Ministry of Economy (Spain)

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Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise
Ministerio de Economía, Comercio y Empresa
Spanish government
Employees4,940 (2019)[1]
Annual budget€ 9.8 billion, 2023[2]
Minister responsible
Agency executives
  • Gonzalo García Andrés, Secretary of State for Economy and Enterprise Support
  • Xiana Méndez, Secretary of State for Trade
  • Amparo López Senovilla, Under Secretary
WebsiteMinistry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness(in Spanish)

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise (MINECO) is the

telecommunications policy and the digital transformation.[3]

This has been a ministry that for most of its history has been linked to the

Ministry of the Treasury
, including a large part of the democratic stage, although they are now separated.

The MINECO is headed by the Economy Minister, a Cabinet member who is appointed by the Monarch at request of the Prime Minister. The Minister of Economy is assisted by four high-ranking officials, the Secretary of State for Economy and Enterprise Support, the Secretary of State for Trade, the Secretary-General for the Treasury and International Financing and the Under-Secretary of Economy. The current minister is Carlos Cuerpo, a State economist and former Secretary-General for the Treasury.

History

Origin and protectionism

The responsibilities over the economy had been integrated in the

dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera was needed an autarchic policy. In addition, after the World War I the complexity of international markets had plunged Spain
into a strong industrial crisis.

As a result, the sectors affected demanded a

protectionist tariff policy in defense of national production against foreign one and, in turn, make it easy the exports. Thus began an autarchic policy based on economic nationalism and tariff protectionism whose best example is the Cambó tariff of 1922. This policy was assumed by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Thus a certain economic bonanza was achieved that was truncated by the Great Depression
of 1929.

The Cambo tariff was the technical and fiscal response to the critical deficit situation of the Spanish trade balance since 1920. It was a tariff policy that served two competing needs: one was to protect the different sectors of the

Spanish economy
against the international, heavily taxing imports of products produced by foreign counterparts; another responded to the need to defend export agriculture, a sector with a large foreign market and which was damaged by the rise in tariffs, victim of the consequent increases in the countries affected by the Spanish measures.

This was solved with the signing of international treaties of Commerce and Navigation agreeing a particular and significant reduction of the tariff with each one of the foreign nations with which commercial exchanges took place. Flores de Lemus defined the situation that was lucidly created: there was a complementarity between export agriculture and agriculture and industry in need of protection, although the instruments used by the Government were opposed and a continuous tension was created between them.

Dictatorship, Republic and Civil War

Although remote antecedents of the Economy portfolio can be found in the creation of the Ministry of Supply as an immediate consequence of the crisis of 1917; The first step towards the creation of a specific department occurred during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera when the National Economy Council established by Royal Decree of 8 March 1924.[4]

The council was born with the purpose of studying the problems of the national production and consumption, for the purpose of setting the customs tariffs and determining the way to establish international commercial relations adapted to the Spanish economic reality. For this reason, its main functions were to collect statistics on foreign trade and

trade unions
of all kinds.

The end of the Military Directorate in 1925, the restoration of the ministerial regime and the economic circumstances led to the creation of the Ministry of National Economy (despite its name, it is today the Ministry of Industry) by Royal Decree-Law of 3 November 1928, in response to public opinion that this affairs required to be placed under one direction only, both in terms of production, trade and consumption; and that to date they were dispersed among the rest of the government departments. The National Economy Council depended on the new Economy Ministry, although slightly modified, continuing with its work of collecting and contrasting the realities of the country around each and every one of the sectors of his economic life. By Decree of 16 December 1931, the department was renamed as Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade.[5]

In the middle of the Civil War, the government of the Republic created a Ministry of Finance and Economy, first based in Barcelona and then in Valencia. The head of the new institution was Juan Negrín, who at the same time was Prime Minister. Its creation was ordered by Decree of 17 May 1937[6] and its functions and structure were dictated by Decree 27 of that same month.

From the economic autarky to the developmentalism of the 1960s

The catastrophic situation in which the country was plunged after the

Office of the Prime Minister
.

The importance of the council will be increased, so much that institutionally its president will be compared to those of the

capitalist economy
, the National Economy Council gradually began to lose importance in the 1960s. It disappeared in 1977, absorbed by the Ministry of Economy.

During the premiership of Arias Navarro, a specific Deputy Prime Minister was created for economic affairs, a position that was assumed by the head of the Treasury portfolio. The new position implied the disappearance of the Ministry of Development Planning, leaving its Undersecretariat ascribed to the Delegate Commission of the Government for Economic Affairs.

Democracy: the Ministry

Despite all that, the department that we know today was created in 1977, named Ministry of Economy. Its creation took place in conjunctural circumstances and of great importance for the economic history of

oil crisis of 1973, the ineffectiveness of the measures adopted by the last governments of the dictatorship; as well as the accentuation of the latent problems: inflation, unemployment
, external deficit, deficit of the public sector and the low level of investments.

The institutional solutions involved remodeling the

Ministry of the Treasury
. Its main task was to establish the guidelines of the general economic policy, the short and medium term programming and the study of the proposal of advisable measures to ensure the smooth running of the economy of the country.

To carry out is new duties, the department was structured through a Secretariat of State, an Undersecretariat, a General Technical Secretariat and four directorates-general, one for design the economic policy of the government, other to study and analyse the economic policy and its effects, other one to study the economiy and forecast and a fourth one for finance policy and supervision of banking entities.

