Council of Ministers (Spain)
The Council of Ministers is the main collective decision-making body of the Government of Spain, and it is exclusively composed of the Prime Minister, the deputy prime ministers and the ministers. Junior or deputy ministers such as the Secretaries of State are not members of the Council. The Monarch may also chair the Council when needed on the invitation of the Prime Minister.
The ministers are proposed by the Prime Minister and formally appointed by the King. There is no requirement for the Prime Minister nor the ministers to be MPs. The ministers are the heads of a ministerial department and receive the title of "Minister". In addition to the ministers who are the heads of departments, there may be ministers without portfolio, who are entrusted responsibility with for certain government functions.
The Council is the main collective decision-making body of the government and the only one constitutionally recognized, although ministers can also meet through other government bodies, such as Government Delegated Committees. The Delegated Committees are created by the Council and composed by ministers and secretaries of state which deal with minor issues that may affect more than one ministry.
The Secretary of the Council of Ministers is the Minister of the Presidency. It is regulated by Article 98 of the Spanish Constitution and by article 5 of the Government Act of 1997.
History
Origins, 15th-18th century
From the beginnings of the modern state and the centralization of power in the monarchs, the government was exercised by them through people of trust. The monarchs trusted them certain subjects and with which they made daily dispatches to deal with these matters. Over time, these trusted people who, on numerous occasions, received the title of ministers, were in conflict with the powers of other ministers and, to resolve these, they made collective meetings between various ministers and the monarchs. The Spanish monarchy has ruled most of its history —depending on the greater or lesser desire of the monarch to delegate its power— through Councils —Council of Castile, Council of the Indies, Council of Aragon, etc.— whose main tasks were those of to administer justice in the name of the monarchs and to advise the Sovereign in his work of government and with these the polysynodial regime was established.With Charles I this regime reached its peak, especially with the creation of the Council of State in 1526, a council that dealt with the great problems of the monarchy and were their secretaries who had more power, i.e. the called Secretaries of State. The secretariat of the Council of State was unique between 1526 and 1567, double between 1567 and 1706 and unique again since this last year. Exceptionally, between 1630 and 1661 there was a third secretary in charge «of Spain, the Indies and adjacent islands, the coast of Barbary and everything indifferent».
Philip II ruled until 1567 with a single secretary and with two since that date, although he balanced the power between his two Secretaries of State and the other advisors and private secretaries. With the subsequent monarchs —Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II— the figure of the favourite appeared, a kind of prime minister. It is at this time when the position of secretary of the Dispatch appears.
With Philip V and, by French influence, the Council of Dispatch was created with a few members. This members had the task of advise the monarch in his task of government and that displaced the Council of State in this task. During his reign many of the Secretaries of State and of the Dispatch appeared.
The Supreme State Board
The institution of the Council of Ministers as a collective body of government does not appear with such a name until its creation by King Ferdinand VII in 1823, however, prior to this, it is worth mentioning the Supreme State Board. The Supreme State Board was a collective body of government created by King Charles III on the advice of the Count of Floridablanca, which was attended by the Secretaries of State and the Dispatch and anyone they considered necessary to address the issues presented to them.This Board was not properly a Council of Ministers because, as we have said, not only ministers but other authorities, such as the Councilors of State, could attend and, in addition, this body was limited by the Reserved Instruction, an articulated text that included the matters that could be discussed by the Board. The Board, created in 1787, did not have a long journey or developed the work for which Floridablanca promoted its creation and, only a few months later, the first criticisms appeared accusing the Count of Floridablanca of wanting to assume all the ministries powers through this body, to appoint the high officials of the Kingdom and thus gather in his person all the power.
The Royal Decree of 8 July 1787, which created the Board, it said:
With the fall of Floridablanca in 1792 and the arrival to the power of Aranda, this one influenced in the King Carlos IV to suppress the Supreme State Board and to return to the previous system with the Council of State like central organ of the Administration.
Briefly, with the return of King Ferdinand VII to the throne of Spain and the abolition of the Constitution of Cadiz, the king recovered the old Supreme Board by Royal Decree of 2 November 1815.
The Council of Ministers
After the experience during the Trienio Liberal, the Council of Ministers was officially created by King Fernando VII, who ordered by Royal Decree of 19 November 1823 that his Secretaries of State should gather to form a body, which was to be called the Council of Ministers. In the meetings of this Council all matters of common interest would be discussed, and every Secretary would report about affairs under his responsibility and receive instructions from the King. The Secretary of State would act as Chief Minister and preside over the meetings when the King was absent.The first meeting of the Council was on 22 November and to it were summoned the Minister of Justice, the Minister of War and the Minister of the Treasury and Navy.
This Council was directly and permanently submitted to the monarch, as it appears in the historical texts that show that between 28 December 1825 and 19 September 1826 it was suspended by direct orders of Ferdinand VII, while it was strengthened the Council of State. From the beginning of the Council of Ministers there were constant conflicts between the Secretaries of Dispatch of the Council and the secretaries of the Council of State because in many occasions the first one had to respond before the latter, a situation that shortly after ceased to re-establish the king, on the proposal of the Council of Ministers, the merely consultative structure originally held by the Council of State.
