ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to reflect on research into friendly societies in Spanish historiography, and propose a change of focus in the analysis of these societies, concentrating on the principal friendly societies that offered different kinds of health coverage. One of the first interventions of the Spanish government of the Franco dictatorship was to regulate the heterogeneous world of friendly societies and other kinds of mutual institutions with the intention of excluding all those whose aim was to make a commercial profit. Under the Franco dictatorship, the law on mutual societies of 1941 was passed, These laws considered the following to be welfare institutions: burial societies, mutual societies and igualatorios offering sickness insurance, maternity insurance, old age insurance, industrial accident and disability insurance, and others that covered capital assets. The National Conference on Sickness, Disability and Maternity Insurance, served as a forum for the non-profit-making entities where they could voice their legal and economic demands.
