Every year, since 1991, and always in the month of June, a question has been asked about the public image of the main political and social Spanish institutions, something that has allowed to establish certain regularities and to explain some variations in time. Public image has always been measured through three different dimensions: salience (proportion of persons who evaluate each institution), evaluation (measured through the arithmetic mean of evaluations on a scale 0 to 10 points), and opinion dispersion (measured through the percent variation that the standard deviation represents over the arithmetic mean of evaluations). Thus, it has been possible to asses that The Crown has always been the best rated institution, while Political Parties have always received the lowest rating. All other institutions receive relatively stable ratings between these two, though showing variations that are usually explained through the socio-economic and political context of each survey. Thus, a certain increase in the evaluation of the more political institutions (especially the National Government) is observed after legislative elections are held (1993, 1996, 2000 and 2004) as if the electorate expected everything from the new Government established after elections. But this generalization is not met in 2008 (after the last elections), when all institutions reduce their rating, except Armed Forces, who increase even more their rating. When data for the present year 2008 are compared with those of the previous year, it may be observed that the majority of institutions have obtained lower ratings, especially the Catholic Church. It must be underlined that the three most valued institutions this month are The Crown, the Armed Forces and the Ombudsman, while the three least valued are Labour Unions, the Catholic Church and Political Parties. The National Government ranks tenth among the 13 institutions included here.

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