The State According to the High Civil Servants of the Spanish Ministry of Finances, 1881-1936

Abstract

This article presents the common elements of the visions of the State among the special corps and superior classes of the general corps of the Ministry of Finance between the final decades of the 19th century and the Civil War. It is organised in three parts. The two first parts describe the general traits of the administrative model that became hegemonic in the Ministry after the reforms of Bravo Murillo and the evolution of this model after 1881, thanks to the multiplication of special corps, which were to become the reference of the evolution of the Ministry. The third part sums up the central elements in the comprehension of the State, which can be derived from the different public discourses of the civil servants who worked for the Ministry of Finance. Three features, which were linked to the previous evolution of the tax administration, are underlined in the third section. Firstly, the understanding of the State as Administration. In the second place, the generalised assumption of technical and specialised knowledge as the very foundation of the bureaucratic career. And, finally, an organicist vision of the Administration (understood as the essence of the State) which referred its good working to the good working of its component parts.