Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Regionalism – Spain'

In recent years, flamenco has been consolidated as a prominent symbol of regional identity in Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain. In the late 1970s, Spain began to decentralise into seventeen autonomous regions. As a result, each region has been encouraged to foreground its own culture vis-à-vis national culture. Although associated with Spain in general, flamenco has fulfilled the role of regional identity building in Andalusia. Increasingly, the Andalusian Government has focused attention on the development of flamenco within and outside of the region. In this thesis, I explore this relationship between flamenco and regional identity in Andalusia. In doing so, I draw upon the theoretical tenets of political geography. Through scholarly exchange, I argue that political geographers and ethnomusicologists can learn much about the relationship between music and regional identity. I use flamenco as a pertinent case study of this relationship in the European context. In particular, I discuss the role that governmental institutions play in the ‘regionalisation’ (Schrijver 2006) of flamenco (that is, the institutional development of flamenco as an ‘official’ symbol of regional identity). However, I argue that at times the regionalisation process can be disputed and subverted. Accordingly, I contend that regionalism (that is, the bottom-up identification with a region) in Andalusia is a fragmented concept. By examining the contexts, the discourses and the styles associated with flamenco, I present alternative readings of regionalism in Andalusia. Drawing upon virtual ethnography and traditional ethnography in Granada, I examine the reception and the production of flamenco at a local level as well as at a regional level. Arguably, some flamenco scholars present a somewhat rigid understanding of the relationship between flamenco and regional identity. By offering different readings of regionalism through flamenco, I reveal the complex and contested relationship between flamenco and identity in southern Spain.

Aquesta tesi doctoral està centrada en el funcionament dels partits d'àmbit estatal (PAES) en estats compostos a través de tres perspectives desenvolupades en quatre capítols: la dimensió orgànica, la institucional i l’electoral. Els PAE que operen en un context institucional multinivell han de fer front a una nova realitat política que modifica el seu funcionament ordinari, tant a les institucions de govern i oposició com en el funcionament orgànic i electoral del partit. Operar en estat compost implica per als partits la necessitat d’establir uns espais de decisió interna entre el partit i les organitzacions territorials del mateix partit, però també pot implicar donar respostes a l’aparició d’arenes electorals diverses, fent front a electorats que competeixen en clivelles electorals diverses i Partits d’Àmbit No Estatal que reclamen nous mecanismes d’autogovern o de govern compartit amb l’Estat. Aquest context ha contribuït al sorgiment d’una literatura que connecta la influència de l’element territorial en els partits. Concretament, durant la dècada dels 2000 s’han donat les primeres passes en la incidència de la descentraltizació en les estructures orgàniques i els mecanismes de decisió interna; l’impacte en l’arena electoral i l’evolució dels sistemes de partits en diversos nivells territorials. Aquest treball es desenvolupa seguint el camí iniciat durant la dècada dels 2000, amb l’interès de conceptualització aquesta qüestió, a través de l’anàlisi de continguts empírics en funció d’estudis de cas enfocats al cas del PSOE. Aquesta tesi contribueix a aquest debat presentant quatre capitols que adrecen la qüestió de com s’adapten els PAES, i més concretament el PSOE, a un context multinivell. La tesi analitza el període 2003-2011 i planteja els mecanismes que contribueixen a que les seccions subestatals dels PAES puguin dur a terme estratègies pròpies.
This doctoral thesis is focused on how Statewide Parties (SWP) operate in compound states. SWP operating in multi-level institutional contexts need to face a new political reality that modifies their regular activity. In this thesis three dimensions are considered in the four chapters, not including the conclusions: the organic dimension; the electoral dimension and the institutional one. Parties operating in a compound state need to stablish intern decision-making rules between the central organization and the regional branches of the organization. But it needs to find out new responses regarding the plurality of electoral arenas, confronting Non Statewide Parties claiming for more self-rule or share-rule dynamics. This context has fostered the proliferation of literature connecting the effect of the territorial issue on parties. More specifically, during the 2000s literature has paid attention on the effect of political decentralization on organic structures of the party, including intern decision-making; the impact on the electoral arena and the evolution of party systems on a plurality of territorial levels. This thesis responds to the literature on this question by presenting both conceptual and empirical contents on this topic. This doctoral thesis addresses the conceptual and empirical debate by presenting four chapters addressing this topic. The thesis addresses the mechanisms affecting the capacity of substate PSOE branches to develop their own strategies. The thesis focuses the analysis on an eight years period (2003-2011), including a comparative paper of the Statewide Parties capacity to drive to modify the Italian and Spanish Territorial Models.

