Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
occurring in Spain since Franco. In the more dynamic regions of Spain, local
enterprise has seen cooperation between local firms and local government since
1978, and the creation of the 17 Spanish regions (Vasquez Barquero 1986).
There has been a partial dismantling of central control, and the initiative in
regional development has passed from Madrid to regional centres like Barcelona
or to lower levels like the municipalities.
Regional planning
Compared with that of the UK, regional planning in Spain has been of lesser
significance and little impact. The equalization of interregional differences, taken
to be the main aim of policy in British regional planning, was never set as a
central target in Spain. If it had been, the efforts would have had to concentrate
on the south, the area of greatest poverty, with a large farming population and
many landless labourers. This was the object of reform attempted by the civilian
government of 1932-3, which would have carried through a complete agrarian
reform. This proposal so antagonized local landowners and their supporters in
the military that it was a major trigger for the Civil War in Spain.
Instead, the Franco government eventually turned to a different approach
based on the French model of growth poles. Twelve intermediate cities were
established as poles from 1964, with their aim being the simple one of
decentralizing industrial growth away from Madrid and Barcelona (Richardson
1975). The list of poles is: Burgos, Huelva, La Coruña, Seville, Valladolid, Vigo
and Zaragoza, all nominated in 1964; and Granada, Cordoba, Oviedo, Logroño,
and Villagarcia de Arosa, in the years from 1970 to 1972. These were not located
in the poorest provinces, but mostly intermediate ones. They offered some pre-
existing industrial development, and lay on important development axes either in
existence or planned.
At each of the poles, a set of financial incentives was put in place to encourage
new firms to establish themselves. The duration of special conditions was
originally only five years, but had to be adjusted to ten to achieve any results.
Tax relief on profits for the early years, subsidy on capital investments, tax
remission on imports needed to set up the firm, and preference in obtaining
official credit, all brought in footloose industries. This was, however, insufficient
to offset general trends which meant that the pole provinces lost their share of
Spanish manufacturing, falling from 19.5 per cent in 1962, to 18.8 per cent by
1975 (Mendez Gutierrez del Valle 1990). Richardson (1975) made some
estimates of the effectiveness of the poles in transmitting growth to their
surrounding areas, and found generally poor results. Seventy per cent of
purchases by pole firms, and 80 per cent of sales, were outside the pole's own
province.
More importantly, the investment made in the poles policy was insufficient to
offset the macroeconomic attractions of Spain as a site for MNCS to set up in
the 1960s, and the big cities were the obvious target for these, with their better
