Oldal 81 [81]
JULIO PONCE ALBERCA
This view entailed certain contradictions, as the deficiencies of the Spanish
state were notin fact especiallyintensein regions asadvancedandindustrialized
as Catalonia and the Basque Country. Rather, the administration faced large
problems throughout the entire country, and especially at the local level. In the
seventies, local councils not only remained unrepresentative bodies, but were
also nowhere near being able to satisfy citizens’ need for public services’. Nor
had the administrative reforms of the fifties and sixties led to any significant
degree of satisfaction®. Nowadays, we are better able to examine precisely how
Spanish citizens view the administration thanks to the Spanish Agency for
the Evaluation of Public Policies (Agencia Estatal de Evaluaciôn y Calidad),
the Centre for Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociolégicas)
or think-tanks such as the Elcano Royal Institute’. Unfortunately, the same
cannot be said for the period we hope to examine. This requires us to turn to
two key written sources, namely the press and books published on the topic.
A combination of the two provides an insight into Spaniards’ perceptions
regarding the functioning of state institutions.
The vicissitudes of the nineteenth-century Spanish state-building process
are well known, and they left a serious imprint on the following century’.
Not only was the resulting administrative structure weak — additionally, the
lack of political stability hindered any consolidation of the political regime
until at least the Canovas Restoration of 1876. To be sure, the state had a
healthy number of civil servants and was to some extent comparable to its
European counterparts’, but it was no less evident that its action was uneven
in its effectiveness and intensity, its presence more tenuous in certain areas of
the country’s complex geography.
Antonio Martinez Marin: La representatividad municipal espanola: historia legislativa y
régimen vigente, Murcia, Universidad, 1989.
Luis Fernando Crespo Montes: Las reformas de la administraciôn española, 1957-1967,
Madrid, CEPC, 2000.
Regarding the Elcano Royal Institute:
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_es/contenido? WCM _
GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_es/zonas_es/demografia+y+poblacion/ari50¬
2016-gonzalezenriquez-declive-identidad-nacional-espanola, See also: Eloisa Del Pino
Matute (ed.): La Administracion Publica a juicio de los ciudadanos: Satisfacciön con los
servicios, valoraciön del gasto, confianza en los empleados püblicos y actitudes hacia la
e-administraciôn, Madrid, Agencia Estatal de Evaluaciön de las Politicas Püblicas y la
Calidad de los Servicios, 2011, 11; Eloisa Del Pino: Los ciudadanos y el estado. Las actitudes
de los espanoles hacia las administraciones y las politicas publicas, Madrid, INAP, 2004;
Antonio Embid Irujo: El ciudadano y la Administraciön, Madrid, MAP, 1996.
José Alvarez Junco: Mater Dolorosa. La idea de Espana en el siglo XIX, Madrid, Taurus, 2001;
Sobre los procesos de nacionalizaciön en España, in Javier Moreno Luzôn (ed.): Construir
Espana. Nacionalismo espanol y procesos de nacionalizaciön, Madrid, CEPC, 2007.
Manuel Santirso: Progreso y Libertad. Espana en la Europa liberal (1830-1870), Barcelona,
Ariel, 2007.
* 80°