Origins Before the arrival of the
Bourbon dynasty to the
Spanish throne in the early 18th century and the progressive centralization of the public treasury, numerous bodies coexisted in the Spanish crown that had powers over the royal treasury.
Castile . In Castile, except for the Basque provinces and Navarre, which had special
charters, the treasury was unique. In Aragon, each kingdom that made up the Crown possessed its own treasury and institutions. In the
Crown of Castile, from the 15th century onwards, finances were managed by the
Contaduría Mayor de Hacienda (roughly translated as the General Accounting Office of the Treasury), composed of chief and junior accountants. When the
Cortes met at
Madrigal de las Altas Torres in 1476, they established two
Contadurias Mayores and, during the reign of the
Catholic Monarchs, there were four chief accountants, two for each
Contaduría. However, the deficiencies of the Castilian tax system, as well as conflicts with the large cities with voting rights in the Cortes, led King
Charles I to create the Council of Finance between 1523 and 1525, as a supreme body responsible for correcting these problems and settling financial disputes. This Council, highly inefficient in its early years, would eventually assume control of economic and financial policy from 1593 onwards, when new internal rules gave it its own jurisdiction and integrated the chief accountants into its ranks. However, until the arrival of the Bourbons, the Crown's taxing power would remain limited to the will of the Cortes, which continued to play an important role in the approval of new taxes. Finally, from 1687 onwards, in addition to the
Contaduría Mayor and the Council of Finance, there was also the position of Superintendent-General for Finance, a sort of finance minister who oversaw the royal treasury.
Aragon, Navarre and the Basque provinces In the
Crown of Aragon and its kingdoms, in addition to different taxes, each kingdom had their own fiscal institutions, such as the General Deputations, the
bailes, and the
maestres racionales. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the Aragonese kingdoms rarely had common institutions, and it wasn't until the reign of the Catholic Monarchs that any appeared. As for the
Kingdom of Navarre and the three Basque provinces (
Álava,
Gipuzkoa, and
Biscay), all of them had their own institutions (such as the Deputation of the Kingdom of Navarre or the
General Assemblies) which, unlike those in Aragon, were preserved beyond the 18th century due to their loyalty to the new monarch during the
War of the Spanish Succession. It is also important to understand that these territories were incorporated into the Crown of Castile and did not form a separate entity, although they retained their own institutions and privileges due to their special characteristics and relationship with the Crown. This meant that if the king needed resources from these territories in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, he had to request them from each of their respective Cortes (parliaments), in a procedure similar to that used before the Cortes of Castile.
Eighteenth century Following the war of succession that consolidated
Philip V on the Spanish throne, he approved a series of decrees, called
Nueva Planta decrees, which, as punishment, suppressed the institutions of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon and their powers were assumed by the Castilian institutions, namely: Council of Finance,
Contaduría Mayor de Hacienda and Superintendent-General for Finance. The sovereign's first measures were to establish in Spain a system similar to the French one, with a
cabinet of ministers and administrative departments for each branch of government. In 1705 he divided the unique Secretariat of Universal Office in two, one secretariat in charge of War and Finance matters and another "for everything else". This division lasted until the final moments of the war, when the monarch further specialized the government and created the five original ministries of Spain:
State,
Justice,
War,
Navy and the Indies, and Finance. The Finance Department was not initially referred as a "Secretariat of State and of the Office" like the other four, but the
Veeduría General (roughly in '''') and headed by the Universal Inspector of the Inspectorate-General (), the primitive denomination of the current position of Minister of Finance.
Jean Orry served as inspector-general from 1714 to 1715. , current
Government Sub-delegation headquarters. Following Orry's dismissal, the king abolished the
Veeduria General and transferred its responsibilities to the Justice Secretariat until 1720, when financial affairs were again separated and given their own State Secretariat. Juan de Dios y Río González, 1st Marquess of Campoflorido and former Governor of the Finance Council, served as Secretary of State and of the Office of Finance. During the reign of
Ferdinand VI, a long process of recovery of the direct administration of the main revenues and taxes began, reconstituting the assets of the public treasury. Also, at the end of his reign, between 1754 and 1755, the king implemented a series of administrative reforms that sought to clarify the regulations of the administration and that established what the specific functions of each ministry were. With the royal decree of 1754, a truly bureaucratic administration for the treasury was created. The State Secretariat, as the governing body, coexisted with the agencies inherited from the
Habsburg monarchy. Of all of them, the one that stood out as second in importance was the General Superintendency of the Royal Treasury, the body to which the Directorate for General Revenues depended—the body that administered the Crown's most productive revenues:
customs duties and those derived from the royal monopolies of
tobacco,
salt and
lead, among others. , Treasury Minister between 1743 and 1754.
A single tax Since 1754, the Directorate for General Revenues was defined as the body in charge of controlling the main taxes and existing revenues: fundamentally, these were tariffs and provincial taxes. From within this Directorate, promoted by
The Marquess of the Ensenada, Secretary of State for the Treasury, took place the creation of a
general cadastre for Castile aimed at reducing the many indirect taxes and few direct contributions to a single tax (), which had previously been created in the territories of the old Crown of Aragon during the reign of
Philip V. Although the project failed, a whole program to be followed by the subsequent owners of the portfolio was established.
