Provincial Council

Palacio de la Diputación Foral de Vizcaya, Bilbao.

In Spain, diputación foral is the name used to designate provincial councils with a foral regime and that have greater powers and political institutions that are differentiated from the rest of the councils. The provinces with a foral regime are Álava, Guipúzcoa, Navarra and Vizcaya.

Its origin is in the foral regimes or special regimes of administrative autonomy that were preserved after the first Carlist war as an exception to the centralist system typical of the liberal State established since 1836 in Spain.

Basque councils

The three Basque councils (and previously also the Navarra County Council) are known by the name of Provincial Council, since these four territories still retain part of their privileges. The Provincial Council is an executive body that reports to the General Meetings (the legislative body). The General Boards are the parliaments of each Historical Territory whose members (proxy representatives in Vizcaya, junteros in Guipúzcoa and attorneys in Álava) are elected by popular vote, which coincides with municipal elections.

Deputy General

The Provincial Council of each territory is headed by the general deputy, who is elected by the General Meetings at the beginning of the legislature. This is in charge of forming the regional government, which is made up of him, as head of the executive, and various regional deputies, as heads of each department.

Current general deputies

Historical territory	General Representative		Research	Number of departments	Parties in the Government
Álava		Ramiro González Vicente	30 June 2015	8	PNV, PSE-EE
Guipuzcoa		Markel Olano Arrese	23 June 2015	8	PNV, PSE-EE
Vizcaya		Unai Rementeria Maiz	1 July 2015	8	PNV, PSE-EE
Political parties: •Basque Nationalist Party

Competencies

The provincial councils enjoy high autonomy and power of action unlike the provincial councils, since among their powers are the collection of taxes through their own treasury, all road infrastructures, or social welfare, among others.

Provincial Council of Navarre

The Provincial Council of Navarra, which had been the Provincial Council of the Kingdom until 1839, when it became a province, after the reform of Javier de Burgos in 1833, which was ratified with the Pact Law. As of 1982, it also receives the name of the Government of Navarra, when the previous foral province became an autonomous community with a particular regime under the name of Comunidad Foral de Navarra.