Soil and freshwater are two absolutely essential resources for ecosystems and humanity. Agriculture depends very much on these resources, and so, without their correct management, farmland practices can trigger many adverse impacts on the environment and jeopardise the availability of soil and water for future agricultural activities. Agricultural lands represent only 12% of the world’s land area. However, roughly 70% of water withdrawals from nature are for irrigated agriculture and 30-40% of the agricultural land is affected by soil degradation. Desertification, irreversible soil degradation, is one of the main problems for sustainability in drylands, areas that cover 40% of the earth’s surface. For these reasons, the environmental impacts of the use of water and land by agricultural activities should be measured. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method to construct the environmental profile of production systems. It was initially developed for industrial production, but a considerable amount of research has been undertaken in recent years to adapt LCA to agricultural systems as well. Conventional LCA methodology does not determine the environmental impacts of water and land use, which is a very significant shortcoming when evaluating the environmental performance of agricultural systems. Furthermore, contrary to other global environmental impact categories such as global warming, the environmental impacts of water and land use vary in every location of the globe, depending on the spatio-temporal conditions of the location, requiring therefore an extension of current LCA methodology. This thesis focuses on the development of the LCA methodology to incorporate the environmental impacts arising from the use of water and land. The spatio-temporal variability of these resources is taken into account in the proposed methods using the complementary tool of geographic information systems (GIS). For water use, two screening frameworks are built to capture the impacts of soil-water consumption by plants, when, until now, efforts have been directed towards evaluating the environmental impacts of irrigation water consumption. For land use, a multi-indicator approach for a new impact category, desertification, until now never modelled in the LCA context, is provided, as well as a methodology for including soil erosion impacts, in which the soil loss has been related to the loss of organic carbon, as a measure of the soil quality, and finally, to the loss of biomass productivity of ecosystems. The methods developed deal with the life cycle inventory (LCI) and the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phases. In addition, to verify the applicability of the developed location-dependent methods and characterisation factors, these are applied to agricultural crop rotations with energy crops growing in Spain, with the aim of quantifying the side effects of producing bioenergy on the disputed water and land resources in the country. The outcomes indicate that there is no best solution of a single crop rotation grown in a specific location capable of minimising water and land use environmental impacts simultaneously. This is because, firstly, rainfed crop rotations exhibit higher land use related impacts but, in contrast, they are not irrigated. And secondly, locations with more surface, ground and soil water reserves are subjected to more intensive and erosive rainfalls, thus, to higher land use damages. Among other important follow-up lines of research, future work should focus on the study of suitable functional units for agricultural LCA, calculate the uncertainties of the developed methods as well as try to identify a feasible and relevant geographical scale at which to address the spatial differentiation of the characterisation factors for water and land use impacts, and in general, for any location-dependent impact category.
