gao Da clearly did not have much time to accompany them.

To be pessimistic, perhaps the next time Gao Da came to Italy, it might be for the funeral of his father, Victor Emmanuel II.

Clearing the complex emotions from his mind, Gao Da ordered the fleet to proceed at full speed, striving to return to Spain in the shortest possible time.

The period of the Tenth Russo-Turkish War was absolutely the best opportunity for Spain's development, and Gao Da did not want to waste even a tiny bit of time.

Merely trading with Russia and the Ottoman Empire was enough for Spain to obtain a large amount of capital and other resources, not to mention that at this time, the eyes of other European powers were almost all on the Balkan Peninsula, so the resistance Spain would face if it wanted to carry out some expansion would also be much smaller.

When Gao Da and his party left Spain, they used the port of Valencia, but upon returning to Spain, Gao Da chose to dock at the port of Barcelona.

As for the reason, it was, of course, to first visit Barcelona, Spain's second most populous city.

Ever since the Barcelona industrial base was built, the development of Barcelona had also been like boarding an express train, with both industry and economy achieving minor successes.

Under the planning of the Spanish government and Gao Da, as of now, more than 200, 00 Spaniards had been continuously migrating to Catalonia, and a considerable number of them had already settled around the Barcelona industrial base.

This had also caused Barcelona's population to see rapid growth in recent years, with a faint trend of catching up to Madrid.

Indeed, Barcelona's geographical location was much better than Madrid's, and it also possessed extremely developed maritime transport, so catching up to Madrid was very possible.

For Spain, Barcelona and the Catalonia it belonged to were one of Spain's most important administrative regions, and also an absolutely inseparable part of Spain.

How to keep Catalonia in a stable state and resolve the troubles of the Catalans was a problem the Spanish government had been considering.

By going to Barcelona this time, Gao Da also wanted to see the current status of Catalonia and see if the policies the government had implemented in Catalonia actually had the corresponding effects.

After arriving in Barcelona, Gao Da's first destination was the Barcelona industrial base in the suburbs.

The Barcelona industrial base was a key project in the Spanish government's industrial construction, and the future Barcelona would also become Spain's industrial heart and largest industrial city.

Although the capital, Madrid, also possessed industry, some industries with heavier pollution would gradually be transferred to other regions or even outside of Spain.

Gao Da did not want Madrid to become a "fog city" like London; although this was also a symbol of industrial development and civilization, such a symbol was not very healthy for people.

As the country with the most developed industry and economy, the British Empire theoretically should not have such a low average life expectancy.

But it was precisely because of the existence of the "fog city" that the average life expectancy of London citizens was lowered. In this era, there were no corresponding anti-smog measures, nor were there masks with strong protective capabilities.

With Londoners breathing high-concentration smog every day, it would be a strange thing if they could live long.

Arriving at the Barcelona industrial base, the general manager of the industrial base, Angelo Orcajo, had already brought the management staff of the industrial base to wait respectfully.

Angelo Orcajo was a talent Gao Da had promoted from among the nobility. The name of the Orcajo family came from the small town of Orcajo in western La Mancha; Angelo's ancestors were enfeoffed as the Baron of Orcajo, with the fief being the land from the small town of Orcajo to the Guadiana River in the west.

After hundreds of years of development, the title of Baron of Orcajo still existed, but Angelo's family had lost most of their territory and were truly fallen nobles.

After Gao Da came to Spain, he decided to select a group of fallen nobles from the Spanish aristocratic class for his own use.

Compared to those dukes and grand dukes with immense power and high status, these fallen counts and marquesses would have higher loyalty to Gao Da.

Just like that, Baron Angelo Orcajo stepped into the political arena step by step, and because he possessed good ability in industrial development, he was promoted by Gao Da to serve at the Seville industrial base.

An-Gao-Luo did well at the Seville industrial base, and when the Spanish government decided to build a larger-scale industrial base in Barcelona, Gao Da handed this heavy responsibility to An-Gao-Luo and appointed him as the general manager of the industrial base.

At present, An-Gao-Luo was doing quite well at the industrial base. The Barcelona industrial base had already successfully completed the first two phases of construction and was undergoing the final phase of construction.

If the entire three-phase construction could be completed, the Barcelona industrial base would become a super-large industrial base with over 500, 00 workers, and Barcelona would also become Spain's industrial heart, its importance not losing at all to Madrid, the capital.

