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In this paper Joseba Agirreazkuenaga gives an account of the workings of the representative institutions—Juntas Generales—of the province of Bizkaia during the later eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth century. In this period Spain as a whole was being transformed into a modern liberal society, Bizkaia followed the national trend slowly and reluctantly. The paper outlines the social, economic and political situation in Bizkaia over the period and then describes the stages by which the traditional, corporative system of representation was modernised. This was a prolonged process in face of a powerful and entrenched traditionalist resistance, so that a major reform implemented in 1854 maintained much of the old structure, which continued in place until liberal reforms, dictated from Madrid, converted the Juntas Generales into a modern parliament after 1872.
