Se analiza el proceso, emergido de la Ilustración, de convivencia y sustitución de las instituciones eclesiásticas por las civiles en la acción social del Estado liberal español a lo largo del siglo XIX, marcado por el reformismo. Desde la perspectiva históricoinstitucional se analiza la interactuación de las posiciones políticas, así como los objetivos e instrumentos que actores laicos y religiosos defienden en torno a este tema y otros conexos en cada gobierno (desamortización, reforma del gobierno local, orden público). La Iglesia, hasta entonces conformadora exclusiva del modelo asistencial, y todo el esquema de poder monárquico, reaccionan y rehacen su espacio político en los nuevos poderes legislativo y judicial, al mismo tiempo que las facciones del liberalismo configuran el poder ejecutivo territorial, central y periférico, básico en el nuevo Estado. Finalmente, la Iglesia convivirá sin dejar de influir la definición, e incluso la gerencia del modelo público, que bajo la presión de la industrialización se modernizará en un contexto de democratización (formal) de la representación política.
This article analyses the process, which emerged from the Age of Enlightenment, of coexistence and the replacement of church institutions by others of a civil nature in the social action applied by the Spanish liberal state throughout the 19th century, which was heavily marked by reforming policy. The interaction of political positions, and also the targets and tools that lay and religious leaders alike defended on this subject, and others connected with each government (the sale of lands owned by the Church, local government reforms, public law and order) are studied from the historical-institutional viewpoint. The Church, up until then the only institution to provide a social welfare model, and the whole of monarchist power, reacted and reshaped their political space into the new legislative and judicial powers, at the same time as the factions of liberalism were shaping territorial, central and peripheral executive power, which was basic to the new State. Eventually, the Church was to live alongside these changes while still maintaining the power to influence, and even assume management of the public model which, under the pressures of industrialization, was to be modernized in a context of (formal) democratization of political representation.