Finances of the Indies Three decades later, in 1787, new changes arrived. On the one hand,
The Count of Floridablanca attempted to centralize the government apparatus by creating the Supreme State Board (, similar to a council of ministers), which would later lead to his downfall after this body generated numerous detractors, such as the
The Count of Aranda, a staunch defender of the
Polysynodial System. During this period, the practice arose of submitting the reports and draft decrees of the Secretary of the Treasury, first to the Junta and, after its dissolution, to the
Council of State. At the same time, the ministries were reformed again, dividing the
Secretariat of the Indies in two and creating by Royal Decree of 8 July 1787 a Secretariat of State and of the Office of Grace and Justice of the Indies and a Secretariat of State and of the Office of War, Finance, Trade and Navigation of the Indies. Despite the intention, this reform failed to solve the problems it sought to address. This, coupled with the economic crisis that developed during the reign of
Charles IV, exacerbated by the political instability in Europe following the
French Revolution, led to the approval of Royal Decree of 25 April 1790, reinstating the traditional division into five Secretariats of State and the Dispatch (State, War, Navy, Finance, and Grace and Justice), each of which was assigned the matters pertaining to the Indies.
Nineteenth century In 1793 began a continuous period of wars that did not end until 1845 and the main resource that sustained them was the
public debt that did not stop growing and that had, among other consequences, the creation of the
Bank of Spain, the implementation of everal
confiscation policies and the creation of a budgetary system to control the
deficit. In 1795 the Superintendency of the Treasury was suppressed assuming its responsibilities the ministry. Between the
Peninsular War (1808-1814), it existed two treasury ministries, one belonging to the Napoleonic government of
Joseph Bonaparte and other to the
Spanish one. For a better organization, in 1824, during the reign of
Ferdinand VII, it was created the
Directorate-General for the Treasury—that still exists today—as a redistributive body of public funds and in 1834 the current Undersecretariat of Finance was created with multiple bodies depending on it. This last reform was important because it was the moment when the
Councils were suppressed and the
Courts of Justice was created. In 1836, the administration continued growing and the Directorate-General for Confiscated Properties was created—direct predecessor of the current Directorate-General for State Assets—and the Treasury Offices for the Indies are suppressed. In 1987, the Directorate General for Personnel Costs was founded. (SVA), integrated into the Tax Agency In 1992, the
Spanish Tax Agency was created, an autonomous body within the Ministry of Finance responsible for the effective implementation of the tax and customs system and for managing the State tax and customs system, as well as the resources of other national and
European Union public administrations and entities. Four years later, in 1996, the budgetary responsibilities were equated with the financial ones, creating the
Secretariat of State for Budget and Expenditure.
Present On 1 January 1999, the
Eurozone was created with the establishment of the single European currency, the
euro (€), and the process concluded on 31 December 2001, when the
peseta (₧) ceased to be legal tender in Spain after more than 130 years. Since then, monetary policy has been governed by the
Eurosystem, headed by the
European Central Bank (ECB) and the governors of the national central banks of the Eurozone. After a brief period between 2000 and 2004, the Ministry of Finance was merged again with the Ministry of Economy, once more forming the Ministry of Economy and Finance. As a result of this merger, when the departments were divided in 2011, responsibility for the Public Treasury was transferred to the Ministry of Economy, where it remains today.
2008 financial crisis reforms In late 2011, new prime minister
Mariano Rajoy abolished the
Ministry of Public Administrations and the Finance portfolio assumed its responsibilities. At the same time, the ministries of finance and economy were split once more. With all financial and administrative powers concentrated in a single department and with
Cristóbal Montoro once again at the helm, this Ministry was responsible for implementing some of the main measures to address the economic crisis, three of which stand out: • The first of these was to conclude the process initiated during the
premiership of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with the amendment of Article 135 of the Constitution. This amendment, which included the concept of "budgetary stability" in the Constitution and gave priority to debt repayment (
balanced budget amendment), was complemented by the approval in April 2012 of the Organic Law on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability. • The second one—in coordination with the
Ministry of the Presidency—was the creation, by the
Council of Ministers, of the Commission for the Reform of Public Administrations (CORA) in October 2012, which led to the approval, among other regulations, of Law 15/2014, of September 16, on the rationalization of the Public Sector and other administrative reform measures, which eliminated, reformed and merged numerous bodies, simplified procedures and strengthened control over the Administration's bank accounts and official vehicles. • Thirdly, in mid-2012 the Government created the
Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA), which was initially endowed with €18 billion to help the
autonomous communities find
liquidity. Subsequently, from 2015 onwards, the FLA was integrated into the new Fund for Autonomous Communities Financing, which, together with the Fund for Local Entities Financing, are the two main mechanisms that the central government has to guarantee the financial sustainability of the rest of the administrations.
Recent times In 2016, the Finance Ministry lost the authority for relations with the rest of the Public Administrations in favor of the Ministry of the Presidency, but maintained those related to the Civil Service, thus being renamed as the "Ministry of Finance and Civil Service". Subsequently, following the
2018 vote of no confidence in the government of Mariano Rajoy and the formation of the
first government of Pedro Sánchez in June 2018, the Ministry's responsibilities over civil service were transferred to the Ministry of Territorial Policy, although it briefly regained them between 2021 and 2023. In 2020, the Ministry lost its powers over
gambling regulation and civil service pensions, in favor of the ministries
of Consumer Affairs and
of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, respectively. That same year, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent response from the European Union, which established a
recovery fund, the Department adapted its structure for better management of European funds, creating bodies such as the Directorate-General for the Recovery and Resilience Plan and Mechanism or a General Secretariat for European Funds to supervise both the aforementioned directorate-general and the Directorate-General for European Funds. ==Organization==