Culture is an indispensable element for the development of intellectual capacities and quality of life, a citizenship factor and pivotal tool for a critical understanding and knowledge of reality.
 
The Ministry of Culture is the government department whose job is to pursue a global and coordinated policy in the area of Culture and related fields.  Although it does not fall to the state to organize, much less control, cultural life, it is competent upon it, without any dirigisme, to stimulate, support and promote actions that foster people’s access to new cultural opportunities as well as to the pluralism of cultural creation. It has, therefore, as its mission, to improve the conditions of access for citizens to Culture and, at the same time, to uphold and safeguard cultural heritage, encouraging new modalities for its knowledge and fruition.

The role of the Ministry of Culture entails it being particularly accountable for the major infrastructures that are indispensable for developing a coherent, consistent and effective cultural policy, without prejudice to its commitment to enhance the diversity of cultural initiatives undertaken within civil society and, likewise, to stimulate forms of cooperation not only with the local and regional authorities but also with private agents and with citizens in general.  

Currently, the Ministry of Culture is promoting the implementation of the Programme of the XVII Constitutional Government and of the Major Policy Options of the Plan for Culture, within a constitutional precept enshrining the democratization of Culture and the right of access to, and fruition of, cultural property, and the recognition of the role of Culture in the affirmation and enrichment of national identity.

It characterizes state intervention in the field of artistic creation as predominantly focused on regulating and structuring the fundamental conditions for the exercise of artistic activity and as a catalyst and promoter of adequate integrated policies for its development.

At a time when new challenges arise, with the emergence  of the so-called Information Society, and in the context of the reforms of the Central State Administration developed by the XVII Constitutional Government, the Ministry of Culture has carried out the restructuring of its set-up which involved merging several bodies under its tutelage and redefining the responsibilities of new bodies which, by enjoying high functional autonomy and being able to guarantee the necessary cross-sectoral linkage, can meet public needs with growing efficiency and efficacy.