The Mexican Cristero experience constituted a political laboratory and a school of resistance providing blueprints of action later exercised in Spain. With barely ten years between their own countries’ conflicts, the ladies of Catholic Action—in Mexico and then in Spain—organized themselves, first, as a passive resistance, and then both used the same justifications to support the use of political violence. News of the Mexican Catholic women’s experience had arrived across the Atlantic in the chronicles of Spanish newspapers beginning in the late 1920s and in the edifying, right-leaning novels that were spread, above all, in Spanish Catholic schools during the 1930s. This helps us understand the parallels between the actions, liaisons, informants, and weapons suppliers of the Brigades and other Catholic organizations in Mexico and the members of the women’s fifth column in Spain. Perhaps the contemporary presence in the public sphere of European fascists resonated more among young urban Madrid or Barcelona women during the Spanish Civil War, but, without a doubt, the social origin, experience, and cultural heritage of Mexican women was more in line with the efforts of conservative Spanish women all over the country during the conflict. In both cases, the defence of religion and their Catholic identity was at the forefront of their efforts and gave coherence to what might, at times, appear to be diverse political projects.

This paper explores the relationship between entrepreneurship, measured by the number of new firms per million inhabitants, and modern economic growth in Spain between 1886 and 2000. Following Audretsch and Keilbach’s methodology, our analysis seems to confirm that entrepreneurship has had a positive and statistically significant effect on GDP per capita and labor productivity. This finding challenges the traditional view that the entrepreneurial factor has hindered the country’s economic growth. Additionally, using data on the size and legal form of start-up firms, our results suggest that neither characteristic has been an important driver of Spain’s long-term economic growth. However, we find that the impact of both variables differs depending on the years studied. To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to test econometrically the long-term contribution of entrepreneurship to Spain’s economic growth.

This article analyses the activities conducted by the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) in Spain between 1936 to 1943 to understand Italian policy towards the Francoist regime during that period. In doing so, this piece argues that it is important to adopt a political economy approach that looks at production, trade and industrial investments, always in relation to politics, diplomacy, law, culture and government. In fact, this article establishes that, for the main actors in Rome at the time, all these considerations were inseparable when it came to the Italian policy towards Franco’s Spain. Furthermore, I argue that the BNL initiatives are better understood when situated within the larger history of the Fascist regime in Italy and its imperialistic policies in the Mediterranean area.

Several proposals to modernize obligations and contracts law in the Spanish Civil Code have not succeeded. However, Spanish contract law has evolved through judicial interpretation, which has reformulated existing rules and recognized new ones. This article deals with major transformations in general contract law and special contracts. Additionally, the Civil Code has been affected by its interaction with EU law, as interpreted by the CJEU. Updating the Civil Code in this manner has created conceptual obscurity and has increased legal uncertainty. Formal modernization of the Civil Code would be welcome, provided it treats Spanish private law as an integral part of the pluralistic legal order of the EU.

This article analyzes the evolution of banking supervision in Spain under Franco’s regime (1939–1975), highlighting how political and economic factors shaped oversight in an authoritarian setting. Two phases emerge. In the 1940s–50s, supervision—lodged in the Ministry of Finance—was weak, poorly staffed, and focused on enforcing banks’ oligopolistic interest rate agreements, reflecting regulatory capture. Following the 1959 Stabilization Plan, rising external pressure, domestic concerns about oligopolistic practices, and the 1962 Banking Law prompted reform. Supervision shifted to the Bank of Spain with the establishment of the Private Banking Inspection Service, resulting in more frequent inspections and gradual formalization of supervision. Archival records indicate that by the 1970s, inspections had become more frequent and rigorous, signaling a cautious shift toward risk-based oversight. However, the reforms remained incomplete. Persistent systemic vulnerabilities culminated in the severe banking crisis of 1977–1982, underlining the limitations of supervisory transformation under authoritarian rule.

This paper examines whether the democratic shortcomings of Restoration Spain influenced the expansion of education spending. Specifically, we discuss how electoral outcomes conditioned the allocation of primary education investment across provinces from 1902 to 1922. Our results show that voting for minority parties and the extensive political patronage at the provincial level hindered public primary schooling outlays. We argue that the government punished “rebellious” provinces to preserve the regime, and that education was not well suited to support patron–client relationships. We also show that these effects diminished after World War I, as government control over electoral outcomes declined. Accordingly, by the end of the period, political voice gained a more salient role.