To understand the motives that the monarch had to create the Council, it is necessary to resort to the royal decree of December 1823 that establishes the "bases on which the new Council of Ministers must walk," and these are:
The purpose, then, was to dismantle any trace of the constitutional period of the Liberal Triennium.
At the time of its creation, the Council of Ministers was composed of the five ministers —six when the Interior Minister was added— in addition to a secretary who, in the absence of this, it assumed the functions of secretary of the Council the Minister of Grace and Justice.
They used to meet once a week; later, it was extended to twice —Tuesdays and Saturdays— although depending on the circumstances, the hours could vary, as happened at the time of the uprising of Jorge Bessières that met daily or when the monarch pleased. Extraordinary meetings and the continual excuses of the ministers not to attend were also common, although the general norm was habitual attendance, as was not the case in other institutions of the monarchy. Likewise, various authorities that were called to issue reports or defend the files that were being processed could go to the Council, generally in the area of the Treasury and international relations. They were described in the minutes as "assistants".
The place designed for its meetings and the most usual in its beginnings was the headquarters of the First Secretary of State, although with time it was the headquarters of the Secretariat of the Navy that assumed that role. It was also common that the Council met where the monarch was, as in the Royal Palaces of Aranjuez, San Lorenzo or La Granja.
After the death of King Ferdinand VII and during the regency of María Christina, in an attempt to win the support of the Liberals, the Queen Regent appointed Secretary of State to Martinez de la Rosa, who due to the tradition already created, received the title of President of the Council of Ministers with the approval of the Royal Statute and with this title, he has been considered the first real Prime Minister of Spain. It was precisely this statute, which for the first time constitutionalized the body of the Council of Ministers but without specifying their formation and powers.
Although the Royal Statute affirmed that the monarch freely appoints and separates the ministers, the parliamentary practice obliged the sovereign to elect the ministers among the members of the Cortes Generales who had the confidence of these ministers, in clear imitation of the European systems in which the Government should have the confidence of the Crown and Parliament. In the same way, the prerogatives that were granted to the monarch were actually exercised by his ministers.
In the first Council's meetings of Martinez de la Rosa and Mendizábal the Queen Regent did not usually attend —although she was always informed of everything— and they met once or twice a week and with the ordinary assistance of the ministers —although during the premiership of Mendizábal many times the Councils were reduced to two members by the notable absences— in addition to the Secretary of the Council of Ministers, with Martinez de la Rosa to the Council also attended the members of the Government, senior administrative positions and military chiefs, mainly because of the War.
With the regency of General Espartero the political situation did not improve. The difficulties to form stable governments were insurmountable and the personality of Espartero —who wanted to exercise power himself— did not help much, in fact, all the ministers of prime minister Joaquín María López resigned at the same time because they had demanded that Espartero respected the principle of that the Monarch reign but does not rule and they said «that such healthy principles can not be realized, believe in the obligation to resign their positions in the hands of Your Highness confident that their resignation will be admitted, which is based on the essential conditions of the representative government ». Espartero quickly appointed Álvaro Gómez Becerra as Prime Minister, something that did not please the Congress that ratified his support for the previous government.
After this situation began the uprisings against General Espartero and, in Barcelona, General Serrano proclaimed himself universal minister, ceased Espartero and appointed Joaquín María López as prime minister, who took this opportunity to lift the minority of Queen Isabella II. This measure was later ratified by the Cortes Generales.
With Narváez as Prime Minister and a council formed by six ministers, they prepared a reform project that would later be transferred to the Cortes for debate and that led to the Constitution of 1845. The typical political instability of the time soon appeared, with governments of less than 20 days to maximum of 9 months mainly for palace intrigues. With Narváez back in government —his third government— in October 1847, the ephemeral governments ended until 1851. His Council of Ministers carried out important reforms in the Administration and the Treasury, but the most important was to confront and dominate the events of 1848. The revolutions of this year affected Spain in a limited way thanks to the iron hand of the Council, coming to call it a "necessary dictatorship" since the government ruled with the Cortes dissolved and the constitutional guarantees suspended.
In the winter of 1851, Juan Bravo Murillo became President of the Council of Ministers, forming a council with a remarkable technical training devoted in depth to the art of government and administration, moving away from the military rather than political government of General Narváez. This Council carried out an important economic sanitation; prepared a new administration reform; and normalized relations with the Holy See through the Concordat of 1851. But, undoubtedly, the task with more resonance was the preparation of a draft constitutional reform, however this suffered the rejection of progressive deputies, most of the moderates and the Queen Mother herself, who still had great influence on her daughter. All this ended up causing the resignation of the government in December 1852.
With the fall of the Bravo Murillo government, political instability and ephemeral governments returned, lasting until the fall of the First Republic in 1874.