CATALONIA
Broadly speaking, current studies of states that display a clear
territorial division of federal or regional powers can be situated along
five basic analytical axes, depending on the research questions that
one is attempting to answer:
a) the uninational-plurinational axis
b) the unitarianism-federalism axis
c) the centralisation-decentralisation axis
d) the symmetry-asymmetry axis
e) the competitiveness-cooperation axis
These analytical axes require a diverse battery of variables and
indicators in order to carry out comparative approaches. In order to
answer the question of the title of this brief article I will focus only
on the second and third axes (degrees of federalism and
decentralisation), giving special attention to the position of the
Spanish “Estado de las autonomías” from a comparative perspective.
Is Spain a Federal Country?