Of course, even if the third phase of the Barcelona industrial base's construction had not yet been completed, the role of the industrial base, which had only completed two phases, was still not to be underestimated.

Currently, the Barcelona industrial base possessed over 250, 00 workers and owned thousands of large, medium, and small-scale factories and different enterprises.

The Barcelona industrial base accounted for more than 30% of Spain's total industrial capacity, and its current industrial scale had already surpassed Madrid and Seville; Catalonia was also the region with the strongest industry in Spain.

The rapid development of industry also allowed Catalonia to profit; as the region with the most powerful industry in Spain, the income of workers in Catalonia was also the highest among all major regions in Spain.

As of the beginning of this year, the average annual income of Spaniards calculated by the Spanish financial department was about 131 pesetas, while the average annual income in the Catalonia region had already exceeded this level, reaching a rather exaggerated 144 pesetas.

This was still because the level was pulled down by the farmers and other low-income populations in Catalonia. The average income of workers in the Barcelona industrial base reached 165 pesetas, a level that was far above the current average annual income.

The continuous increase in per capita income made the economy of Catalonia quite prosperous, and the area around Barcelona was not at all inferior to Spain's capital, Madrid.

If one were to discuss the total economic scale of the entire region, except for Andalusia, which could barely be mentioned in the same breath due to population, other regions including Madrid could not compare to the total economy of Catalonia.

The prosperity of Catalonia also attracted a large number of domestic and foreign laborers to go there, and Barcelona was also the city that received the most foreign immigrants in Spain every year.

Currently, the population structure of Barcelona had undergone significant changes; the proportion of true Catalans was constantly decreasing, and the number of orthodox Spaniards and foreign immigrants was constantly increasing.

This made those more extreme Catalan nationalists see danger, but they had no way to deal with it at all.

The reason Catalonia attracted domestic and foreign laborers to come was the construction of the Barcelona industrial base; one couldn't just stop the construction of the Barcelona industrial base, right?

One had to know that the current Barcelona industrial base possessed over 250, 00 workers and could accommodate over 250, 00 more workers in the future.

If the construction of the Barcelona industrial base were stopped, not to mention what the Spanish government would think, just the opposition of those 500, 00 workers would be enough to destroy the plans of these extremists.

Among the existing 250, 00 workers, more than half were Catalans; would these Catalans who had already entered the factories still support their plans?

In a situation where most of the extreme Catalans had been immigrated or suppressed, the small number of extremists had no way to deal with the current evolution.

They had no power to stop it, and those Catalans who had already entered the factories to work and obtained higher incomes would not allow these minorities to destroy their good lives.

"Your Majesty, the third phase of construction of the Barcelona industrial base has entered its final stages. It is expected that within one year, all construction can be officially completed and enter the production state," the general manager of the industrial base, Angelo Orcajo, reported to Gao Da with a smile on his face.

The construction of the Barcelona industrial base had been going on for nearly 7 years now, consuming all the heart's blood of the entire Spanish government and him.

At present, the results achieved by the Barcelona industrial base were quite gratifying. Spain's industrial scale was also developing rapidly with the continuous completion of the Barcelona industrial base; currently, Spain's industrial scale was no weaker than Italy's.

Italy was not at all weak in terms of industry. Although Italy was a country that had just unified a few years ago, its predecessor, the Kingdom of Sardinia, was still quite powerful in terms of industry.

The unification of Italy integrated several powerful industrial states and regions in the north, allowing Italy's industrial scale to rise to a higher level.

Being able to catch up to Italy in industrial scale was already a quite good achievement for Spain. After all, counting it all up, Spain had only used less than ten years, and in the middle, it had also experienced civil war and all kinds of chaos; this was already quite not easy.

Hearing An-Gao-Luo's report, Gao Da nodded, still very satisfied with the talent he had promoted from the vast aristocratic group of Spain.

Although he was a fallen noble, An-Gao-Luo's own ability was still worth affirming. If the Barcelona industrial base could be successfully built and fully put into production, this was not only an achievement made by the Spanish government, but also an achievement of An-Gao-Luo himself.

After Canovas officially served as Prime Minister, the position of Minister of Industry he concurrently held became vacant, which was just right for An-Gao-Luo to get some more training.

If An-Gao-Luo also did well in the position of Minister of Industry, Gao Da would not mind letting him form a cabinet and become Prime Minister after Canovas.

