♦ Domingo Cuéllar Villar
Public Works Policy and Liberal Policies. The Ministry of Public Works (1851–1874)
Abstract:
The following text provides an overview of the creation of a ministerial department whose mission was to provide the Spanish economy with a set of infrastructures that would serve as the starting point for the modernization of the state. The set of economic services grouped under the significant name of the Ministry of Public Works would have as its main areas of focus public works, agriculture and trade, and public education. Devoid of the approaches of the Old Regime, the liberal state would attempt to tackle such a monumental undertaking with clearly limited resources. Public works, as economic infrastructure of great importance and constituting the ministry’s most significant budget item, will be the focus of our analysis. The vast body of legislation from each department will regulate the projects undertaken in roads, railways, waterworks, and ports, as well as the varying roles the private sector would play in the construction of these infrastructures.
♦ Domingo Cuéllar Villar
Public Works and the Institutional Framework during the Restoration. The Ministry of
Public Works (1875–1913)
Abstract:
This paper aims to provide an overview of the activities of the Ministry of Public Works throughout the first period of the Restoration in Spain. The study examines issues of organization and jurisdiction to understand how the ministry’s functions evolved within a department that progressively lost authority and came to focus its activities on public works—a function that had already constituted a significant portion of its budget in earlier periods. The substantial body of legislation would regulate and standardize the functions and services undertaken in roads, railways, waterworks, ports, and lighthouses. It also assesses the budgeted amounts from a general perspective of the state as a whole, bearing in mind that these economic services would take on special significance in the years to come and that, up to that point, the state, with limited resources, had been more showy than effective.
♦ Pedro Pablo Ortúñez Goicolea
Reduction of Powers. Maintenance of Spending (1914–1936)
Abstract:
This article seeks to reconstruct the activities carried out by the Ministry of Development and Public Works between 1914 and 1936 to advance the country’s modernization process. Understanding these years is particularly important because they span a period when the state became more aware of the role it was called upon to play, and social demand for such services was on the rise. The article analyzes some of the tensions between that perception and the actual possibilities of carrying out all the projects and ideas in a state that had many unresolved issues regarding the consolidation of its democratic institutions and the reform of the Treasury and tax system. An effort has also been made to describe the ministry’s responsibilities over the years by reconstructing its organizational charts and, albeit briefly, to provide some details about the ministers who held the portfolio.
♦ Olga Macías Muñoz
The Long Awakening: The Era of Autarky (1939–1959)
Abstract:
The era of Autarky (1939–1959) marked for the Ministry of Public Works the end of a period of ostracism characterized by the losses of the Civil War and exacerbated by a political interventionism in which public works were a fundamental component of the comprehensive regeneration of Spain. The Franco regime’s new policy of openness, both in foreign policy and through the inclusion of new groups of statesmen within the government, led to some improvement in transportation, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. Although the levels of growth achieved do not allow this recovery to be considered extraordinary, they did provide the Ministry of Public Works with the foundation for the subsequent development of these sectors vital to the country’s economy.
♦ Manuel Hernández Muñiz
Travel and Drinking: Fixed Social Capital for Unbalanced Growth (1960–1977)
Abstract:
This paper examines the process of fixed social capital accumulation driven by the Ministry of Public Works during the decade of unbalanced growth. First, it discusses the doctrinal issue that defines the scope of public sector intervention in the provision of fixed social capital. We then outline the circumstances of the 1960s that shaped this process: the limited revenue-raising capacity of an outdated fiscal administration ushered in a period of growth driven by a shortage of fixed social capital, which exceeded public investment capacity and forced ministry authorities to delegate the territorial structuring of the Spanish economy—the highway system—to the private sector. In contrast, water projects, railways, ports, and airports will combine varying degrees of public intervention that consolidate the major advances of this era.
♦ Rodolfo Ramos Melero
Spain’s Path to the European Union (1975–2001)
Abstract:
The article is divided into two parts. The first analyzes the evolution of the ministry’s structure, its plans, housing policy, and the deregulation of transportation and communications. The second analyzes how the ministry has used public spending to finance this development and infrastructure improvement.
♦ María del Carmen González-Blanco Aguilar
The General Archive of the Ministry of Public Works
Abstract:
The current Ministry of Public Works traces its earliest origins to the Secretariat of State and Office of Commerce, Education, and Public Works, created by Royal Decree on January 28, 1847, which would later become the Ministry of Public Works. The General Archive of the Ministry was established by Royal Decree of September 12 of the same year. The law of June 30, 1894, incorporated the Ministry of Public Works into the Professional Corps of Archivists, Librarians, and Archaeologists, among other archives. Therefore, for more than a century, this body has continuously safeguarded the documentary collections of this ministerial department.
This archive was housed in the so-called “Palacio de Fomento” on Paseo de Atocha from 1897 to 1963, when the then-named Public Works Archive was moved to the Nuevos Ministerios building, where it is currently located. Throughout its history, the Archivo de Fomento has undergone the vicissitudes resulting from changes in the name and responsibilities of the ministry to which it belongs.
♦ Andrea Giuntini
Stefano Maggi, Politics and Economics of Transportation (19th–20th Centuries).A History of Italian Modernization
♦ Javier Vidal
Margaret Walsh, Making Connections: The Long-Distance Bus Industry in the United States
♦ Paul Van Heesvelde
B. Van Der Herten, M. Van Meerten, and G. Verbeurgt (eds.), The Age of the Train: 175 Years of Railway
s in Belgium – 75th Anniversary of the SNCB
♦ Rubén Amengual Matas
Jordi Maluquer de Motes i Bernet, Technicians and Technology in the Development of Contemporary Catalonia
♦ Michel Merger
Interview with François Caron, professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
