Miquel Roman

A continuació teniu un article publicat per The Economist -i que m’ha fet arribar Josep Farreny– sobre el perill de trencament d’Espanya. Quin drama …

The Spanish centrifuge

Mar 1st 2007 | MADRID From The Economist print edition

Madrid is losing its grip, even if Spain is not yet a federation NOT since the last Moorish ruler, Boabdil, quit Granada in 1492, after 781 years of Muslim rule in al-Andalus, has anything like an Andalusian nation existed. But a new charter of autonomy gives Andalusia a "nationality", and even a "millennium-long" history. It has provoked surprisingly little passion in the home of flamenco, Don Juan and Carmen. Barely a third of Andalusians bothered to vote in the referendum that said yes to the charter.

Both the ruling Socialists and the opposition People’s Party were in favour.

The new charter demonstrates the growing power of the 17 autonomous regions  into which Spain divided itself after Franco. Although the country is not a federation, it increasingly looks like one. Spain is one of Europe’s most decentralised states-more than some overtly federal ones, says Francisco Balaguer, at Granada University. The regions control some 36% of public spending. Ministries in Madrid are seeing their budgets dwindle fast.

Andalusia is the third region (after Valencia and Catalonia) to get a  revised charter since the federalism-friendly prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, came to office in 2004. Others, like Galicia and the Basque country, should follow later. By the end of his (hoped-for) second term in 2012, Mr Zapatero wants to have all 17 regions fitted out with new charters. The opposition is officially against, but their local chiefs, like politicians anywhere, rarely dislike extra power.

The new charters combine bureaucratic detail with romantic verbosity. Local preferences loom large: the Catalans want to protect their language; left-leaning Andalusians want free school textbooks, publicly financed flamenco and equal numbers of men and women on public bodies. But some features are common, especially the paeans of praise for distinctiveness, cultural and historical.

There is confusion too. Should the government divide the pie by size, population or wealth? Each region offers reasons why it should be high up the pecking order. So far, Catalonia has been the pushiest and most successful. Others want to catch up. All charters must be vetted by the Madrid parliament, which tends to water them down. The Constitutional Court might yet strike out bits of the Catalan charter.

Nor do the charters give any right of secession, much as some Basques and Catalans would like one. Words are carefully chosen: Andalusia is a "nationality", not a "nation". The Catalans’ charter admits that, although they think of themselves as being a nation, the rest of Spain does not.

Tussles over centralism have bedevilled Spanish politics since Boabdil’s  last sigh. Some worry about cost and the creation of new boondoggles for public officials. Others fear that autonomy will lead inexorably to separation. But for now most voters seem not to care that much.