Talk:Deputy Prime Minister of Spain

Problem with title and naming conventions
There is a big naming problem with this article. As you will see in the article on the Prime Minister of Spain, Spain hasn't got a President but a Prime Minister, but as in Spanish he is referred to as Presidente del Gobierno this causes a lot of confusion. Therefore, the Spanish Vicepresidente Primero actually means Vice President of the Government (not of Spain). The title is actually equivalent to that of Deputy Prime Minister. So, I think the article should be named either:


 * First Vice President of the Government (Spain)


 * First Deputy Prime Minister (Spain)


 * First Vice Prime Minister (Spain) (problem with this one: no such position exists anywhere as far as I know)

For the time being I'm going to change the heading of the list to "List of First Vice Presidents of the Government of Spain". I'm also going to extend it with content from the Spanish article and explain the terminology slightly.

Does anyone know how to change the name of the article (a redirect would be kept, of course)? Which of the three options (or any others) do you think is most appropiate? --Daniel Medina 16:18, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unless Spain has become a Republic, the article should be called Deputy Prime Minister of Spain. GoodDay (talk) 17:35, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I am Spanish and I'll try to help you to resolve this conundrum. Spain is a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, as most people know and the Head of State is the Sovereign, just like in The UK. Our "Presidente del Gobierno" has similar functions to many Head of Governments in parliamentary state and that figure, in English, is called "Prime Minister".

When we refer to David Cameron we say "Primer Ministro" (Primer Minister) even though the less traveled and less cultured people refer to any foreign highest politic authority as "Presidente" (President), e.g. the less cultured here say that Obama (POTUS), Hollande (President of France) and David Cameron (British PM) are Presidents, as well as they would say the same of any Prime Minister (Head of Government) in a parliamentary republic like Matteo Renzi in Italy, Alexis Tsipras in Greece and Antonio Costa in Portugal. Recall that Italy, Greece and Portugal are parliamentary republics having a President (Head of State) which does not coincide with the Head of Government.

What I want to express is that the most accepted and non-misleading form to refer to any Head of Government is "Prime Minister" while we retain the voice "Presidente del Gobierno de España" for our country. If, in English, you refer to our Presidente as "President", I think you will mislead a lot of people who could think thereof that Spain is a republic, but it is not.

As a piece of cake I share with you that this mess (I think it is a nominal mess) is inherited from Francoist Spain. After Franco's side won the Spanish Civil War in 1939, Franco was proclaimed by his supporters as Generalissimo and Head of State, and there was no Head of the Government. Meanwhile, Franco himself he presided every cabinet (formed by himself and the ministers) and had also functions of Head of Government. In 1970 he named a Head of the Government to assume Franco's executive ordinary functions and since he didn't want to transmit the idea that there were any minister more impotant than others, he named him "Presidente del Gobierno" in order to stress that he was the person who presided the government and not anything similar to a heir. This Presidente del Gobierno had a Vice President, who was actually a Deputy Prime Minister.

Another historical example was the Second Spanish Republic, in which the Head of State was called "Presidente de la República" (President of the Republic) while the Head of Government had the title of "Presidente del Gobierno" (President of the Government) because having two "Presidents" gave an idea of balance of power between the executive power held by the President of the Republic and the leader of the legislative power (the President of the Government). Years later many Spanish still wonder why this did not work... Sam10rc (talk) 02:05, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

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