A concise overview is provided of the history of evaluation, focusing on educational evaluation, followed by some observations on program evaluation in Spain and possible future developments. Evaluation was a new concept in Spain at the end of the Franco era, at a time when its development was beginning to gain momentum in the United States. The evolution of evaluation in Spain has been conditioned by the political climate and the relationships between central and regional governments, the absence of a participatory tradition, the lack of evaluation specialists, and the need to balance individual and collective rights. The evaluation model that has to be developed in Spain must be fundamentally based on negotiation. Evaluation should be interpreted as a negotiation process that facilitates deeper understanding of all audiences of the object to be evaluated. The challenges in Spain will be to facilitate the professional work of evaluators so that evaluation can contribute to the democratic structure of society and to increase efficiency in organizational functioning by establishing more participatory models. (Contains nine references.) (SLD)