Publicado en B. de Villiers, comp., Evaluating federal systems, 162-193, Ciudad del Cabo y Dordrecht: Juta y Martinus Nijhoff, 1994
The political and spatial reorganization brought about by the progressive consolidation of the Spanish Estado de las Autonomías ('State of Autonomies') is in line with a model of multiple ethnoterritorial concurrence and imperfect federalism analysed in this paper. The model relates socio-political substate ethnic mobilization with the competitive interplay among Spanish regions and nationalities in pursuit of political and economic power, as well as for the achievement of legitimisation for their institutional development. A succinct review and interpretation of some of the main developments in Spain's modern history is carried out in the first section of this paper. A reference is made to the upsurge of ethnoterritorial political movements which took place in Spain during the 1970s and which coincided with a challenge to the hypercentralist state enforced by General Franco's Dictatorship. With the subsequent transition to democracy, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 adopted a quasi-federal structure more in line with the pluriethnic nature of Spanish society. The persistence of a dual self-identification expressed by citizens in the Spanish Comunidades Autónomas (nationalities and regions) is one of the main features of centre-periphery relations in democratic Spain. This 'dual identity' or 'compound nationality' incorporates -in variable proportions, individually or subjectively asserted- both state/national and ethnoterritorial identities with no apparent exclusion. It characterizes the ambivalent and dynamic nature of ethnopolitics in Spain. The Spanish model of multiple ethnoterritorial concurrence and imperfect federalism incorporates social, economic and political elements in a vigorous and heterogeneous manner. This paper reviews some of the main features which have set the type of plural competition and solidarity put into play in Spain at the turn of the millennium. The model may perhaps prove useful for other countries of a plural ethnoterritorial composition
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