The Moncloa Pacts: the confidential reports of the meetings between the government and businessmen in the summer of 1977: los informes reservados de las reuniones entre gobierno y empresarios en el verano de 1977

Abstract

This article aims to shed light on the government's consultations with social agents and, in particular, with businessmen, in the months preceding the signing in October 1977 of the so-called Moncloa Pacts. The hypothesis that guides the following pages is the conviction that these meetings between members of Adolfo Suárez's government and business delegates contain important keys to the relations established between economic power and the first governments of democracy. Specifically on the influence that organized business could have exercised in areas such as income policy, the tax system or the reform of Social Security. This work is based on unpublished documentation: the confidential minutes of those meetings that were prepared by the CEOE delegates and that have been preserved in the personal archive of the former first president of the employers' association. These reports, together with other internal documents, provide us with more precise information on the issues discussed and on the attempts by the business leaders to influence the reformist agenda of the first government of the Transition elected democratically at the polls.