''.
Prado Museum In the years prior to the creation of this department, economic and industrial matters were divided between the ministries
of Finance and
the Interior. When the latter was established in 1812, it was trusted with the powers of "political and economic government of the Kingdom [...], in everything that by law may pertain to the Government to promote and foster national agriculture and industry in all its branches, and in the public establishments of both [...] navigation and inland trade and everything corresponding to statistics and public economics". From 1847, these responsibilities fell to the
Ministry of Development, which would carry them out for the next eight decades, through a Directorate-General for Agriculture, Industry and Trade, with the exception of the period 1922–1928, when the newly created
Ministry of Labour assumed the powers over Industry and Trade.
Twentieth century The close relationship that today exists between the ministries of Industry and Economy is due to the fact that the origin of both, although in different times, is the same. If the
Ministry of Economy was founded in 1977 with the objective of "grouping a series of currently dispersed powers in matters of economic organization and planning" as well as "to singularize decisions on economic policy", fifty years earlier, in 1928, the Ministry of Industry—then called "of National Economy"—was created, with the similar objective of "putting under a single direction, coordinating them appropriately, the services that affect the national economy, both in the concept of production and in those of trade and consumption". As happens in many other departments, the scope of competence and the approach with which it was created is different from what it has today, since back then it was a general coordinator and stimulator of the Spanish economy, with competences over
agriculture,
industry—which included
intellectual property—,
trade, supplies and
metrology. This first stage ends at the beginning of the
Second Republic, when prime minister
Manuel Azaña renamed the department as Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade.
Second Republic and Dictatorship The importance of the economic area and the important role played by the primary sector in the
Spanish economy at the beginning of the 20th century—the population dedicated to agriculture accounted for nearly 50% of the total active population— was evident from the beginning, since as early as 1900 the term "Agriculture" began to appear in the names of some government departments, such as the Ministry of Development, named from 1900 to 1905 as Ministry of Agriculture, Industry, Trade and Public Works. As mentioned, in 1931 the Ministry of National Economy was renamed as "Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade". From June 1933—with a brief merger between September 1935 and February 1936—, the ministry lost its powers over agriculture, which were transferred to the newly established
Ministry of Agriculture, which was being created for the first time. At that time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade was structured through the directorates-general for Industry, Trade and Tariff Policy, for Mines and Fuels and the National Economy Council. After losing its agricultural functions during the republic, the
dictatorship of Francisco Franco meant the loss of another of its major areas of activity: trade. So much so that, in 1951, the Francoist government reinstated a ministry that had briefly existed during the previous republican period, the
Ministry of Trade. In the opinion of the leaders at that time, "commercial activity, in which world circumstances make greater attention from States inexcusable, especially in its two most important aspects,
supplies and
foreign currency, has now reached such an extent that it completely absorbs the activity of a Ministry, given the dimensions and complexity of the problems in which the Administration is obliged to intervene. On the other hand, the
industrial development of the country and the necessary promotion of
mining and the production of
energy and
basic materials, contain within themselves more than enough scope to also absorb all the activities of a single ministerial department".
1939 Industry Law Years before, in 1939, two relevant industrial laws were approved. First, the Law of 24 October 1939, on the Protection of New Industries of National Interest and, later, the Law of 24 November 1939, on Industry Regulation and Defence. The latter was the axis around which industrial policy revolved during the dictatorship and some of its precepts remained in force until the approval of the 1992 Industry Law. This law subordinated industry to the State's public interest, prohibited the installation of new industry without government authorization, established price controls, set the working conditions of this sector and its inspection, regulated the State's capacity to intervene to guide industrial policy and the obligation to priorized the product manufactured in Spain, as well as its level of quality, also requiring that companies of national interest have Spanish leadership, establishing a minimum Spanish share capital in companies of 75 % and introducing rules to protect and prioritize national production. To supervise the implementation of industrial laws and to promote and finance new industries, the National Institute of Industry (INI) was established in 1941. Its role was central, serving as the main channel through which the Spanish government directed industrial policy. The INI’s total
liabilities grew dramatically over the decades, from ₧0.5 million in 1941 to ₧1.04 trillion in 1986. Adjusted to constant prices, this corresponds roughly to ₧97 million in 1941 and ₧4.7 billion in 1986. By 1960, the INI’s liabilities alone accounted for about 8.2% of Spanish GDP, illustrating its significant weight in the national economy.
