This research aims to outline the cultural task of the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales de la Diputación Provincial de Barcelona, an institution created by the Francoist authorities for the study of social sciences.
Based on the analysis of the journal edited by this institution –Revista del Instituto de Ciencias Sociales– and of the information that has provided interviews with some of its main collaborators, we try to find out what were its fundamental objectives, what issues were raised and what solutions offered by the intellectuals who collaborated with this institute before the various problems of Catalan society during the Franco regime.
For many years, studies on the intellectual world have focused on the culture that made the democratic opposition to the Franco regime without paying too much attention to the culture produced from official institutions. We have chosen this work theme to know what cultural initiatives the regime took from its institutions.
Based on the fact that in the early 1960s the Government promoted the “Planes de Desarrollo” (Development Plans), we wanted to see how the governmental initiative of economic development in the field of social studies was translated intellectually, specifying this fact in one of the initiatives that was carried out from the institutions of the regime: the creation of the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales by the Barcelona provincial council, and its magazines from 1963 to 1977.
The initiative of the work responds to the interest to know the why of the creation of the Instituto, what objectives it had and the projects that were carried out in this organization. On the other hand, we wanted to know what was the motivation that pushed the edition of the magazine, what were the members of its editorial board, what intellectuals participated, under what individual ideological principles, what topics were raised, what was the content of the articles and, finally, what social studies were carried out and what perspectives and solutions the authors offered to solve the various problems that originated in society at the beginning of the 1960s.
