Social, and more importantly, cultural conditions are die causal factors that allow us to analyse the interpretation and the traits of the translation of David Ricardo's Principles of political economy and taxation, published in Madrid during the years 1848, 1849 and 1850. These social and cultural factors were economic backwardness, the economics training of the translator, the intellectual environment of Madrid, and the concern about social and political unrest. The result was an interpretation of Ricardo's thought quite different from mat usual in Great Britain, and where the meaning of Ricardian economics was lost.