ABSTRACT
The basis of a country’s public life lies in the institutions and mechanisms by which it is governed, the state. The equivalent Spanish term (estado) is often used specifically to refer to Spain’s own central government as opposed to the country’s various regional governments. That distinction is followed here. The present chapter will examine the main central institutions – the monarchy, the Parliament, the political executive made up of the Prime Minister and his cabinet, and the administrative apparatus subordinate to it – leaving regional government to be studied in Chapter 3. Also dealt with in Chapter 1 is local government. Although clearly distinct from the central institutions, it shares with them one essential feature. Unlike the regions, which are the product of an open-ended process of development conditioned by the interplay of political forces over the last three decades, the structures of both central and local government derive from the new Constitution adopted in 1978.
