La vuelta del “hijo pródigo” el Estado de Bienestar español en el camino hacia la Unión Económica y Monetaria

Abstract

The first part of this work presents the social policies practised before the Spanish democracy. The second one analyzes the neocorporatist policies applied during the democratic transition. The third one deals with the break of these practices, which coincided with the adhesion to the CE and with the preparatory stage of the Single Market and of the European Economic Space. The fourth part studies the context of “competitive neocorporatism” and of reinforced cooperation in the path towards the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The EMU applied from its beginnings a program of benchmarking directed to generalize and to make sustainable the social policies considered as the “best practices” within the continent. The conclusions of the article synthesize the vicissitudes of all this process, which culminated with the introduction of the euro. In this process the aspirations of European integration of the Spanish population worked as an engine for the building of the Welfare State.