The Barcelona Trading Company was a Spanish chartered company founded in 1755 by the Spanish crown which had a monopoly on trade to the Spanish West Indies territories of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Margarita Island.
The company provided a legal framework and a focus for capital which enabled Catalan merchants to break free from the restrictions of the Cadiz monopoly on trade with the Indies, provided skills and contacts that enabled the development of free trade between Catalonia and the Americas to flourish after the company's demise, and contributed to the development of the textile industry which later became the basis of industrialisation in Catalonia.
The integration of Catalonia'a economy in international trade is the root of the exceptional experience of Catalan industrialisation and the development of an increasingly capitalist economy. The company was merged with the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas in 1785 to form the Royal Company of the Philippines.
Historical context
Since 1503, under the Habsburg kings, all trade with America had been conducted through the port of Seville (and after 1717, Cádiz) under a monopoly that prevented other cities, including Barcelona, from trade with the Americas, or the Indies as they were known. Tentatively by the late 17th century Catalan goods had reached the Indies via the Spanish coastal trade to Cádiz and this grew slowly until by the mid 1740s entire ships were beginning to be fitted out in Barcelona for transatlantic commerce.