Since the 1950s, Catalonia has remained one of Europe’s most popular tourism destinations. Throughout this period, however, Catalonia’s presentation to the world has changed dramatically. In this article, I explore claims to authenticity in Catalan tourism attractions and promotion, which emerged as shrewd marketing language in the increasingly competitive tourism market of the 1980s and 1990s. The resulting Catalanisation of the region conditioned the international projection and reception of the region as historically, linguistically, culturally, and politically different from Spain and, indeed, the rest of the world. This new image of the region relied on and sustained an ontology of marketable and consumable national difference that resonates far beyond Catalonia’s borders. This research shows how ideas of consumable authenticity functioned as an important mediator between nationalism and globalisation, popularised nationalist thinking without the influence of committed nationalist actors, and helped scholars to understand the sustained importance of the nation-state as a unit of international politics despite its shifting meaning, function, and power from the 1970s to today.

Radical right behavior and support for radical right parties have increased across many countries in recent decades. A growing body of research has argued that, similar to the spread of other extremist behaviors, this is due to an erosion of political norms. This suggests that re-stigmatizing radical right parties might be an effective way of countering their growth. We use a survey experiment in Spain that compares the effectiveness of three theory-driven interventions aimed at increasing political stigma against a radical right party. Contrary to expectations, we fail to validate the efficacy of vignette-based attempts at stigmatization, instead identifying some backlash effects. Methodologically, our findings underscore the importance of validating treatments, as we show that simple attempts at re-stigmatization can produce null or opposing effects to their intended purpose. Theoretically, our results support the idea that normalization is a “one-way street,” in that re-stigmatizing parties is difficult after a party has become normalized.

Research on the political consequences of terrorism often finds a rally around the flag effect: terrorist attacks, as other types of threats, tend to produce spikes in popularity and support for the incumbent, as citizens turn to those in power seeking protection. Most research, however, is based on single case studies that analyze very salient attacks from international terrorist organizations. Even if these studies are well identified, the question of generalizability remains, as the studied attacks are often very idiosyncratic. In this paper, we explore the rally around the flag effect in an arguably difficult context: a sustained terrorist campaign held by domestic terrorist groups in a parliamentary democracy (Spain). To overcome the limitations of the single-attack studies, we use a multiple unexpected event approach: we developed a systematic process of matching the occurrence of terror attacks during the fieldwork of official public opinion surveys in Spain, through which we identified 142 valid attack-survey pairs. We find that in the attacked region support for the incumbent increases, on average, around 4 percentage points right after an attack, while support for the opposition decreases in a similar amount. These effects seem to occur mostly for the conservative incumbent and are especially relevant for the attacks that target civilians. We use a survey experiment to provide additional evidence in support for our interpretation of the findings.

This article posits that the multi-level governance literature can benefit from administrative burden theory if scholars are interested in understanding under which conditions policy implementation fails. To support this argument, we build on these two bodies of research to examine how implicit welfare rescaling – where the central government expands its role in a previously devolved policy – may increase administrative burdens for claimants, and to what extent local welfare systems can help to mitigate these burdens despite lacking coordination. To address these research aims, we assess the implementation of the “Ingreso Mínimo Vital,” a national minimum income scheme introduced in Spain within a fragmented regional system. Qualitative fieldwork with frontline professionals and policy experts shows that welfare rescaling heightened claimants’ administrative burdens due to inter-institutional misfit among governance levels. This imposed substantial learning, compliance, and psychological costs on claimants, making frontline professionals essential for guiding them through these challenges.

