Spain: the government decides to deepen decentralization

President of the Spanish government Pedro Sanchez, during a press conference in Trujillo, Portugal, October 28, 2021. AFP - BORJA PUIG DE LA BELLACASA

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From now on, all public bodies will be established outside the capital.

Scheduled for 2022, about fifteen new organizations whose headquarters will be located outside Madrid, which concentrates almost all the seats of public institutions. 

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With our correspondent in Madrid,

Spain is often said to be a federal country.

It is in many ways.

But as far as public institutions are concerned, apart from the Army Military Academy in Zaragoza, everything is established in Madrid.

And only in Madrid.

The socialist executive says it wants to put an end to this excessive centralization.

The government has therefore decided that, from now on, all the organizations will be distributed across the provinces.

From 2022, this will be the case for the Army Logistics Base in Cordoba, for the Energy Storage Center in Caceres, the Prison Studies Center in Cuenca, and many others.

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In the name of interior Spain

It is the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975 that a government has taken such a decentralizing decision.

In the 1980s, some had imagined the senate in Barcelona, ​​but the idea quickly fell.

This time, the Socialists are doing it in the name of the fight against the loss of speed of interior Spain, that of the countryside and small towns, victims of exodus, lack of dynamism and investment.

It is not sure that this will be enough to reverse the trend, but at least, observers say, it is a move against the omnipotence of the capital.

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• Spain

• Pedro Sanchez