Suelo y agua dulce son dos recursos imprescindibles para los ecosistemas y la humanidad. La agricultura depende de la disponibilidad de estos recursos, que por tanto, debe gestionar correctamente. En caso contrario, las prácticas agrícolas pueden provocar impactos adversos en el medio ambiente y poner en peligro la disponibilidad de suelo y agua para futuras actividades agrícolas. Los suelos agrícolas representan sólo el 12% de la superficie terrestre mundial. Sin embargo, aproximadamente el 70% de las extracciones de agua de la naturaleza se utilizan en la agricultura de irrigación y el 30-40% de los suelos destinados a la agricultura están degradados. La desertificación, entendida como la degradación irreversible del suelo, es uno de los mayores problemas para la sostenibilidad de las tierras áridas, áreas que cubren el 40% de la superficie terrestre. Por estos motivos, deben evaluarse los impactos ambientales debidos al uso del suelo y del agua en la agricultura. El análisis de ciclo de vida (ACV) es un método para evaluar el perfil ambiental de sistemas productivos. El ACV se desarrolló inicialmente para estudiar la producción industrial, pero en los últimos años la investigación se ha dirigido a la adaptación del método para poder aplicarlo también en los sistemas agrícolas. La metodología convencional de ACV no determina los impactos ambientales debidos al uso del suelo y del agua, siendo ésta una importante deficiencia para evaluar el perfil ambiental de los sistemas agrícolas. Además, al contrario de otras categorías de impacto ambiental global, como el calentamiento global, los impactos ambientales derivados del uso del suelo y del agua son distintos en cada lugar del planeta, en función de las condiciones espacio-temporales del sitio. Por tanto, es necesario extender la metodología actual de ACV. Esta tesis se centra en el desarrollo de la metodología de ACV para incorporar los impactos ambientales resultantes del uso del suelo y del agua. La variabilidad espacio-temporal de estos recursos se tiene en cuenta en los métodos propuestos utilizando la herramienta complementaria de los sistemas de información geográfica (SIG). Para el uso del agua, se presentan dos métodos de aproximación para medir los impactos debidos al consumo de agua de las reservas del suelo, cuando, hasta la fecha, los estudios han intentado evaluar los impactos ambientales debidos al consumo de agua para la irrigación. Para el uso del suelo, se propone una aproximación multi-indicador para modelar el impacto de la desertificación, una categoría nunca antes incluida en ACV, así como una metodología para incluir los impactos de la erosión del suelo, donde la pérdida de suelo se relaciona con la pérdida de carbono orgánico, como medida de la calidad del suelo, y finalmente, con la disminución de producción de biomasa de los ecosistemas. Los métodos desarrollados comprenden las fases de inventario de ciclo de vida (ICV) y de evaluación de impacto de ciclo de vida (EICV). Además, para comprobar la aplicabilidad de los métodos regionalizados de ACV y de los factores de caracterización desarrollados, estos se aplican en rotaciones de cultivos con cultivos energéticos en España, con el objetivo de cuantificar los efectos colaterales de producir bioenergía sobre los recursos suelo y agua, muy disputados en el país. Los resultados revelan que no hay una solución idónea, con una rotación de cultivos sembrados en una zona específica del país, que sea capaz de reducir, simultáneamente, los impactos ambientales debidos al uso de suelo y agua. Esto se debe, en primer lugar, a que los cultivos de secano muestran mayores impactos relacionados con el uso del suelo, pero, al contrario, no utilizan agua de irrigación. Y en segundo lugar, a que las zonas con más reservas de agua en superficie, acuíferos y suelos están también sometidas a lluvias más intensas y erosivas, y en consecuencia, a un mayor deterioro del suelo. Entre otras importantes líneas de investigación a seguir, próximos trabajos deben centrarse en el estudio de unidades funcionales adecuadas para el ACV de sistemas agrícolas, el cálculo de las incertidumbres de los métodos desarrollados en la tesis, así como en la identificación de una escala geográfica significativa y de aplicación factible que aborde la diferenciación espacial de los factores de caracterización para los impactos del uso del suelo y del agua, y, en general, para cualquier categoría de impacto ambiental regional.