We examine the impact of decentralisation on COVID-19 mortality and various health outcomes. Specifically, we investigate whether decentralised health systems, which facilitated greater regional participation and information sharing, were more effective in saving lives. Our analysis makes three contributions. First, we draw on evidence from several European countries to assess whether the decentralisation of health systems influenced COVID-19 mortality rates. Second, we explore the regional disparities in one of the most decentralised health systems, Spain, to untangle some of the determinants shaping health outcomes. Third, we estimate the regional loss of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) due to COVID-19 mortality, broken down by the wave of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that coordinated decentralisation played a critical role in saving lives throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

When are far right parties punished for their extreme positions? We argue that the punishments of deviant position-taking are conditional on the degree to which a far right party is normalized or stigmatized in the party system. When the far right is treated as normal, the costs suffered from these parties’ extreme positions decrease, as moderate voters discount the authenticity of their commitment to such positions. We use a survey experiment to test this argument in Spain, finding evidence for discounting on the far right’s extreme anti-LGBTQ+ statements, but not on its embrace of authoritarian history. This study thus shows that normalization and stigmatization of the far right can change how its extreme positions are interpreted by voters.

Southern European welfare states have historically been characterised by the absence of national safety nets. However, these countries have witnessed a succession of policy reforms over the past three decades. In 2020, the Spanish Parliament unanimously approved the ‘Ingreso Mínimo Vital’ to finally cease being the only European country without a minimum income scheme at the national level. This article investigates the political and institutional mechanisms that enabled this policy reform, which was particularly unexpected due to the fragmentation of the party system along both ideological and territorial dimensions. To solve this puzzle, I employ the ‘explaining-outcome’ process tracing method and rely on qualitative data from official documents, party manifestos and parliamentary interventions spanning from 2015 to 2020. In addition, I build on ten expert interviews with relevant actors directly involved in the reform, conducted between 2022 and 2024. Findings illustrate that inclusive path departure was possible through two political stages. First, left-wing party competition and strong socio-political demand (2014–2020) allowed for the introduction of the scheme into the political agenda. Second, territorial politics and the external shock of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic ultimately contributed to mitigating expected political cleavages during the parliamentary process.

This study explores the role of influencers in shaping public opinion about feminism in Spain, a country where gender equality and feminist discourse have gained relevant public prominence. Although the figure of the influencer may appear novel, the process of opinion formation mirrors that which has historically prevailed for celebrities in traditional media. However, the inherent characteristics of social media endow influencers with even greater tools of persuasion. We test this argument by collecting a representative survey of the Spanish population and analyzing posts and videos from influencers’ profiles, employing manual content analysis. Our findings reveal that audiences of incidental feminist influencers exhibit stronger pro-feminist attitudes, while those of incidental anti-feminist influencers lean toward anti-feminist views. Additional analysis using propensity score matching offers further evidence of the persuasive power of influencers, even after adjusting for potential selection biases in their audiences.

A recent report revealed that 21.7% of women in Spain who went on a Tinder date were raped. These findings suggest that the incidence of sexual violence on Tinder dates in Spain may be higher than in other social contexts. This study explores the experiences of Tinder users in Spain to understand the factors contributing to this phenomenon and to propose measures for enhancing user safety. We conducted four focus groups separated by sociodemographic characteristics that replicated the typical victims’ and perpetrators’ profile (age and gender). Male participants initially expressed disbelief and attributed the phenomenon to Tinder’s environment, pathological behavior, pornography, and women’s actions. In contrast, female participants accepted the statistic as reflective of real-world issues, dismissing pathological explanations and highlighting systemic victim-blaming, fear-induced paralysis, and the impact of pornography as key factors. The findings underscore a significant disparity in perceptions between genders, with males often minimizing or misattributing the problem, while females recognizing deeper systemic issues. These insights suggest a need for targeted interventions and policies that address both the behavioral and perceptual factors contributing to sexual violence on dating platforms.

This research supports the singularity of the Spanish case. The lessons we can learn are a product of the short transition in the mid 1880s from a city-based monetary system (supported by private actors) to a central banking system in the absence of a developed banking system with a nationwide scope, unlike what occurred in the rest of Western Europe. Introducing market arbitrage, we provide novel evidence – using new data – of how price formation in city-based money markets was driven by more than one price. Furthermore, factors such as market conditions, political circumstances and the asymmetrical development of market potential in the Spanish economic geography also played an important role. We also show new empirical support that transaction cost reduction was not associated with improving efficiency during the 1875–85 period when city-based money markets were still operating. The inland payment system was struggling even before its takeover by the Bank of Spain.