The Ministry of Industry and Tourism (MINCOTUR) is the department of the Government of Spain responsible for designing and implementing the government policy on industry and tourism. This includes designing the industrial strategy and development, as well as fostering entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises and defending industrial property. At the international level, these powers are exercised in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Industry Ministry, along with the Defence Ministry, has an important presence in the military industry and it regularly grants loans to state-owned enterprises for the promotion of this industry and the realization of military projects. In the past, when it had commercial powers, it also oversaw the import and export of military and defense equipment.
The MINCOTUR was established in 1928 to unify the economic responsibilities of the various government departments. Originally, it was named as Ministry of National Economy and, except for a brief period when it was called Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade (1931–1936), it has since been known as the Ministry of Industry.
History
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. The Industrial Engineers Crops was incorporated to this department and it inherited an important territorial structure from the Ministry of Development, since it had "Provincial Industry Inspections" distributed throughout the provinces since the beginning of the 1920s.
The Ministry was integrated by the following bodies:
The National Economy Council, transferred from the Office of the Prime Minister, and all its committees, consortia, and commissariats. It was chaired by the minister. The Directorate-General for Agriculture, transferred from the Ministry of Development, including the Agronomic Council, the Agricultural Chambers, and all institutes, schools, stations, and establishments for agricultural or livestock education. The Directorate-General for Trade and Supplies—which grouped the trade responsabilities of the Ministry of Labour and those about supplies of the Ministry of the Interior—including the Export Monitoring Committee, the National Board on Spanish Trade Overseas, the Chambers of Commerce, Navigation, and Books; the Associations of Commercial Agents; the Service of National and International Fairs and Exhibitions; and the Central and Provincial Supply Boards. The Directorate-General for Industry, transferred from the Ministry of Labour, including the Industrial Property Registry; the Corps and Schools of Industrial Engineers; the Standing Commission on Electricity, as well as those on Industry and Automobile Affairs; the Associations of Industrial Property Agents; the Industrial Council; the Chambers of Industry; the Service for Inspection of Weights and Measures; the Service of Meter and Automobile Inspectors; and the Ministry’s auxiliary Secretariat.
The following year, a new Directorate-General for Tariffs, Treaties and Valuations was created, to unify the National Economy Council's functions about trade tariffs, agreements and valuations.
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".
During this period, the department designed the Agrarian Reform Law, which was approved by the Cortes on 10 August 1932. This law, promoted by minister Marcelino Domingo, established a policy of expropriation with compensation for the owners of large estates—except for the Grandees, who were punished for the Sanjurjada with expropriations without compensation—with the aim of converting the land into smallholdings that could be distributed among day laborers and thus improve both the conditions of the workers and the productivity of the land.
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
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:
In 1959, the balance of payments surplus reached $81 million. The Bank of Spain's foreign exchange reserves increased. The sum of foreign reserves and short-term government loans went from a negative balance of nearly $2 million in June 1959 to a positive balance of nearly $500 million in December 1960. Inflation fell from 12.6 percent in 1958 to 2.4 percent in 1960. Foreign investment in Spain and tourism increased. Competitive conditions in the country improved, and new technologies were adopted.
Energy importance
As the country's economy took off and Spain emerged from autarky, energy production had to increase again to sustain that growth: the exploitation of lignite and other domestic coal deposits, as well as the construction of new dams and oil refineries. Furthermore, Spain was a pioneer in the development of nuclear power for electricity generation, inaugurating its first plant in 1969. However, the first oil crisis hit in 1973, followed by the 1979 crisis, which severely disrupted the global economy, including Spain's.
In this context, in 1962 the Directorate-General for Energy was created, which would later also assume the powers over fuels of the Directorate-General for Mines and Fuels and, from the oil crisis of the 1970s, a Commission for Energy and Mineral Resources was created in 1977, with the category of under-secretariat, which would culminate with the creation of the Secretariat of State for Energy and Mineral Resources in 1996.