After all, for all countries in this era, developing industry was the most important thing. If one did well in industry, then there would be no mistakes in national development.

Having industry meant having everything; this was an eternal truth in this era. One of the main reasons why the United States and Germany rose rapidly in this era was that they quickly built extremely massive industries.

Don't look at the fact that Britain was the world's most powerful industrial country now; in the next twenty or thirty years, the United States and Germany would successively surpass Britain and become more powerful industrial countries than Britain.

Although industry did not represent everything, industry was also one of the basic elements for measuring a country's strength. If An-Gao-Luo really possessed quite good ability, Gao Da was also willing to let him enter a higher stage and fully exert his ability.

"During the process of the industrial base's construction, were there any problems that were difficult to solve?" Gao Da asked with a smile: "Can the workers' wages and welfare benefits be guaranteed? I do not want the incident that happened in Madrid last time to happen again in Barcelona."

Regarding the construction and development of the industrial base, what Gao Da was most concerned about was the attitude of the workers.

The construction of the industrial base would give birth to a large number of workers, and the power of these workers was extremely strong. Unlike the conservative peasant class, if the interests of the working class could not be guaranteed, then what might be destroyed would be the interests of the ruling class.

Gao Da could see this point clearly; anyway, the Spanish government and the royal family were not short of this little money. Under the premise of being able to guarantee the workers' interests, what the royal family and the government had to do was to guarantee the workers' interests as much as possible, and incidentally, do some propaganda for themselves.

"The construction of the industrial base has indeed faced many problems up to now, but under the leadership of Your Majesty and the government, most of these problems have been solved," An-Gao-Luo did not rush to answer Gao Da's question, but pretended to be thinking seriously, and only after a short while did he open his mouth to answer: "

If I have to say what problems have not been solved, the current vacancy of technical talent is one. The current Barcelona industrial base has over 250, 00 workers, but our vacancy for technical talent and skilled workers still exists, and it is quite huge.

There is also the fact that the development of the industrial base has some slight deviations from our estimates before construction; perhaps our Barcelona industrial base will be even more massive than expected."

Gao Da nodded. The problem of technical talent vacancy was not just in the Barcelona industrial base; this was a problem faced by the whole of Spain.

Even if the government invested heavily in education, it would not have an effect in just a few short years.

Attracting technical talent from abroad was indeed also a way to solve the problem, but wanting to attract technical talent on a large scale was impossible; every year, the immigration regarding technical talent was very few, adding up to only a few hundred or a thousand people.

"The industrial base can contact various factories and enterprises to count the technical jobs we are most lacking and need most." Gao Da thought for a while and gave his own solution: "

After determining the types of technology that are most lacking and needed, the government will arrange for people to focus on finding technical talent and skilled workers of these types.

The lack of technical talent is a problem faced by the whole of Spain, and it cannot be solved in a short time. But we can first solve the lack of some relatively important talent, and the less important ones can be solved later."

Wanting to solve all the technical talent lacking in the industrial base was simply impossible to complete in a short time. But if it was only to solve the lack of technical talent of a certain type, it was still possible for the Spanish government to realize it.

At worst, throw money at it; anyway, the treatment of talent in this era was not that good, and throwing money at it could still attract some.

Compared to the development of the Barcelona industrial base, sacrificing some funds was not a big deal. A complete industrial base was extremely important to Spain; let alone some sacrifices in terms of funds, even if it were sacrifices in materials and other resources, it was not impossible to consider.

Hearing the solution proposed by Gao Da, An-Gao-Luo showed an excited look and said quite approvingly: "This is indeed a good idea, Your Majesty. This problem has troubled me for a long time. Thank you, Your Majesty; I can sleep well today."

"Haha." Gao Da laughed. Although he knew An-Gao-Luo was flattering him, he was still very satisfied with this guy's attitude: "The scale of the Barcelona industrial base you mentioned might have some deviation from our estimates; what is the actual situation?"

"Previously, in our estimates, the scale of the Barcelona industrial base could accommodate about 500, 00 workers and have an output of 700, 00 tons of pig iron and 300, 00 tons of steel.

But according to our statistics on the scale of the existing industrial base and the estimates for the third phase of the industrial base's construction, after the industrial base is completed, the number of workers it can accommodate will increase to about 550, 00, and it is even possible to reach a scale of 600, 00.

