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This paper is devoted to a reflexion about the possible incidence of economic topics on the transformation of the State in eighteenth century Spain. Leaving apart the debate on the "modern state", it is assumed that during the eighteenth century the process of the straightening of the State (absolutism), with a long history behind it, is still going on. Pushed by their own needs or under the influence of bourgeois groups, the Spanish governments of that century made laws or modified traditional jurisdiction in favour of merchants, industrialists and their activities, hi practice they were chaging their policies towards and increase of royal absolutism. The character of the "reformas" of the time, the meaning of the term "freedom" and the study of some particular reforms and their consequences, are part of this general reflexion.