Spain

I

Transport

Spain had about 666,292 km (414,014 mi) of roads and about 455 passenger cars per 1,000 people, in 2003. Rail service over about 14,484 km (9,000 mi) of track is provided by both government-owned and private companies. In 1992 a high-speed railway line from Madrid to Seville began operating. There are metros in Madrid of 112 km (69 mi), Barcelona, of 72 km (45 mi), and Bilbao, of 26 km (16 mi). The government-controlled Iberia Airline operates domestic and international services. There are international airports at Madrid (Barajas), Barcelona (Prat del llobregat), Alicante, Almeiría, Bilbao, Gerona, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Compostela, Saragossa, Seville, Tenerife, Valencia, and Valladolid. In 1995 the merchant navy had 1,101 vessels of a gross tonnage of 637,000.

J

Communications

There were around 422 telephones per 1,000 people in Spain in 2005; in 1994 mobile telephones numbered 411,930. Television sets in use totalled about 24 million and radios, 13 million (1997 figures). There were a large number of independent national and regional radio stations and three national/commercial television networks, and two regional networks broadcasting in Basque and Catalan. The country had 87 daily newspapers in 2000, with a combined daily circulation of about 4 million. Influential dailies include A.B.C., published in Madrid, and La Vanguardia, issued in Barcelona. In 1994 more than 44,000 books were published.

V

Government

In the late 1970s the government of Spain underwent a transformation from the authoritarian regime (1939-1975) of Francisco Franco to a limited monarchy with a powerful parliament. A national constitution was adopted in 1978.

A

Executive and Legislature

The head of state of Spain is a hereditary monarch, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Executive power is vested in the president of the government (prime minister), who is proposed by the monarch on the parliament’s approval and is voted into office by the Congress of Deputies. Power is also vested in a Cabinet, or council of ministers. There is also the Council of States, a consultative body.

In 1977 Spain’s unicameral Cortes (parliament) was replaced by a bicameral parliament made up of a 350-member Congress of Deputies and a Senate of 208 directly elected members and 51 special regional representatives. Deputies are popularly elected to four-year terms by universal suffrage of people aged 18 or older, under a system of proportional representation. The directly elected senators are voted to four-year terms on a regional basis. Each mainland province elects 4 senators: another 20 senators come from the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla.

B

Political Parties

Spain has many political parties. The two major groups in the 1996 and 2000 general elections were the Popular Party (PP), a conservative party that had absorbed the Christian Democrats and the Liberal Party, and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Other significant parties in parliament include the Democratic and Social Centre, the United Left (a Communist party), and Catalan and Basque nationalist parties. The Basque group, Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA), a Basque separatist organization, use terrorist methods to oppose the government. Batasuna, a radical Basque party, was suspended in August 2002 and then banned the following March. In the March 2004 elections, the PSOE won a 16-seat overall majority in the Congress of Deputies (winning a total of 164 seats); the PP won 148 seats but remained the leading party in the Senate. The 2008 election saw the PSOE take 169 seats and the PP take 154. Although the PSOE made gains in Senate representation the PP still held more than 100 seats..