Chapter 469: Economic Development

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

Although the current film production process is relatively rudimentary, it still takes at least several months to complete the filming of a single movie.

Gao Da did not have that much time to pay attention to a movie; for Gao Da, the current United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal had too many affairs that required his personal handling, and for the sake of the country's stability, none of these could be taken lightly.

In mid-March 1908, Gao Da, along with the high-ranking officials of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal, boarded a train from Madrid to Lisbon.

The purpose of this trip to Portugal was, first and foremost, to inspect Portugal's newly built industrial zones. Compared to Spain, Portugal was still too impoverished; whether in terms of economic products or mineral resources, it had no competitive advantage compared to Spain.

However, since Portugal had become Gao Da's territory, he could not just focus on developing Spain while ignoring the feelings of Portugal.

Regarding Portugal's economic development, after personally inspecting various economic products in Portugal and drawing on his main impressions of Portugal's economy from later generations, Gao Da formulated an economic development model based on the dual pillars of the textile and cork industries, supplemented by the wine industry.

Portugal's textile industry was not that developed, but it was indeed one of the few industries Portugal could showcase. The cork industry was perhaps the only industry in which Portugal had achieved success; in later generations, Portugal was known as the "Cork Kingdom," with its cork production accounting for half of the world's total.

Cork is not a soft wood, but the bark of a specific tree. The official name of this tree is the cork oak; its bark has an extremely well-developed cork layer, generally reaching several centimeters in thickness, and is an excellent raw material for making bottle stoppers, fishing net floats, flooring, and even industrial products.

More importantly, the formation process of cork oak bark is the secondary growth of the tree's stem, which also means that this bark known as cork is renewable.

Because of its waterproof, insulating, and renewable properties, it is welcomed by many industries, which has also stimulated the growth and prosperity of the cork industry along the Mediterranean coast.

Although cork has many application scenarios, for Spain and Portugal, its most important use is, of course, for making bottle stoppers for red wine.

Currently, the red wine industry is a quite important economic sector for both Spain and Portugal; the Spanish and Portuguese alone consume a massive amount of red wine every year, not to mention the red wine exported abroad, the quantity of which is countless.

Under such circumstances, the consumption of red wine bottles and cork stoppers by major red wine manufacturers is also enormous. Currently, the most important cork production areas in all of Europe are generally concentrated near the Mediterranean coast, with Portugal, Spain, and Italy being the most prominent.

The reason for designating the cork industry as one of Portugal's pillar economic industries, in addition to the achievements Portugal would later make in the cork sector, was that Portugal truly faced few competitors in this field.

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

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

However, Spain would certainly not engage in fierce competition with Portugal in this regard, as Spain could certainly have better options.

Portugal developed the cork industry because it had no other decent industries to serve as economic pillars, whereas Spain had plenty of optional economic pillars.

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

It was precisely for this reason that Gao Da ultimately decided to place the cork industrial park in the south of the Lisbon region of Portugal; this area, and the Beja region further south, were very suitable for planting cork oaks and developing the cork industry.

By leaving the development of the cork industry to Portugal, Spain could focus its main energy on wine production. The cork produced by Portugal could be used to make bottle stoppers for wine, meaning the wine industry could benefit both Spain and Portugal.

Although the number of stoppers currently required by the wine industries of Spain and Portugal was not yet that staggering, consuming several million stoppers a year was no problem at all.

Added to the consumption of cork products in other areas, it was perfectly fine for Portugal's cork industry to provide thousands or even tens of thousands of jobs.

Furthermore, the textile and wine industries could also provide tens of thousands of jobs for Portugal. The industrial park built in the Lisbon region of Portugal encompassed the textile industry, the wine industry, and the cork processing industry, and was expected to accommodate hundreds of factories and enterprises of various sizes, capable of providing tens of thousands of jobs and benefiting hundreds of thousands of people around the Lisbon region.

In addition to inspecting this large industrial park, Gao Da also planned to inspect Portugal's only medium-sized industrial base and the Lisbon Shipyard, and to attend a routine meeting of the Portugal Regional Council to fulfill his role as the King of Portugal.

In fact, the most important part of this was the inspection of the Lisbon Shipyard.

Portugal's decline was far more severe than that of Spain at the time; not only was its industry lagging behind most European countries, but even its once-brilliant shipbuilding industry had fallen into decay.

The only thing Portugal could currently showcase was a state-run joint-venture shipyard in Lisbon. This shipyard had built brilliant sailing warships over a hundred years ago, but since the era of ironclad warships, the orders this shipyard received from the government navy had become fewer and fewer, and the shipyard's development had been consistently 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 warship from this shipyard, which was named the Vasco da Gama ironclad.

This ironclad was also the only capital ship built by the Portuguese Navy in the 30 years up to that point.

In 1903, the Vasco da Gama underwent a forced refit in Lisbon. The hull was cut and extended by 30 meters, its armament was changed from two 263mm guns to two 8-inch guns, one 6-inch gun, one 12-pounder gun, and six 3-pounder guns, and it was re-equipped with Yarrow boilers, increasing its speed from 10 knots to 15. knots, and it was forcibly classified as an armored cruiser.

Although this gave the ironclad, which had been in service for nearly 30 years, a new lease on life, whether in terms of paper data or actual performance, this ironclad was still a major step behind the battleships equipped by other countries at the same time.

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

To expand this shipyard, Gao Da had invested quite a lot of capital. The total capital investment had exceeded tens of millions of pesetas. Currently, the initial reconstruction work of the shipyard had been completed; the largest dry dock could definitely build battleships of over ten thousand tons, and the smaller No. 2 dry dock could also build cruisers and coastal defense gunboats of about five thousand tons, which already met Gao Da's requirements.

Spain did not need this Lisbon shipyard to build dreadnoughts of over twenty thousand tons for the Spanish Navy. The main purpose of expanding this shipyard was to have it build smaller auxiliary warships for the Spanish Navy, while also providing maintenance services for warships.

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

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

The reason Spain was able to land around Lisbon so easily at the 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 batteries in Lisbon Bay, planning to turn Lisbon into a solid military fortress and use it as one of the bases for the Atlantic Fleet of the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal.

With the Atlantic Fleet stationed in the bay where Lisbon was located, there was no need to worry about enemy navies sneaking in. With the help of coastal defense batteries, it could be said that no matter how many enemy warships came, they would all be sunk.

These coastal defense guns installed on the batteries were no joke. Coastal defense batteries were generally divided into two types: rapid-fire guns and main guns, with calibers ranging from 75mm to 125mm and 254mm to 305mm, respectively.

The former were mainly used to deal with small, fast warships, preventing them from suddenly approaching the coast to launch surprise attacks. The latter were used to deal with larger capital ships; a single hit could damage the opponent's battleships or even dreadnoughts.