Ministry of the Interior (Spain)
The Ministry of the Interior is a department of the Government of Spain responsible for public security, the protection of the constitutional rights, the command of the law enforcement agencies, national security, immigration affairs, prisons, civil defense and road traffic safety. Through the Undersecretariat of the Interior and its superior body, the Directorate-General for Internal Policy, the Ministry is responsible for all actions related to ensuring political pluralism and the proper functioning of electoral processes.
The MIR, which was created for the first time by the Cortes of Cádiz in 1812, has its central headquarters since the 1970s in the Palace of the Counts of Casa Valencia, located at the Paseo de la Castellana. Likewise, the rest of the services are distributed between the buildings adjacent to this palace, which are also owned by the Department, and other headquarters spread throughout the city of Madrid.
This department has historically received numerous denominations such as Ministerio de la Gobernación, Ministerio de Orden Público and Ministerio del Interior y Justicia when both ministries joint in one.
As of 2023, central, regional and local governments in Spain spend around €27.4 billion per year on security and public order. Furthermore, according to the Crime Balance for the fourth quarter of 2024, the conventional crime rate in Spain stood at 41 cases per thousand inhabitants, 0.3 points less than in 2023, while the cybercrime rate stood at 9.6 cases per thousand inhabitants.
History
The Ministry of the Interior was created to handle matters relating to the governance of the Kingdom of Spain, a large area of responsibility that in the past had been assumed by the Councils of the Monarchy and which from the 18th century onwards ended up being centralized by the Council of Castile, whose numerous functions included assisting and collaborating with the monarch on government affairs.In the 18th century, the extinction of the Habsburg dynasty and the arrival of the Bourbons brought profound institutional reforms. With King Philip V, this Council extended its jurisdiction to the territories of the Crown of Aragon and the whole country was ruled by the same institutions. Also during this time, the Councils started to lose importance and the Secretariats of State and of the Office were created. King Philip reformed the government and the First Secretariat of State —today known as Ministry of Foreign Affairs— was responsible for matter regarding the governance of the realm. However, depending on the king's confidence in his ministers, other departments could end up taking over these responsibilities. Thus, at different times, the heads of other Secretariats also assumed domestic governance, and even the Council of Castile, during the tenure of the Count of Aranda, regained significant prominence in this area.
However, the Peninsular War introduced into Spain, under French influence, the concept of internal government as its own entity, which would lead to the creation of a new ministry.
Nineteenth century
Origin: the Peninsular War
The uprising of the people of Madrid on 2 May 1808, extended the Napoleonic Wars to the Iberian Peninsula, in response to Napoleon's imposition of his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne.From that moment on, Spain was divided into two factions, each with its own legal system. On the French side, the Bayonne Statute was approved, a charter granted by Joseph Bonaparte that adapted the Spanish political system to the French model, and created within its government a Ministry of the Interior and a Ministry of General Police. Meanwhile, on the Spanish side, the Cortes of Cádiz approved the Constitution of 1812, whose article 222 established a Secretariat of State and of the Office of the Governance of the Kingdom for the Peninsula and Adjacent Islands and another of the same characteristics for the Overseas territories, which were added to the pre-existing departments since the reign of Philip V. The vast majority of authors do not consider the department created by the Napoleonic government as the original one, because of its invasor nature.
For our purposes, the Secretariat of State and of the Office of the Governance of the Kingdom was regulated by Decree CXLV of 6 April 1812 of the Cortes, which established that this department was responsible for:
Despite the department's broad range of responsibilities, it lacked a fundamental one: public safety, hich, at that time, was part of the Ministry of Justice. The first minister to hold this portfolio was José García de León y Pizarro.
