Redirected from Spain/autonomous communities
Nationalism and separatism played a big part in the Spanish transition[?]. To appease these forces, the development of the Spanish Constitution of 1978[?] establishes a highly decentralized[?] State comparing with the previous Francoist regime. While not forming a federation or confederation, Spanish regions are more powerful than most in Europe. The Constitution distinguishes "historic" or "fast-track" communities (Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia) and the "slow-track" rest. The historic ones have received initially more functions.
The distribution of competences is different for every community, collected in the autonomy statuses. For example, the Basque Country has a full-range police force (Ertzaintza[?]) of their own. Other communities have a limited-bailiwick one or none at all. Another example: The Basque Country and Navarre collect taxes and agree with the Spanish government their total quota. The rest receive according to the transferred functions.
There has been a tendence for "slow-track" communities to aspire to the function range of their elder. Even in communities without a separatist tradition, the local branches of parties fight for more power and budgets. This was dubbed the café para todos[?] ("coffee for everybody") policy. Current points of disagreement are tax collection and representation at institutions of the European Union.
The Spanish Constitution of 1931[?] tried to give autonomy to regions but the Spanish war[?] crushed this experiment.
The communities are:
The map is stable, though some minorities claim separate communities for León, Orihuela and Álava.
There are five places of sovereignty (plazas de soberanía) near Morocco, under direct Spanish administration:
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump