1. Introduction
In recent years, most of the comparative studies concerned with the development of the
welfare state in Western Europe have dealt with the situation in liberal democracies.
The case of Spain has attracted very little attention from academics and experts in the
area of social policy and welfare development. Such a disinterest must be caused by
the fact that the Iberian country was under Franco's rule for a period of nearly 40 years.
This Working Paper aims to analyse succinctly the process of building a system of
provision of social welfare in contemporary Spain stressing general differences and
similarities with respect to other Western European countries. It also seeks to identify
the main features and future trends of the model of social welfare currently being
developed in Spain. This model, which is labelled a via media with respect to other
existing welfare systems, incorporates an emphasis on a gradual and progressive
decentralisation of social policy planning and implementation at regional and local
levels.
2. The Spanish background: Krausists and Social Catholics
The origins of the Spanish regime of welfare provision are rooted in the governmental
reforms put forward at the turn of the 19th century under the auspices of some middleclass
intellectuals, most of them social Catholics and "neo-liberal" krausistas (1
). These
two groups played a significant role in the subsequent creation of the Instituto Nacional
de Previsión Social in 1908, the pioneering institution of the future Spanish social
welfare system.
These early Spanish "neo-liberals" were largely influenced by the ideas of the German
philosopher C.G.F Krause, who advocated ideas of "harmonic rationalism". These were
based on a programme of promoting a mutually beneficial coexistence of the social and
economic classes which would constitute an alternative to traditional conservatism,
laissez-faire, Catholic corporatism, and revolutionary collectivism. The krausistas
agreed with Social Catholics on supporting social reforms and social intervention by the
state, although they disagreed on priorities and on issues pertaining to the religious
sphere.
Spanish "neo-liberals" believed that the main cause of poverty in Spain was its cultural
and economic backwardness. According to this view, Spain should improve its
economic structures, and in order to achieve such a goal, its human capital should be
educated and trained to compete with other countries in the international trade arena;
otherwise, misery and social chaos would take over Spanish society. For the krausistas
the main obstacle to Spanish modernization was the tight control exerted by the
Catholic Church over people's behaviour and expectations. Thus, education should be
secular and focussed mainly on technical knowledge. Accordingly, traditional charity should be replaced by a system of social security that should not necessarily be in the
hands of the state.
Social Catholics, a minority sector of Spanish Catholicism (2
), shared with both Belgian
and French Christian Democrats views for greater social justice based on the idea that
not all social inequalities have a "natural" origin (3
). They also recognized that the social
function of private property implicitly admitted the mechanism of expropriation in the
interest of the common good. Some of them sought to promote unions as a means for
workers to protect themselves against employers' exploitation. However, the general
emphasis of their proposals stressed the moral regeneration of the poor by piety rather
than by means of economic and social reforms.
With regard to mainstream Catholics, their alternative to liberalism and to collectivist
ideas was an "organicist" conception of society where each individual had to perform a
social commitment and in which private property was an inviolable right (4
). The role left
for the state was that of promoting social harmony, which assumed "natural" inequality
and which developed conformity, discipline, and hard work by the less-favoured
members of society. The latter, nevertheless, were encouraged to be upwardly mobile
on an individual basis. According to their views, class conflicts and poverty were the
results of mistaken ideologies and inadequate morals internalized by the workers. They
found no problems with industrial relations nor any need for reforms to be implemented.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the Instituto Nacional de Previsión
promoted a private and voluntary system of retirement and of accident insurance. The
economic crisis of 1917 and the rising revolutionary movement made the government
come to terms with the limits of voluntary assurance. A new universal scheme of
insurance was proposed that would introduce a system to cover retirement, illness,
unemployment, and maternity needs. The strongest opposition came from employers
and landowners; the latter supported by a large section of the Catholic Church. At the
same time, doctors' associations and insurance companies did not accept the
compulsory illness assurance. Working class organizations did not, however, present a
united front. Socialist Party members collaborated in the Instituto's project, but the