Chapter 469: Economic Development

Although he ordered Spain's two major film companies to film films related to Spanish history respectively, Gao Da's focus was not on these two film companies.

Although the filming process of the film was relatively crude now, it still took several months to complete the filming of a film.

Gao Da did not have that much time to pay attention to a film; for Gao Da, the current United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal had too many affairs that needed Gao Da to handle personally; for the sake of the country's stability, these could not be careless.

In mid-March 1908, Gao Da, along with Prince Juan Fernando and various high-level government officials of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, boarded the train from Madrid to Lisbon.

The purpose of this trip to Portugal was first to inspect the newly built industrial zone in Portugal. Portugal was still too barren compared to Spain; whether it was economic products or mineral resources, compared to Spain, there was no competitive advantage.

However, Portugal had already become Gao Da's territory, so he could not just focus on developing Spain and ignore Portugal's feelings.

Regarding Portugal's economic development, after Gao Da actually inspected Portugal's various economic products, and then based on his main impression of Portugal's economy in later generations, he formulated an economic development model with the textile industry and cork industry as the dual pillars, plus the wine industry as a supplement.

Portugal's textile industry was not that developed, but it was indeed one of the industries that Portugal could take out. The cork industry might be the only industry that had achieved something for Portugal; the Portugal of later generations was known as the cork kingdom, and cork production accounted for half of the world's production.

Cork was not soft wood, but the bark of a specific tree. The official name of this tree was cork oak; its bark had an extremely developed cork layer, generally with a thickness of up to several centimeters, and was a good raw material for making wooden stoppers, fishing net floats, floors, and even industrial products.

More importantly, the formation process of cork oak bark was the secondary growth of the tree's stem, which also meant that this bark called cork could be regenerated.

Because of its waterproof, heat-insulating, and renewable characteristics, it was welcomed by many industries, and also stimulated the growth and prosperity of the cork industry along the Mediterranean coast.

Although there were many application scenarios for cork, naturally for Spain and Portugal, the main use of cork was still to make stoppers for red wine bottles.

At present, the red wine industry was a quite important economic industry for Spain and Portugal; just Spaniards and Portuguese consumed a large amount of red wine every year, not to mention the red wine exported to the outside world, the quantity of which was countless.

In such a situation, the consumption of red wine bottles and cork stoppers by major red wine manufacturers was also extremely large. At present, the most important cork production areas in Europe were generally concentrated near the Mediterranean coast, with Portugal, Spain, and Italy being the most prominent in Europe.

The reason why the cork industry was set as one of Portugal's pillar economic industries, apart from the achievements Portugal made in the cork industry in later generations, was also because in the cork industry, the competitors Portugal faced were indeed not many.

The external competitors were at most only Italy, and Italy's potential in the cork industry could not compare to Portugal's.

Spain might be Portugal's biggest competitor in the cork industry; after all, the mainland of the Iberian Peninsula and the mainland of the Morocco region were both cork production areas, and the upper limit of cork production was higher than Portugal's.

However, Spain certainly would not conduct fierce competition with Portugal in this regard; after all, Spain could completely have better choices.

Portugal developed the cork industry because there were no other decent industries that could serve as economic pillars, while Spain had plenty of economic pillars to choose from.

The vegetable and fruit industry, automobile industry, shipbuilding industry, military industry, and a series of light and heavy industries, etc., could all serve as Spain's pillar economic industries.

It was precisely because of this that Gao Da finally decided to place the cork industrial park in the south of Portugal's Lisbon State; this place and the Beja State further south were very suitable for planting cork oak and developing the cork industry.

By handing over the cork industry to Portugal to develop, Spain could focus its main energy on the production of wine. The cork produced by Portugal could be used to make stoppers for wine bottles, which was equivalent to the wine industry being able to benefit both Spain and Portugal.

Although the number of stoppers required by the wine industry in Spain and Portugal was not that exaggerated at present, consuming millions of stoppers a year was still no problem.

Adding the consumption of cork products in other aspects, Portugal's cork industry providing thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs was still completely no problem.

And then there were the textile industry and wine industry, which could also provide tens of thousands of jobs for Portugal. The industrial park built in Portugal's Lisbon State included industries such as the textile industry, wine industry, and cork processing industry, and was expected to accommodate hundreds of large and small factories and enterprises, which could provide tens of thousands of jobs, benefiting hundreds of thousands of people around Lisbon State.

