Specyfika problemu wspólnot autonomicznych w Hiszpanii

The Author’s goal is to present the problem of autonomous communities in Spain. She presents a short historical overview of nationalistic and regional social movements in various parts of Spain. She discusses various conditions influencing their creation, evolution and peculiarity. National minorities question in Spain is multi-dimensional. The complexity results form historical roots and, more and more influential economic issues. The strongest separatist ambitions are present in Catalonia and Basque Country – the two most developed and prosperous regions of Iberian Peninsula. The second part of the analysis illustrates approach of Spanish government to the question of national minorities and how this problem is addressed in Spanish law. Spanish nation is not an ethnical one. It’s rather an ideological-sociological construct, which can be assigned some specific features. As the 2 article of the Constitution says, the Spanish nation is composed from two elements: nationalities and regions. The indirect consequence is that there exists a Spanish nation (nación) and nationalities (nacionalidades), which could be defined as inhabitants of each region/ autonomous community (pueblos de España). Affirmation of nationalities are Autonomous Statues of each community, which usually in preamble address the question of their identity.