Les transcriptions des strophes des chants flamencos soulèvent des problèmes liés à leurs spécificités linguistiques et à leur portée symbolique. Cette thèse propose d’étudier les représentations phonologiques sous-jacentes aux graphies des premiers recueils consacrés à ce type de chants, publiés en Espagne entre la fin du XIXe et le début du XXe siècle. Ces graphies extra-normatives sont envisagées selon trois perspectives différentes et complémentaires : métalinguistique, historico-culturelle et historico-épistémologique.Les systèmes de transcription étudiés supposent des phonologies, donc des discours sur la langue, qui se rattachent aux diverses représentations culturelles sur le « peuple andalou » véhiculées dans ces mêmes ouvrages. Celles-ci sont analysées dans le contexte mouvementé de réorganisation politique et sociale – et de quête identitaire et symbolique – qui avait lieu en Espagne et dans ses régions à l’époque en question. On étudie donc le rôle qu’ont joué les folkloristes espagnols dans la recherche des particularités andalouses.L’élaboration de ces systèmes de transcription s’est faite dans un cadre scientifique caractérisé par l’institutionnalisation des études folkloriques, en Espagne comme ailleurs en Europe, et par l’émergence de nouveaux savoirs en linguistique. Linguistes européens et folkloristes espagnols échangeaient idées et matériaux, non sans engendrer des erreurs d’interprétation qui ont perduré pendant plusieurs décennies.De la sorte, les représentations linguistiques sous-jacentes acquièrent le statut de prototypies, participant à des constructions culturelles et légitimées par leur rattachement à un réseau scientifique international et interdisciplinaire
The transcription of flamenco songs raise various issues connected to their linguistic features and their symbolic value. This thesis addresses the phonological representations underlying the written forms found in the first collections, published in Spain between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. We approach these non-orthographical spellings from three different and complementary perspectives: a metalinguistic one, a cultural-historical one, and an epistemological-historical one.They imply phonological descriptions of the language of flamenco songs that are linked to different cultural representations about the “Andalusian people” conveyed by the authors themselves. These cultural representations are studied in the tumultuous context of the social and political reorganization and the symbolic and identity-related search that took place in Spain both at a national and at regional or local level at that time. Thus, this work focuses on the role played by the Spanish folklorists in the search for Andalusian peculiarities.The establishment of these transcription systems emanated from a scientific framework featuring the institutionalization of folk-studies in Spain and Europe, and the rise of new knowledge areas in linguistics. European linguists and Spanish folklorists shared ideas and materials, a process that led to some misunderstandings that were perpetrated through the following decades.In this way, the underlying linguistic representations acquire the status of prototypes, that participate to cultural constructions and that are legitimated by their connection to an international and interdisciplinary scientific network
Las transcripciones de las letras de los cantes flamencos plantean problemas vinculados a sus particularidades lingüísticas y a su valor simbólico. Esta tesis se propone estudiar las representaciones fonológicas subyacentes a las grafías de las primeras colecciones de este tipo de cantos, publicadas en España entre finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. Se contemplan estas grafías extra-normativas bajo tres perspectivas diferentes y complementarias: la metalingüística, la histórico-cultural y la histórico-epistemológica.Estas transcripciones suponen fonologías, esto es, discursos sobre la lengua que están relacionados con las diferentes representaciones culturales sobre el “pueblo andaluz” concebidas en las mismas obras. Éstas son examinadas en el marco tumultuoso de la reorganización política y social y de la búsqueda identitaria y simbólica que se registra en España y sus regiones en la época mencionada. Por lo tanto, se estudia el papel que desempeñaron los folkloristas españoles en la búsqueda de las especificidades andaluzas.La elaboración de estos sistemas de transcripción se hizo en un marco científico caracterizado por la institucionalización de los estudios folklóricos, tanto en España como en el resto de Europa, y por la aparición de nuevas áreas de conocimiento en lingüística. Lingüistas europeos y folkloristas españoles se intercambiaban ideas y materiales, generando a veces errores de interpretación que persistieron durante varias décadas.De este modo, dichas representaciones lingüísticas adquieren la condición de prototipos que participan a las construcciones culturales y son legitimados por su vínculo a un marco científico internacional e interdisciplinar

This work is set around three empirical papers concerned with the political foundations and consequences of trust among people. The first one addresses the question of how trust evolves and whether this is shaped by life-events related to economic shocks vis-à-vis experiences related to the individual engagement in civic life and to the institutional environment. The second paper turns the attention to the characteristics of the partner involved in the interaction investigating how intergroup political conflicts affect social cooperation and trust. This allows assessing whether heuristics about political group membership and identities shape the individual trust radius. The third paper considers, instead, the consequences of trust addressing whether it favors involvement in unconventional political participation, a still understudied relationship. This is done also accounting for other selective and collective incentives. Overall, this thesis offers a novel approach and new evidences on both political origins and implications of trust among people.
