ABSTRACT
The federalisation of the Spanish State did not result historically from an agreement between pre-existing states, but from a consensus regarding the political decentralisation of a heavily centralised state. The author argues that within the Spanish 'State of Autonomies', two contradictory logics have always existed, with one or the other dominating, depending on the context. It is important to highlight that the population of some Autonomous Communities (ACs) was insufficient to establish a substantive federal government. As a result, during this phase, excessive fragmentation became evident as one of the greatest structural problems of the Spanish State of Autonomies, eclipsing issues derived from equalisation of nationalities, regions and competencies. From a federal and statist perspective, the structural existence of a variety of different autonomous political, institutional and political wills can be ignored in the name of equality, the general interests of the economy, unity of the market or interterritorial solidarity.
