ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Canel’s viewpoint not so much in the light of Spain’s internal constitutional arrangements — although it will be necessary to touch on them - but more in the light of Spain’s embrace of the European Union, and the active participation of its regions and cities in the networks that are springing up across Europe. The most significant regional grouping for Spain is that which includes Catalonia. Dubbed ‘the four motors’, the grouping includes Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy and Rhone Alpes. The Italian City States of the twelfth century and the independent Cantons of the Swiss confederation are much better known and documented. The most famous of the federations was, of course, the Hanseatic League. The Hansa was a durable and effective trading group of up to seventy cities in the North Sea and the Baltic, capable jointly of enforcing advantageous trading deals on kingdoms, and independently or jointly, of resisting military adventures against them.
