Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
transport linkages, physical infrastructure, and large labour pools. Rather than
intermediate cities such as Huelva and Seville, designated as poles, Madrid and
Barcelona were the recipients of major inward investment.
There have been other policies with a potential regional effect, such as the INI
(Instituto Nacional de Industria), the national industrial holding company that
accumulated over 70 firms which it sought to maintain as strategic industries or
in need of temporary help. There has also been a modest agrarian reform policy.
But in Spain memories are long, and the 1930s type of agrarian reform by
expropriation, a major contributor to the Civil War, has not been attempted again.
Instead, this policy has concentrated on agricultural colonization projects, mostly
to extend irrigation agriculture on to new lands. But these actions have not been
regionally directed and have had little impact since little state investment was
put into them.
After the death of Franco, a new Constitution for Spain was formulated in
1978, which created 17 autonomous regions. The verdict on this redistribution of
power resources has not yet been given, but it may be noted that the regions are
of very uneven character, and their devolution has moved at different paces. The
strongest units with most political voice, Catalonia and the Basque Country, have
devolved further and more effectively than many smaller and less politically
identified regions such as Murcia, really only a left-over from the carve-up of the
provincial system. Decentralization also has had major costs, in the setting up of
another layer of local government, alongside the existing municipalities,
provinces and national government. Because autonomy includes substantial
control over the regional economies (Barquero & Hebbert 1985), there is also
room for greater divergence in both the style and level of regional development.
Reconstruction of old heavy industries is high on the list of priorities for the
Basque area, while new development is the aim of Andalucia. These aims may
have very different consequences, and so decentralization may be regarded as
having no particular equalizing effect.
Vasquez Barquero (1992), in another contribution on recent development,
shows how the growth of new small industry has in fact been concentrated along
the Mediterranean coast, from Gerona down to Valencia and Murcia, and in the
Balearics, where the tertiary sector has been strong and where governmental
influence of any kind has been quite low. Local municipal help and support to
new firms is of strong and rising significance for this new kind of development
thrust.
Conclusions
As commented on above, the recent regional policy in Spain has been
politicized, through the measures of decentralization undertaken after the death of
Franco. A national economic policy for regional development is now scarcely in
existence, although there are funds for transfer of tax revenues from richer
regions to poorer ones. Most of Spain gains now from European policies which are
