Il funzionario pubblico nella Spagna fra Otto e Novecento : logiche corporative e istituzionali fra tecnica e politica (1898-1936)

The binomial Officer-Public Administration was one of the pil-lars on which the Nineteenth century liberal State was built. During this period a strongly teleological vision of statehood strenghtenes, even though we must take into account the complexity of this con-troversial process. In this respect, Spain can be considered a signifi-cant case, until now relatively unknown by our historiography: the construction of a model formally in compliance with the characters of the moderate liberalism did not mean the clear break of para-digms of corporate society. The world of Spanish public officials is a privileged observation point: the articulated constellation of administrations, that made up the Spanish civil service between XIX and XX centuries, gave a constant tension between legal and substantial reality of power and institutions, bound to the Officium logic. Those problems were not solve by the Ley de Funcionarios of 1918, and emerged again in the Spanish democratic Constituent of 1931, when the necessary collaboration between technical and politics put on the agenda the is-sue of loyalty of the citizen – official.