Between early August (04/08/2025) and early September (05/09/2025), I had the opportunity to participate in a secondment at the Universidad del Pacífico (Lima, Peru), as part of the EM4FIT project.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the warm hospitality extended by the university’s faculty members—especially those from the Academic Department of Humanities. The secondment provided an ideal academic setting in which I was able to advance my research project while fully immersing myself in the intellectual life of this prestigious institution.
I had the privilege of participating in a range of activities organised by the small yet vibrant group of economic and business historians at Universidad del Pacífico, and I collaborated closely with Professors Martín Monsalve and Beatriz Rodríguez-Satizábal. I am particularly grateful to Martín Monsalve for facilitating my involvement in several academic events and for helping me connect with the wider Peruvian scholarly community of economic, business and social historians. Beatriz Rodríguez-Satizábal also welcomed me warmly—her dynamism and vitality were truly contagious throughout my stay. Together, we engaged in fruitful discussions on various aspects of my research and our shared EM4FIT project, through meetings, lectures, and seminars.
Another key area of progress was the development of a book chapter to be included in a forthcoming volume that aims to summarise the contributions of researchers involved in EM4FIT Work Package 4. The editorial project is currently in its preliminary stages and is being coordinated by Beatriz Rodríguez-Satizábal (Universidad del Pacífico) and Tomás Fernández de Sevilla (Universitat de Barcelona), who serve as volume editors.
My chapter focuses on the resilience of collective entrepreneurship, using agricultural cooperativism in Western Catalonia, from the post–World War I period onwards, as a case study. While the performance of private enterprises is well documented, research on collective entrepreneurship, grounded in cooperation, shared decision-making, and mutual benefit, remains comparatively scarce, despite its historical relevance in certain sectors. In the early 20th century, cooperatives and the broader cooperative movement experienced notable growth in Western Catalonia. Remarkably, by 2020, one-third of the region’s agrarian cooperatives are estimated to have reached centennial longevity.
My research examines one such enduring institution: Cooperativa la Granadella, founded in 1920 in a small Western Catalonian municipality to produce olive oil. Drawing extensively on its archival records, the study explores collective entrepreneurship as a source of resilience. It aims to highlight how the cooperative adapted to shifting historical and institutional contexts, and to identify the key factors behind its century-long survival, including its original organisational structure, its capacity to deliver essential services and meet community needs, its deep integration within a regional cluster, effective management strategies, and the active agency of its members.
In addition to these academic activities, I also had the pleasure of exchanging ideas on teaching economic and business history and engaging in wide-ranging conversations with other faculty members. I was also fortunate to experience Peru’s rich and impressive cultural heritage during my stay.
The generosity of the faculty at Universidad del Pacífico made me feel entirely at home. The experience was both fascinating and deeply enriching—one I would gladly repeat without hesitation. My heartfelt thanks to all!
Ramon Ramon-Muñoz