ABSTRACT
Spain is like France but more so, in several respects. It has retained some powerful central drives, but sits within an utterly changed polity, now federal or even potentially splintering. There are still all-Spain ideas and forces in several infrastructure fields, but the pressures that bend and restrain these are enormous. We are looking here at a story of stresses and strains, and of responding creatively to these: a picture that changes in front of our eyes. This feature of major change in the case countries in the last few years has been common to all the countries with the partial exception of Germany.