1959 Stabilization Plan , a car that symbolized development in Spain in the 1960s. The SEAT 600 was also a symbol of the new
mass consumer society and the so-called
Spanish economic miracle Two decades later, the
autarkic nature of the dictatorship's early years came to an end with the implementation of the 1959 Stabilization Plan. This plan aimed to achieve economic stability through the prior stabilization of the national currency—by raising the exchange rate against the dollar and through loans from international organizations and the
United States federal government—, the control of inflation—with measures such as interest rate rises and wage freezes—, the implementation of new legislation to encourage foreign investment, a tax reform to increase revenue, and the limitation of public spending. This plan also sought to introduce a gradual liberalization of industry, in contrast to the objectives of the 1939 law. The stabilizing effects were noticeable in the very short term, both internally and in the external balance: By 1979, the ministry's structure was quite substantial, with seven directorates-general (for Mines and Construction Industries, for Energy, for Iron and Steel and Naval Industries, for Chemical and Textile Industries, for Food and Other Industries, for Technology and Industrial Safety, and for Services), the Undersecretariat and the Commission for Energy and Mineral Resources. and
Luis Carrero Blanco during a visit to the "Juan Vigón" Nuclear Energy National Centre in 1958
Spain's nuclear program was halted in the 1980s following the rise in environmental awareness brought about by the
Chernobyl disaster and the energy policy shifted towards another energy resource:
natural gas. Perceived at the time as less dangerous, the
Maghreb–Europe Gas Pipeline was built to bring the supply from Algeria, passing through Morocco, along with gasification stations to receive the
LNG tankers. In 2011, another
direct gas pipeline from Algeria to Spain was inaugurated across the
Alboran Sea. Also in the 1980s, the Nuclear Energy Board (, JEN) underwent a major transformation. Law 15/1980, of April 22, created the
Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), an independent agency that replaced the JEN in its
nuclear safety and security and
radiological protection responsibilities. As for the JEN, which retained all powers relating to scientific and technological research in the field of energy, by Law 13/1986, of April 14, it was renamed as the
Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT). In the early 1990s, it briefly resumed trade responsibilities through the Secretariat of State for Trade (1991–1993). It was also organized through a Secretariat of State for Industry, four general secretariats (for Energy and Mineral Resources, for Tourism, for Industrial Promotion and Technology, and for Trade) and nine directorates-general. In 1992, the department fostered a new Industry Law—still in force—which established the new regulatory framework governing industrial activities, defining them as "activities aimed at obtaining, repairing, maintaining, transforming, or reusing industrial products, packaging, as well as the use, recovery, and disposal of waste or by-products, whatever the nature of the resources and technical processes used. Also included are [...] engineering, design, technological consulting, and technical assistance services directly related to industrial activities". was part of the Industry Ministry At the same time, the Government authorized the National Institute of Industry to create TENEO, a public enterprise that would assume all of the INI's business activities. In 1995, the INI was dissolved and replaced by the State Industrial Agency (AIE) and the
State Company for Industrial Investments (SEPI), the latter of which absorbed the TENEO Group. Two years later, SEPI incorporated the AIE's companies into its assets, confirming its dissolution. The
National Hydrocarbons Institute, created in 1981 to manage the INI's petroleum businesses, it was dissolved after privatizing a large part of its assets, including the multinational
Repsol, with the remainder being integrated into SEPI. The SEPI was transferred to the
Ministry of Finance in 2000, and since then, both the SEPI and the Directorate-General for State Assets, which fall under the Ministry of Finance, have managed most state-owned or state-participated enterprises. Likewise, the territorial structure of the ministry was also reorganized, transforming the Territorial and Provincial Directorates of Industry into Functional Areas of Industry and Energy, attached to the
Government Delegations.
Present Between 2000 and 2004 the ministry was abolished and its functions were divided between the
Ministry of Economy (energy) and the
Ministry of Science and Technology (industry). However, this situation made it difficult to maintain relations with different industrial sectors, as was the case with the automotive sector, which in 2002 did not know who to contact and, when they were attended to, were referred to another department. This situation was reversed in 2004, when the Ministry was re-established and entrusted again with responsibilities for industry, trade, tourism and energy, complemented by others concerning
SMEs and
telecommunications. In the period 2011–2016, the department lost its powers over trade to the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and, between 2016 and 2018, the department was abolished, as the industrial powers were transferred to the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the rest of them, that is, those over energy, tourism, telecommunications and information society, were grouped in the new
Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda. This situation lasted barely a year and a half and, in June 2018, the department with responsibilities in industry, trade and tourism was recovered, but it did not recover either the energy powers, which were transferred to the
Ministry for the Ecological Transition, or the digital powers, which were transferred to the Ministry of Economy and Business. With no changes for the next five years, the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan ( , PRTR) was approved during this stage as a consequence of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Within this economic plan, a new public-private collaboration mechanism was created in 2020: the Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (, PERTE). This new mechanism sought to channel
Next Generation EU funds to achieve a rapid economic recovery around the energy transition and digitalization; in this sense, the department supervised four PERTEs: for the agri-food industry, for industrial decarbonization, for the shipbuilding industry and for the electric vehicle. On 20 November 2023, the trade affairs were transferred to the
Ministry of Economy. The two remaining areas of the Department—industry and tourism—were restructured. On the one hand, with regard to industry, the Secretariat of State for Industry, which had already existed in the 1990s, was reinstated, while the General Secretariat for Industry and SMEs and the Directorate-General for Industry and SMEs were eliminated, the latter being split into two: the Directorate-General for Industrial Strategy and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the Directorate-General for Industrial Programs. Regarding tourism, the area was strengthened with a Directorate-General for Tourism Policies. == Organization ==