National Statistics Institute.[8]

The administrative reforms carried out by the first government headed by Felipe González led in 1982 to the merger in one of the departments of Treasury and Economy and Commerce,[9] giving birth to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. This body has continued to operate continuously with the exception of the 7th Cortes Generales (2000-2004), under the premiership of José María Aznar, in which the Treasury and Economy portfolios were split in two. The same happens since the 10th Cortes Generales (2011–present). Between 2016 and 2018, the Ministry of Economy merged with the Ministry of Industry.[10]

Structure

The Ministry of Economy and Enterprise is organised in the following superior bodies:[11]

  • The Secretariat of State for Economy and Enterprise Support
    • The General Secretariat for the Treasury and International Financing
    • The Directorate-General for Economic Policy
    • The Directorate-General for Macroeconomic Analysis
    • The
      Directorate-General for Insurance and Pension Funds
  • The Secretariat of State for Trade
    • The Directorate-General for International Trade and Investments
    • The Directorate-General for Commercial Policy
    • The Deputy Directorate-General for Internationalization Strategy
    • The Deputy Directorate-General for Studies and Evaluation of Commercial Policy Instruments
  • The Undersecretariat of Economy, Trade and Enterprise
    • The Technical General Secretariat
    • The Inspectorate of Services
    • The Deputy Directorate-General for Human Resources
    • The Deputy Directorate-General for Financial Administration and Administrative Office
    • The Budget Office
    • The Deputy Directorate-General for Information and Communication Technologies
  • The Special Commissioner for the Alliance for the New Economy of Language, with rank of Under-Secretary
    • The Office of the Special Commissioner for the Alliance for the New Economy of Language

Ministry agencies

List of officeholders

Office name:

  • Ministry of Economy (1977–1980; 2000–2004)
  • Ministry of Economy and Trade (1980–1982)
  • Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2011–2016)
  • Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (2016–2018)
  • Ministry of Economy and Enterprise (2018–2020)
  • Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (2020–2023)
  • Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise (2023–)
Portrait Name
(Birth–Death) 		Term of office Party Government Prime Minister
(Tenure) 		Ref.
Took office Left office Duration
Enrique Fuentes Quintana
(1924–2007) 		5 July
1977 		25 February
1978 		235 days Independent Suárez II Adolfo Suárez

(1976–1981) 		[12]
[13]
Fernando Abril Martorell
(1936–1998) 		25 February
1978 		6 April
1979 		1 year and 40 days UCD [14]
[15]
José Luis Leal
(born 1939) 		6 April
1979 		9 September
1980 		1 year and 156 days UCD Suárez III [16]
[17]
Juan Antonio García Díez
(1940–1998) 		9 September
1980 		7 October
1980 		2 years and 85 days UCD [18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
7 October
1980 		27 February
1981
27 February
1981 		3 December
1982 		Calvo-Sotelo Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo

(1981–1982)
Miguel Boyer
(1939–2014) 		3 December
1982 		8 December
1982 		5 days PSOE González I Felipe González

(1982–1996) 		[22]
[23]
Office disestablished during this interval.[a]
Rodrigo Rato
(born 1949) 		28 April
2000 		18 April
2004 		3 years and 356 days PP Aznar II José María Aznar

(1996–2004) 		[24]
[25]
Office disestablished during this interval.[b]
Luis de Guindos
(born 1960) 		22 December
2011 		4 November
2016 		6 years and 76 days Independent Rajoy I Mariano Rajoy

(2011–2018) 		[26]
[27]
[28]
4 November
2016 		8 March
2018 		Rajoy II
Román Escolano
(born 1965) 		8 March
2018 		7 June
2018 		91 days Independent [29]
[30]
Nadia Calviño
(born 1968) 		7 June
2018 		13 January
2020 		5 years and 205 days Independent Sánchez I Pedro Sánchez

(2018–present) 		[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
13 January
2020 		21 November
2023 		Sánchez II
21 November
2023 		29 December
2023 		Sánchez III
Carlos Cuerpo
(born 1978) 		29 December 2023 Incumbent 111 days Independent [35]

Notes

  1. ^ The department's competences were transferred to the Ministry of Economy and Finance between 1982 and 2000.
  2. ^ The department's competences were transferred to the Ministry of Economy and Finance between 2004 and 2011.

References

  1. ^ Statistical Bulletin of the personnel at the service of the Public Administrations (PDF). 2018. p. 48.
  2. ^ "2023 State Budget" (PDF). boe.es. 1 January 2023. Retrieved 8 January 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Royal Decree 403/2020, of February 25, which develops the basic organic structure of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation". boe.es. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  4. ^ "Royal decree establishing in the Office of the Prime Minister a Council of the National Economy" (PDF).
  5. ^ "Decree renaming the Ministry of National Economy as Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade" (PDF).
  6. ^ "Decree providing for the new denomination of the ministerial departments as of the date of the promulgation of this Decree" (PDF).
  7. ^ "Royal Decree 1558/1977, of July 4, by which certain organs of the Central State Administration are restructured". boe.es. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  8. ^ a b "Real Decreto 1875/1977, de 23 de julio, sobre Estructura Orgánica y funciones del Ministerio de Economía". www.boe.es. Retrieved 22 April 2022.
  9. ^ Presidencia del Gobierno (7 October 1980), Real Decreto 1996/1980, de 3 de octubre, por el que se estructura el Ministerio de Economía y Comercio, pp. 22274–22275, retrieved 22 April 2022
  10. ^ "Royal Decree 415/2016, of November 3, by which the ministerial departments are restructured". boe.es. pp. 76631–76635. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  11. ^ "Royal Decree 139/2020, of January 28, which establishes the basic organic structure of the ministerial departments". boe.es. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
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