I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful. The other benfit they had was the isolation of th

I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful. The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in Mondragon.