Apart from inspecting this large industrial park, Gao Da also planned to inspect Portugal's only medium-scale industrial base and the Lisbon Shipyard, and participate in a routine meeting of the Portugal region parliament, exerting his role as the King of Portugal.

In fact, the most important thing here was the inspection of the Lisbon Shipyard.

Portugal's decline was far more serious than Spain's at that time; not only was the industry lagging behind most European countries, but even the shipbuilding industry, which was originally very glorious, had already decayed.

The only thing Portugal could take out at present was a joint-venture shipyard in Lisbon with an official nature. This shipyard had built glorious sailing warships over a hundred years ago, but since the era of ironclad ships, the orders this shipyard received from the government navy every year had become fewer and fewer, and the shipyard's development had always been restricted.

The largest order this shipyard had received in the last few decades could be traced back to a small-scale expansion of the Portuguese Navy in the mid-to-late 19th century.

At that time, the Portuguese Navy ordered an ironclad ship from this shipyard, which was named the Vasco da Gama ironclad ship.

This ironclad ship was also the only main warship built by the Portuguese Navy in the 30 years up to now.

In 1903, the Vasco da Gama underwent a forced modification in Lisbon. The hull was cut and extended by 30m, the armament was changed from 2 263mm artillery pieces to two 8-inch guns, 1 6-inch gun, 1 12-pounder gun, and 6 3-pounder guns, and it was refitted with Yarrow boilers to increase the speed from 10 knots to 15.5 knots, forcibly calling it an armored cruiser.

Although doing so allowed this ironclad ship that had been in service for nearly 30 years to regain its second spring, whether it was paper data or specific performance, compared to the battleships equipped by other countries during the same period, it was far behind by a big step.

However, this refit also proved that Portugal's shipbuilding industry still had a certain foundation, and Gao Da also hoped to use the remaining afterglow of Portugal's shipbuilding industry to expand this shipyard located in Lisbon into a military shipyard capable of building giant ships of over ten thousand tons, contributing to Spain's subsequent construction of warships.

In order to expand this shipyard, Gao Da had paid quite a lot of capital. The capital investment before and after had already exceeded tens of millions of pesetas; at present, the initial renovation work of the shipyard had been completed, the largest dock could be determined to build battleships of over ten thousand tons, and the smaller No. 2 dock could also build cruisers and coastal defense gunboats of about five thousand tons, which had already met Gao Da's requirements.

Spain did not need Lisbon's shipyard to build Dreadnoughts of over twenty thousand tons for the Spanish Navy. The main purpose of expanding this shipyard was to let it build auxiliary warships with smaller tonnage for the Spanish Navy, and incidentally provide maintenance services for warships.

It was mentioned before that Lisbon was not a coastal city in the true sense, but was built on the north bank of the bay, connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the strait of the bay.

The benefit of doing so was that as long as a large number of coastal defense artillery batteries were deployed on both sides of the bay's strait, Lisbon and its surrounding cities could be protected, preventing enemy navies from invading the bay where Lisbon was located.

The reason why Spain was able to easily land around Lisbon at that time was actually because the landing site was chosen on the Atlantic coast, rather than the bay where Lisbon was located.

After merging the military forces of Spain and Portugal, the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal also passed a bill on rebuilding the artillery batteries in Lisbon Bay, planning to build Lisbon into a sturdy military fortress, using this place as one of the stationing points for the Atlantic Fleet of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal.

The Atlantic Fleet stationing in the bay where Lisbon was located did not need to worry about enemy navies coming to sneak attack at all. With the help of coastal defense artillery batteries, it could be said that no matter how many warships the enemy came with, they would sink.

These coastal defense guns installed on the coastal defense artillery batteries were not a joke. Coastal defense artillery batteries were generally divided into two types: rapid-fire guns and main guns, with calibers of 75mm to 125mm and 254mm to 305mm respectively.

The former mainly dealt with those small warships with small volume and fast speed, preventing small warships from suddenly approaching the coast to sneak attack. The latter was to deal with main warships with larger volume; as long as one shell hit, it could make the opponent's battleship or even Dreadnought suffer injuries. ===== CHAPTER 470 =====