African swine fever (ASF) was introduced to Europe from Africa in 1957. To Spain, ASF was dragged from Portugal in 1960. During a few years the disease has spread throughout the whole country. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact that ASFV circulated in the pig population in small-scale pigs, in the sixties of the last century, in Spain, modern pig production started to develop dynamically. Large swine farms, with high biosecurity standards, were successfully built as well as new, previously unknown breed of pigs from developed agricultural countries in Europe were introduced. Initially, the disease was acute with typical clinical symptoms and lesions. After some time, the picture of the disease changed into an endemic (chronic) form. The endemic form of ASF was manifested by a mild or subclinical course of the disease and a fundamental change in the mortality, from 100% in the course of theacute form to only 5% in the chronic form. For this reason, detection of the disease without laboratory tests has not been possible. Restrictions in the international, but also in the domestic trade caused by the presence of ASF, significantly blocked the further development of pig production in Spain. As a result of huge costs generated by ineffective control of ASF and the pressure from pig producers, in March 1985 the Spanish government prepared a coordinated eradication program for ASF in Spain (Coordinated Program to eradicated ASF in Spain; Royal Decree 425/1985). In the present article, the main assumptions of this program have been presented and discussed. In December 1995, Spain was declared officially free from the disease. At present, Spain is ranked as the largest pig-producing country in European Union.