Printed in International Journal of Technology Management, 21 (7-8): 661-679, 2001.Recently Technology Foresight (TF) exercises promoted by governments are spreading all over Europe, however the forms that TF takes within each country is very diverse. First, in order to understand the importance of the policy context, as an example, we will explain the "fate and fortune" of foresight in Spain in relation to the attempts to bring it into the science and technology (S&T) policy agenda and will analyse the institutional constraints over the development of TF. The second part of this paper is related to the extent in which TF is a useful tool for policy making. We will enlighten the analysis with the use of the theory of decision making, especially in the reflection on the role of the information emerging from TF as legitimation for policy makers, but more importantly on the promising use of TF for coordination within national innovation systems.This paper has been produced in the context of the research project Foresight as a tool for the Management of Knowledge Flows and Innovation, funded by the IV R&D Framework Programme of the European Union (TSER Programme -SOE1-CT97-1056) and the III National R&D Plan (SEC-98-1539-CE).Peer reviewed