Common geographical, climatic and historical elements allow us to support as an hypothesis of work an economic identity of the north of Spain, from Galicia to Navarre, passing through the Cantabrian regions, an identity that has a long history and is already detected in the eighteenth century, temporal to which this work is consecrated. The successive studies that compose it analyze the economic situation, in general, of the north of Spain in the century illustrated and, in particular, the main business initiatives that during that time took place and those who were its most outstanding protagonists. The different authors of the work, coming from the most prestigious university area of ​​the north of the Iberian peninsula, are depicting an image of eighteenth-century Cantabrian Spain, not least suspected of discovering: the incipient industrialization of the different regions, the development and internationalization of trade, both to America and other places in Europe, the obstacles and everlasting bureaucratic or political difficulties for entrepreneurship in the realm of the Bourbon monarchy, which is both advantageous and detrimental to economic development, social promotion or the consolidation of entrepreneurial "dynasties" ... With nuances and differences, however, in Cantabrian Spain as a whole, a series of similarities will be found that will determine, by extension, the difficulties and also the capacities of the Spanish economy for overcome the rigid molds of the Old Regime and take irreversible steps towards the modern stage.