The total industrial output is also expected to have an increase of 10% to 15%, which also means that Barcelona will need more workers; relying solely on the population of Catalonia is completely insufficient," An-Gao-Luo answered.

The construction plan for the Barcelona industrial base had been determined long ago, but the plan would definitely have some deviations from reality.

Currently, according to the development and construction situation of the industrial base, the industrial base after being completely built would have a certain gap compared to the previous estimates.

Of course, this kind of deviation was actually a good thing. As long as the problems of workers and technical talent could be solved, the bigger the industrial base, the better.

Although it was only about 10% more industrial capacity, for a super-large industrial base with hundreds of thousands of workers, this 10% industrial capacity was as high as over 100, 00 tons in terms of steel alone.

And the Barcelona industrial base was a comprehensive industrial base that included chemical industry, heavy industry, mechanical processing industry, military industry, electric power industry, light industry, and many other industrial fields; this 10% increase could even affect Spain's total industrial scale.

Hearing An-Gao-Luo's report, Gao Da smiled and completely set his heart at ease: "This is a good thing. Don't worry about the workers' problem; in the future, there will be a continuous stream of workers coming to Barcelona.

You just need to complete the third phase of the construction plan; any problems you face can be submitted to the government or come directly to find me.

The construction of the industrial base is the top priority; I will not allow anyone to destroy our industrial base. An-Gao-Luo, as long as the three-phase construction of the Barcelona industrial base can be successfully completed, the position of Minister of Industry in the next cabinet government will be yours."

An-Gao-Luo was originally a member of the Spanish aristocratic class, so to Gao Da, he was a well-deserved "one of our own."

It was precisely because of this that Gao Da's emphasis on An-Gao-Luo was visible to the naked eye, and he even went so far as to promise the quite important position of Minister of Industry.

Among the many departments in the cabinet, the industrial department is absolutely one of the most important; perhaps only the defense and finance departments can be mentioned in the same breath.

Upon hearing the position of Minister of Industry promised by Yu Kaluo, Xiang Kaluo nodded with excitement and loudly assured Yu Kaluo: "Rest assured, Your Majesty, I will supervise the smooth completion of the Barcelona industrial base."

"Before the next cabinet government election, I will let Your Majesty see a complete and massive Barcelona industrial base, and I will absolutely not fail your trust."

Yu Kaluo nodded, still very trusting of Xiang Kaluo's words.

Establishing an industrial base in Catalonia is not that easy; those extremist Catalans would cause some destruction or secretly carry out obstructions from time to time.

The reason why the establishment of the Barcelona industrial base has been so smooth up to now, besides the government's emphasis and the stationing of the army, is also largely due to Xiang Kaluo working tirelessly for it.

According to reports from the Royal Security Intelligence Department, since Xiang Kaluo became the person in charge of the industrial base, he has been busy until very late almost every day.

In addition to supervising the construction of the industrial base to ensure the quality of the buildings, he also has to constantly communicate with the factories and enterprises that have already moved in to ensure their production and transportation.

Yu Kaluo did indeed provide Xiang Kaluo with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he did indeed seize this opportunity. He not only fully demonstrated his ability and value through this opportunity but also gained Yu Kaluo's trust through his attitude.

Currently, in Yu Kaluo's view, Xiang Kaluo is a talent worth cultivating, which is also what Xiang Kaluo wants to achieve.

"Have the factories and enterprises in the industrial base strictly followed the relevant provisions of the Labor Law to pay workers' wages and provide benefits?" Yu Kaluo continued to ask.

In fact, the workers' demands are not high; they are nothing more than no withholding of wages and a certain amount of rest time.

Workers do not reject overtime; what they reject is overtime without any gain. No one is willing to work overtime without overtime pay, but if enough overtime pay is given, workers are of course willing to work several extra hours in the factory every day.

"The industrial base attaches great importance to this point. I organize personnel to investigate all factories and enterprises within the industrial base at regular intervals to ensure that they do not withhold workers' wages. At present, such problems have not yet appeared within the Barcelona industrial base, and workers' working hours are also strictly limited to under 11 hours," Xiang Kaluo replied.

6, 00-word two-in-one chapter, seeking support!

I came back late today, so the 10, 00-word update is changed to tomorrow. As compensation, here is a 6, 00-word long chapter update today. Thank you all for your support!



(End of this chapter)