Este trabajo de tesis consta de tres artículos empíricos sobre las orígenes y las consecuencias políticas de confianza social. El primer articulo se propone investigar la cuestión esencial de cómo se forma confianza social y si esta es el resultado de shocks económicos, frente a experiencias relacionadas con la participación en la vida cívica o el contexto institucional. El segundo articulo se centra en la interacción de confianza entre individuos investigando cómo los conflictos políticos entre grupos afectan la confianza y la cooperación entre individuos. Esto nos permite evaluar si los individuos emplean heurísticos cognitivos e identidades sociales y políticas y si estos afectan al perímetro de la confianza social. En fin, el tercer articulo estudia las consecuencias políticas de confianza social analizando como esta influye en la participación política en formas no convencionales de protesta, en el marco de una teoría de los incentivos selectivos y colectivos, una discusión que sigue abierta en la literatura científica. En general, este trabajo de tesis se propone ofrecer nuevas evidencias empíricas sobre las orígenes y las implicaciones de la confianza social entre personas a través de soluciones metodológicas innovadoras.

Defence date: 5 December 2005
Examining board: Prof. Iñaki Aguirre Zabala, Departemento de Derecho Internacional Público, Relaciones Internacionales e Historia del Derecho y de las Instituciones, UPV/EHU ; Prof. Leonardo Morlino, Dipartimento di Scienze della Politica e Sociologia, Università degli Studi di Firenze ; Prof. Friedrich Kratochwil, Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute ; Prof. Michael Keating, Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute (Supervisor)
First made available online 9 September 2016

Defence date: 12 September 2005
Examining board: Prof. Bo Stråth, European University Institute (Supervisor) ; Prof. Michael Keating, European University Institute (Second Supervisor) ; Prof. Enric Ucelay-Da Cal, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ; Prof. David McCrone, University of Edinburgh
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 6 November 2000
Examining board: Prof. Yves Mény (EUI-Supervisor) ; Prof. Michael Keating (EUI) ; Prof. Luis Moreno (Consejo Superiori de Investigaciones Científicas) ; Prof. Juan Subirats (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Diploma thesis "The role of regional political parties within the Spanish political scene in the period of 1993-2010" presents an analysis of the role of Spanish regional political parties, which play within the national political scene since 1993. The preliminary chapter of this thesis provides a brief description of the contemporary Spanish political system, the regional organization of Spain and the Spanish electoral system, which has considerable influence especially on the party system. I consider this general introduction relevant and important for a better understanding of the whole issue. The next section is devoted to the Spanish party system, its development, the typology and the main national political parties. Here I come to the conclusion that due to the specific configuration of the electoral system in Spain happens relatively complicated interpenetration of the national party system with the regional party systems. The final and the most important chapter deals with the regional political parties, which after 1993 came to the Spanish parliament, and especially about those that have influence on the government formation and the government policy. At the beginning of this chapter I define the regional political party, the regionalist and the nationalist political party and I try to...

Diplomová práce Analýza španělského modelu asymetrického regionalismu ~ 1 ~ Summary The masterʼs degree thesis "Spanish Model of Asymmetric Regionalism: An Analysis" deals with the concept of political-administrative division of a state, which has been typical of the Kingdom of Spain. The masterʼs degree thesis aims to profoundly analyze all the substantial aspects of this unique type of inner arrangement of a state, namely in broader (above all in legal, in historical and in political) relations. When elaborating on the topic I drew on Czech and English monographic literature (this applies both to the theoretical and to the historical part of the thesis) and on topical wordings of Spanish legal regulations; I also made use of various sources, as e.g. of professional articles online, of relevant judicial decisions, or of notes I made in Spain at lectures on Spanish constitutional law. The thesis consists of three chapters which are further divided into subchapters. In the initial theoretical chapter attention is paid to the typology of states according to their inner arrangement. The concepts such as confederation, federation, unitary state or regional state are explained here. The second chapter provides the overview of historical development of Spain (or, more exactly, of Iberian Peninsula) from the first...

Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain Abstract The diploma thesis "Regional political parties and the European Union: Case study of Spain" focuses on the area of the regional parties on the stage of the European Parliament, a subject which has not been analysed thoroughly in the past. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of this phenomenon on the case of the Spanish historical regions (Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia) which are a recognizable proof of the remarkable institutional strengthening in the framework of a regionalized unitary state. The methodology of triangulation was used for the analysis of this issue as the data of the diverse type (i.e. electoral results, party's material etc.) have been put together through different methods (as a qualitative and quantitative content analysis, deductive and comparative approaches) with the aim to reveal the complete character of the issue and to reach the objective results as possible. The study focuses on the analysis of the regional parties on the European level through their cooperation in the European federations of the political parties as well as the framework of the political groups in the European Parliament. The emphasis is also placed on the analysis of the own work of the members of the European Parliament...

Cette thèse porte sur l’évolution des relations des « nationalités historiques » espagnoles avec l’Union européenne dans les années 1992-2008. L’analyse se concentre sur la genèse d’une paradiplomatie nationaliste européenne dont l’objectif est la reconnaissance de l’identité nationale de ces communautés au sein de l’Union européenne. Après avoir obtenu une certaine reconnaissance nationale et un statut privilégié en Espagne, les élites de ces « nations sans État » ont remarqué que le processus de construction de l’Union européenne a des conséquences négatives sur leur autonomie et, dans ce contexte, ces élites nationalistes sont obligées à concevoir une vraie politique européenne pour protéger leurs intérêts nationaux en Espagne et dans l’Union européenne. À partir de l’étude des rapports établis entre les « nationalités historiques » espagnoles avec l’Union européenne, nous démontrons que l’involution autonomique (en Espagne) et le manque d’empathie de l’Union européenne envers ces communautés nationales sont les principales causes de la genèse de leur politique européenne. Loin d’être simplement associée à une forme de régionalisme ou de néo-régionalisme, cette politique étrangère (« action extérieure ») de ces entités envers l’Union européenne fait partie d’un processus de construction nationale et pourrait être définie comme une paradiplomatie nationaliste. La présente thèse, basée sur une analyse de la politique européenne des « nationalités historiques » entre 1992 et 2008, soutient que les limites du dessein institutionnel de l’Union européenne représentent la principale raison d’être de l’évolution de la paradiplomatie nationaliste vers une protodiplomatie apparemment incohérente. Dans une telle situation, l’inaptitude institutionnelle de l’Union européenne à accommoder les demandes nationalistes serait une cause majeure de l’échec des initiatives nationalistes autonomistes et, en même temps, une cause de l’émergence d’un nouveau courant nationaliste au sein des élites des « nations sans État » occidentales, dont le but est la construction d’un propre État national à l’intérieur de l’Union européenne.
This tesis deals with the story of the relationship between the Spanish "historical nationalities" and the European Union in 1992-2008. The analysis is focusing on the birth of EU-centred nationalist paradiplomacy with the aim of achieving national identity recognition for these communities within the European Union. After having obtained some national recognition and a privileged status within Spain, the elites of these "nations without state" have noted that the process of building the European Union has a negative impact on their autonomy and, in this context, these nationalist elites are forced to conceive a genuine European policy in order to protect their national interests in Spain and within the European Union. Based on the research on the relationship between the Spanish "historical nationalities" and the European Union, we argue that the autonomic involution (within Spain) and the EU lack of empathy for these national communities are the main causes of the birth of their European policy. Far from being simply associated with some kind of regionalism or neo-regionalism, this foreign policy ("external affairs") is a part of a process of national construction and could be defined as a nationalist paradiplomacy. Furthermore, based on an analysis of this EU-centred foreign policy between 1992 and 2008, our tesis claims that the limits of institutional design of the EU represent the main reason for the evolution of this nationalist paradiplomacy towards an apparently incoherent protodiplomacy. In such a situation, the EU institutional inability to accomodate the nationalist demands seems to be responsible for the failure of some Home Rule nationalist projects and stimulates the growth of a new wave of nationalists whose objective is a national State-building within the European Union.