Abstract
When Francism ended in 1975, it was deemed necessary to reform the Spanish administration. The effects of the I960 reform had by then slowed down and a change in political regime had to be accompanied by that of public administration. However, the centre-right (UCD) government only concentrated upon implementing political reform, the re-establishment of free elections and of a consensus for democracy. In reality, the 1978 reform of the constitution led to the radical reform entailed by the creation of the Autonomous Communities. Indeed, each of the Communities has its own public administration and thus has broken with the centralizing model that until then had dominated Spain. Since 1982, successive socialist governments introduced certain changes in management of the administration but openly backed off from a more general reform. They thus opted for a policy of modernizing certain functional aspects of the administration in a period of fiscal pressure and control's on the state s budget in an attempt to align themselv es with the rest of Europe. Since 1996, Parti populaire governments have continued to pursue this modernizing policy, notably by introducing controls over the quality of public action, but also by reducing the role of the economy through a series of privatizations.