This paper applies a model of the tax incidence of protectionism to the Spanish economy during the period 1870-1913, in an attempt to measure the changes in relative prices caused by protectionism in various sectors of an economy. The starting hypothesis is that a tariff prejudices non-protected sectors, that is to say, and when viewed from an aggregated perspective, pro-ducers of goods that are not capable of commercialisation and exporters. The scale of the prejudice to each sector will depend on the conjunction between the tariff itself and the substitution relationships. The successive estimation of the two models by way of the ADL method confirms this hypothesis and establishes that the main negative incidence of protectionism during this pe-riod was suffered by exporters.

Keywords: tariff, tax incidence, exports, Spanish economy.