Cultural policies are very relatively recent phenomena in Spain. So in someway in this last 25 years we have had the possibility to see the building of thisprocess from zero to the current level, that is not too far away from the normalpractise in Europe. For other Europeans countries the relevant problem is not tounderstand the origins of cultural policies but to explain the present realities of thecultural sectors and which role the State plays in this frame. Despite that this is notan empirical paper about the cultural policies in Spain, in some sense, the Spanishhistorical circumstances and data could bias the theoretical approach of this paper.Anyway, we use this historical proximity, to arrive at certain microfoundations of cultural policies, (and we do that in a not very usual way), that could be more hiddenin other consolidated and experienced realities. And this goal “must be” useful in amore generalised realm. If this “must be” is not accomplished then the exercisewon’t deserve the efforts

Publicaciones Econcult: Área de Investigación en Economía de la Cultura y Turismo. Universitat de València