Between professionals and bureaucrats. The local council secretaries in the XIXth Century in Spain

Abstract

Comparing Spain with Italy we tackle on a first level of approximation some of the working aspects of the local council secretaries. It is important to highlight certain common elements as well as differences. As in Italy, so in Spain, the secretaries of local councils, the principal employees of these corporations, were “private” agents who had “public” functions until the decade of 1920 ( in which, in a fairly synchronized manner, they were converted into civil servants of the State); They were of a largely homogenous group both socially and politically with the members of the Municipal Council, and were key elements of the material constitution of the modern state. In contrast to Italy, Spain (whose political center was even weaker than the Italian) the job did not require an official diploma, the (major) instability in this employment was in part connected to the (higher) institutional instability, and the annual salaries could not only be set by the councils but also by the “prefects”.