This book looks back at the research support measures implemented in Spain over the past century and, through them, at the changing vision of science in this country. Both science and the policy support granted to scientific and technical research are strongly conditioned by the historical context.

And in the case of century Spain, successive changes of government regime, the civil war and our national political geography – forming part of a continent ravaged by two world wars and revitalized by the subsequent Allied reconstruction – had a decisive influence on how the study of science was promoted and indeed on the progress of science itself. ‘Cien años de política científica en España’ fills a gap in the historiographic study of the sciences in Spain with its analysis of this long and convulsive period. It conveys the main ideas and background information the reader needs to understand and appreciate the current vitality of scientific research in Spain.