The spanish regional problem

If you´re spanish, have been to Spain, or you have an acquaintance from there, you may have heard something about the spanish regionalism problems or rather, the nationalisms that this country suffer from a long time ago.

Spain is one of the oldest countries of Europe, and probably of the world. That provides a lot of cultural heritage, from the people who inhabited this particular peninsula previously.

After 40 year of Franco´s regime, in 1978 the country opened up to democracy, and signed the new and current constitution which recognized a high level of freedom to all of its 17 autonomous regions.

During this period of democracy, so far have been given many concessions to almost all of its regions, but particularly more to a few of them which have regional parties that can press to the central government to get access to control things like education, police forces, etc.

Everytime there are general elections, in case the winning party don´t achieve the majority of the votes, it´s forced to negotiate with those parties which claim more concessions in exchange.

This is not negative itself. Decentralized countries can have a more effective management of its resources, but where is the limit here? Should a country give more power to its regions and become a purely symbolic institution, creating at the end small 17 different countries?

Is this a good solution for all of its population, or just beneficious to the richest regions to avoid contributing to the hole country?

Maybe now you know that I´m referring specially to Catalonia and the Basque Country, two regions with a highly level of freedom, thanks to the independentist parties that negotiate with the central government.

Many of those who vote for these parties don´t wish the independence, but they think they´ll have more investments in their regions.

Meanwhile, regions like Extremadura (with no regionalists parties that claim for their needs), are waiting for a proper train that connects them with Madrid.

This is the fee to govern Spain.