A liberal ministry
The new department did not last long. Once the war was over and Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne, he annulled most of the measures implemented by the Cortes of Cádiz and reinstated absolutism. This was a severe blow to the liberals, who had been the main instigators of the Monarchy's administrative reforms and who had hoped that, after supporting Ferdinand's cause, he would accept a change of regime. Nothing could have been further from the truth; the king reinstated the Polysynodial System and abolished, among other bodies, the secretariats of government, returning to the pre-war situation.Viewed as a liberal ministry, the Secretariat of Government was suppressed until 1820, when liberals rose up against the king following Rafael del Riego's uprising and forced him to reinstate the constitutional regime established by the 1812 Constitution. This included the restoration of a department dedicated exclusively to the affairs of the Kingdom's governance. During the brief period of the Liberal Triennium, several proposals were put forward to create police forces, such as the National Safeguard Legion. The instability of this period was evident in the ministerial appointments, with numerous officeholders, and it ended with the restoration of absolutism in 1823 thanks to the support the king received from the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis.
This ushered in the Ominous Decade, a dark period in Spanish history marked by repression of liberals. Once again, all traces of the reforms of the Liberal Triennium were eliminated, and although an attempt was made to reformulate a Ministry of the Interior called the Secretariat of the Interior, it lasted only a few months. Its sole head was.
The most relevant events of this period were the creation in 1824 of the General Police of the Kingdom, direct predecessor of the current National Police Corps, the creation of the Carabineros in 1829 —which in 1940 was integrated into the Civil Guard— and the succession issue, which caused King Ferdinand to make risky moves to secure the throne for his daughter Isabella, Princess of Asturias.
To achieve this, his government introduced some reforms, both in the academic and social spheres. As far as the administration of the Kingdom was concerned, the Sovereign had in mind since 1830 the creation of a Ministry of the Interior, an idea that was defended by relevant politicians of the time such as Javier de Burgos, , or his own finance minister, , who called it "Secretariat of the Office of the Political Government". It encountered greater resistance among some justice ministers like or , who even resigned upon its creation, and even the Council of State, whose report ended in a tie among its members.
Finally, by Royal Decree of 9 November 1832, the monarch re-established the Secretariat of State and of the Office, now called "of General Development of the Kingdom". The name's choice was not insignificant; an attempt was made to avoid both the term "Interior", due to its association with the French occupation, and the term "Government ", linked to the liberals of Cádiz. The person in charge of setting up the department was the Minister of Finance,, who assumed the position on an interim basis and designed how this Ministry would operate in its new phase. Following him, The Count of Ofalia was appointed permanent minister until October 1833, when Javier de Burgos, who had already advocated for the creation of the department in 1826, was appointed minister. This new Department was complemented by the creation of the position of sub-delegate of public works in the provinces and the division of these provinces carried out by minister Burgos in 1833.
From Interior to Governance
During the reign of Isabella II, and with the Queen Regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies acting in her name, the latter had no choice but to rely on the liberals to defend her daughter's right to reign. To this end, she promulgated a charter, the Royal Statute, which, for the first time, regulated a government separate from the Crown —although headed by it— and with a clearly differentiated head of the executive, the President of the Council of Ministers. In this new phase, the liberals renamed the department in May 1834, reinstating the term "Interior" and the sub-delegates of public works became known as civil governors. A few months later, the Undersecretariat of the Interior was created with as under-secretary, and the Ministry was relocated, moving to the former headquarters of the Council of the Supreme Inquisition, on Torija Street in Madrid.Again, at the end of 1835, the name of the Department was changed once more, becoming the "Department of Governance of the Kingdom". This new stage as the Ministry of Government began with a six-department organization, dedicated to the general affairs, local administration and services, police forces, prisons, public education, economic development, agriculture and public works.
Despite numerous reforms in the area of public safety, a feasible solution could not be found, and government protection was considered imperative to ensure the freedom of citizens; this was stated in a Decree of 26 January 1844, "civil liberty, continually exposed to individual manipulations and violence, does not seem to subsist firmly without the protective vigilance and robust support of the solicitous and vigorous authority of the government". In this regard, a few months later another decree was approved that created the Civil Guard, led at that time by The Duke of Ahumada, with a dual dependency of War and Governance.