Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper deals with the discussions on accounting criteria taken place at the Board of Directors of the Bank of Spain short after its establishment. Shareholders pretended that Public Debt and real property should appear on the Balance sheet at market price values and some members of the Board of Directors shared this opinion. This was against the accounting principle of purchase price, which was the generally accepted at that time. Another burning matter discussed was the convenience of a wider disclosure of financial issues. The way to implement an accrual basis accounting was also a discussion subject as well as even the model that the published Balance sheet had to adopt. These discussions were so harsh that even the Governor, that is, the highest responsible of the institution, began to think to resign, although his appointment was made by the Government and not by the shareholders. Another questions regarding accounting were also the object of bitter criticism that caused the corresponding retorts on the part of the Bank in defence of its actuation and reputation. It seems that nowadays many of the arguments used to defend some accounting principles or to reject others are overcome. Nevertheless, it has to be concluded that the same reasons put forward in those times have been recently heard on the occasion of the acceptance of International Accounting Standard (IAS) in Europe. About 150 years later, in some way, the wax continues burning in the oil-lamp of the controversies. In order to insert the subject matter within its context, the paper begins with an explanation of the background of the Bank of Spain’s establishment in 1856. For this purpose, it departs from its predecessor, the Spanish Bank of San Fernando, which in its turn was successor of the Bank of San Carlos, founded in 1782. The banking changes began at that time as a consequence of a new normative framework. Its configuration constitutes the starting point of the current Spanish banking system. The economic environment was stimulated by legislation on several more favourable fronts, which facilitated the entry of foreign investments as an economic path to develop the country. Under the new order, the Bank of Spain did not enjoy the traditional supremacy of its predecessors and experienced the pressure from the competitors, i.e., the Credit Societies, which under this denomination were authentic private banks. On the other hand, the Bank had to learn to assume some opposition to their management, administration and accounting criteria in the shareholders’ meetings. This opposition constitutes properly the subject of the paper as seen above.

Comentario sobre el libro de Amedeo Lepore: Nuove metodologie per la storia economica. Fonti elettroniche e telematiche, Dipartimento di Studi Europei Giuspubblicistici e Storico-Economici dell'Università di Bari, Napoli: Giannini Editore, 2007.

a tesis es el fruto de varios años de investigación de archivo que bajo el título de: “Las obras reales de la Alhambra en el siglo XVI: un estudio de los libros de cuentas de los pagadores Ceprián y Gaspar de León (1528-1627)” se intenta dar una visión novedosa de la historia de la ciudadela de la Alhambra teniendo como base dos libros contables. Informa de una etapa fundamental para el estudio de la Alhambra durante el siglo XVI y primer cuarto del siglo XVII, como paso de la ciudad palatina del sultanato nazarí a un mantenimiento administrativo y jurídico, considerándola fortaleza, ciudadela y Sitio Realindependiente de la ciudad de Granada y directamente dependiente de las decisiones reales. La tesis persigue varios objetivos que dan a conocer el funcionamiento de la administración de las obras de la Alhambra; el sistema contable y los oficiales que estaban implicados en la gestión de ellas; el sistema contable empleado que, a su vez, tuvo un carácter inspector del buen funcionamiento de las cuentas; se analizan las Ordenanzas que normalizan los requisitos para llevarlas a cabo por parte de la administración castellana para conocer sus dominios y por ellas se conocen las obligaciones de cada uno de los oficiales, gestores y obreros que dependían laboralmente de la Corona.

This study aims to understand the importance and scope of the municipal accounting reform developed from 1842 to 1849 by Costa Cabral, Portuguese Minister of the Kingdom (1842-1846, 1849-1851) and Prime Minister (1849-1851), analysing its content, effective application, the impact it had on Portuguese municipal accounting and how it contributed to a greater link between the local government and the central government. To this end, we present a brief analysis of the economic, social and political context of the 1840s and the transformations then operated at the administrative and fiscal level with an impact on municipal accounting; the literature review regarding municipal accounting, especially from the 19th century; the historical sources used and the methodology adopted; the nature of Costa Cabral's 1849 Instructions on municipal accounting, its application and importance, seeking to detect changes and the factors behind them. We conclude that the Portuguese State, by defining the regulation for itself and for the organizations that depended on it, intervened, innovated and disseminated the accounting transformations carried out with the 1849 Instructions, seeking to integrate municipalities into the national accounting system as a whole, in a clear exercise of power, in a political context of legal imposition and lack of revenues, but also within a cultural and technical context of modernization, rationality and efficiency of municipal services. Submitting municipalities to common procedures and practices, as well as to the same obligations, is a remarkable achievement.

