Chapter 97: Progress of Government Work

Gao Da attended the Spanish government's summary meeting for 1870 and inquired about the progress of the Spanish government regarding industrial and economic construction.

From the government work report submitted by Prime Minister Primo, one could also see the specific differences in Spain's development between the Primo government and the provisional government period.

During the provisional government period, Spain's total railway mileage reached 5, 00 kilometers.

This railway mileage figure was not much different from Italy's 5, 00 kilometers; although it could not compare to the tens of thousands of kilometers of railway mileage in Britain, France, and Germany, it was not bad.

So the question arises: why did Spain's 5, 00 kilometers of railway mileage not cause Spain's economy to take off?

The real reason is that the width of Spain's railway tracks was not consistent with other European countries; Spain's railways had completely become transportation channels for domestic economy and materials, rather than international trade routes.

Although Spain's railway track width was consistent with Portugal's, Portugal was ultimately a small country; if the Spanish economy wanted to take off, it still had to accelerate economic exchanges with other countries.

Since Prime Minister Primo officially took office, the Spanish government has attached great importance to railway construction.

From mid-1869 to the end of 1870, Spain built a total of over 500 kilometers of railway lines, bringing the total railway mileage infinitely close to 6, 00 kilometers.

For the Spanish government, this speed of railway construction had far exceeded the past. From the birth of railways until 1869, Spain had only built 5, 00 kilometers of railway, but since Prime Minister Primo took office, 500 kilometers of railway were built in one year; this was one of Prime Minister Primo's political achievements.

Of course, besides railways, roads were also a very important part of the Spanish government's construction.

Over the past year and a half, the Spanish government had cumulatively built 4, 32 kilometers of roads, of which more than 1, 00 kilometers were main roads with a two-way four-lane standard.

There were always areas that railways could not reach, making the construction of roads very necessary. With the birth of automobiles, the importance of roads would increase infinitely.

The Spanish government's future emphasis on road construction would not decrease, and roads and railways would also be one of the main construction goals of the Spanish government in the future.

Gao Da also focused on the education situation in Spain.

When Gao Da first arrived in Spain, the illiterate population accounted for more than 70% of the total population. So far, more than one million people had cumulatively received literacy education, and the illiteracy rate had decreased by at least about 5%.

It is expected that within the next four years, Spain's illiterate population should be able to decrease by about 15% to 20%. Reducing Spain's illiterate population to below 40% of the total population before 1880, and reducing Spain's illiterate population to below 10% of the total population before 1900—this was Gao Da's long-term goal.

The ultimate grand goal was certainly to achieve zero illiteracy within Spain. Only by fully implementing free primary education could Spain's teenagers enter society with sufficient knowledge and become technical workers and other professions needed by the country.

Only as the educated population grows, and eventually all school-age children can receive education above primary school, can it be guaranteed that universities have enough students when enrolling.

Education must start from childhood; this saying makes sense. If one has not even received primary education, how can one skip middle school and high school to directly apply for university?

Speaking of universities, currently, all of Spain's universities combined recruit more than 4, 00 university students annually.

But among these 4, 00 people, the number of those choosing majors related to physics and chemistry was less than 1, 00. There were simply too many people in Spanish universities doing literature and art; even architectural engineering majors were more popular than physics and chemistry.

Spain clearly did not need so many literature and art students, and the next step was to transform some universities. Either build them into comprehensive universities or directly convert them into science universities, consolidating the literature-related colleges together; having one or two such universities would suffice.

Achieving such integration was still very difficult because most of Spain's universities were private institutions, and the number of universities founded by the government was very small.

The only thing that gave Gao Da some comfort was that Spain's population grew steadily in 1869 and 1870.

In 1868, Spain's population growth rate was the lowest in the last decade; this was not only due to the outbreak of revolution, but also because a large number of Spanish farmers, facing the government's harsh taxes, were unable to afford the cost of raising children. Since they could not afford to raise children even if they were born, the best way was not to have them.

And after the revolution broke out, the population growth rate returned to a normal level.

Although it was impossible to accurately count the entire population of Spain, based on the population changes in various places, it could be roughly estimated that the current population of Spain had basically exceeded 16. million.

In the year 1870 alone, Spain's population grew by at least 150, 00. If it were not for the lack of advanced medical care leading to a large number of early childhood deaths, the population growth data would likely have doubled.

The problem of low survival rates for newborns and young children was a major difficulty that all European countries had to face at present.

Let alone ordinary civilians, even among the nobility and the royal family, early childhood death was very common.

For example, Gao Da's father, Vittorio Emanuele II, had two sons die early in succession, one of whom lived for only a few days.

Regarding transmigrating into this world, Gao Da was generally satisfied. The only thing he was not very satisfied with was the world's quite backward medical technology, which was simply too terrible compared to later generations.

Although the Industrial Revolution brought considerable strength to European countries, there was not such great progress in medical technology.

Although various countries' biology and medicine were also constantly making breakthroughs, the fact that the average life expectancy of Europeans remained below 40 years old was enough to prove the terrible medical environment of this era.

Of course, the average European life expectancy of 40 years could not be entirely blamed on the poor medical environment. After all, most European civilians were being exploited by capitalists, working more than ten hours a day; being able to live to about 40 was already quite good.

Although there was no specific working hour system in Spain at present, in some royal enterprises, it had been explicitly required many times that workers' daily working hours must not exceed 12 hours.

Gao Da was the King, so naturally, he could not unscrupulously exploit those workers.

In addition to explicitly requiring that daily work must not exceed 12 hours, royal enterprises allowed employees to have one day of vacation per month, letting employees relieve the fatigue and drowsiness accumulated over a long time.

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(End of chapter)