The Spanish aristocratic estates were one of the more important private economic organizations in the country, al least until 19th century. In spite of this, there is yet a lack of research works on accounting history of the Spanish Aristocratic estates. This paper deals with accounting used in the Osuna’s ducal estate, one of the bigger Spanish aristocratic estates. The Crown seized the patrimony of the ducal estate in 1590 due to high level of indebtedness and the problems to pay accurately to their creditors. This kind of financial problems were not exclusive of the Osuna’s ducal estate but usual in other Spanish aristocratic organizations in that period. However, the availability of primary sources just allows starting the study with the accounts reported in 1594 but related to 1591. This period covers until 1633. The king decided to give back to the dukes the management of their patrimony in that year in spite of the problem of indebtedness had not been solved but, on the contrary, had increased. The paper bases on the primary sources kept in the Municipal Archive of Osuna and in the Nobility Section of the National Historic Archive. The study of these sources allows the description of several accounting documentation coming from the period 1594-1633, overall, the accounts reported by the collectors of the ducal patrimony in different villages of Andalusia. After studying the documents we can assert that the main role played by accounting in the Osuna’s ducal estate during those years were the rendering of accounts of the organisation’s agents. The aim of the accounts was to calculate the balance, creditor or debtor, of these agents face to the ducal estate. The method used to reach this objective was the charge and discharge as usual in other great organizations of this period. On the other hand, we can conclude that accounting did not play an important role in the decision-making of the management of the seized patrimony nor there relevant changes in the accounting informative flows of the organisation during the period of the seizure.

In the 19th century, the Spanish charity system still followed the model defended by Enlightenment thinkers: charity understood as the wish to solve the situation of those in need, which overcame the former concept bound more to the salvation of those who practiced charity. This concept of “Enlightenment” charity was supported in the 19th century and it was the framework where different initiatives regarding care were developed, such as the creation and maintenance of hospitals and hospices. In this work, we study the hospital system in the province of Albacete, particularly San Julián Hospital in the period from 1838 to 1859 when it was managed by the Municipal Council of Charity. We have analysed the accounting of this institution which was based on the so-called “cargo y data” system, although there are records of double-entry bookkeeping since the end of the 13th century. The procedure consisted in comparing   collection effected, derived from different income sources, with payments of expenses in a General Account which informed about the treasury of the hospital. Information has been analysed by means of a database, statistically arranged, that reveals the type of income and expenses that, on average, represented relatively the most important of all the full amounts, as well as those amounts that reached maximum and minimum values during the studied period. We have aimed to assess the hospital management during those years as well as analyse the accounting information system of the Hospital. The accounting system consisted of a collections and payments register, where the first were a higher figure than the latter. In fact, from 1846 there was a surplus or positive balance to the order of the hospital, which favoured management improvement.  

Concesión del Premio Enrique Fernández Peña de Historia de la Contabilidad 2008

This article examines the characteristics of the Africanist ideology in the novel Afrique, afrique (Marchal, 1983). In the first part, it addresses how this ideology understood Central Africa, namely by reducing the complexity of reality to a few general characteristics. Then it examines how the post-independence expressions of the Africanist Text rely on metonymy and synecdoche as a way of describing the main ethnicities of Rwanda and Burundi. Regardless of their institutional status, symbolic goods written after independence reproduce colonial knowledge without questioning it. In the last part, this article explores the consequences of this continuity by drawing on Ricœur’s reflections on manipulated forgetting.

For more than 40 years, the presidents of the V French Republic have lent themselves to a televised interview on July 14. A highly formal interaction situation, with rigid functional-discursive roles and with the matters of greatest interest to the State and Government on the agenda. We could expect from them a satisfactory fulfillment of conversational cooperation and the mitigation of threats to the image of the interviewee. However, in two interviews analyzed with Jacques Chirac and François Hollande, we find episodes of counter-argument, more typical of the debate than of the interview. The purpose of this work is to describe this practice of discursive pressure from the tools of Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis.