Hello all, I've been reading some political history of Spain. One theme I've noticed is that all the regions within Spain seem to be called "Autonomous Regions." Is Spain simply a collection of Autonomous Regions that get along? Or does the Spanish cultural identity keep a strong cohesion between those regions? What stops them from simply breaking away and balkanizing the Iberian peninsula? I've noticed in my research that these current divisions are from the constitution in 1978, how was Spain divided beforehand (i.e under Franco/the second republic/monarchy?) Thank you and I'm sorry for so many questions in one post!!
That's quite a complex question.
The concept of Autonomous Regions comes from the 1978 constitution, as you have noticed, but it does have a precedent in the II Republic. In that period, there were three regions (Galicia, Basque Country, Catalonia) that obtained Statutes of Autonomy, based on the fact that they had their own languages and that they were "historical nations" (whatever that means). Fast-forward to Franco, and the Statutes of Autonomy fly out the window: Spain becomes a unitary state, with no regional autonomy, no free elections, etc.
When Franco died, king Juan Carlos, prime minister Adolfo Suárez, and the one and only Torcuato Fernández-Miranda get to work in restoring democracy, but without ruptures. In Torcuato's own words: from the Law to the Law, through the Law. Amongst the things that got restored prior to the approval of the Constitution were the autonomies of Catalonia, Basque Country, and Galicia, as that was of paramount importance. That was not only a symbol of democratisation, but also of reconciliation: Josep Tarradellas, who had been appointed in exile as president of the Generalitat, came back to Spain, and saw the Generalitat legally restored. This would help in getting the Catalanists' support for the Constitution.
That still does not explain the Autonomous Communities, so let me go back to the Constitution itself, article 2: The Constitution is fundamented in the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common and indivisible motherland of all the Spanish people, and recognises and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions that compose it, and the solidarity amongst them.
As you may have noticed, the concept of autonomous communities does not even exist there, what we see are nationalities and regions. Prior to the Constitution, Spain was a heavily centralised state, only administratively divided into regions, that's why the term "regions" can be seen in the 2nd article. Galicia, Catalonia, and Basque Country had the consideration of "nationalities" according to some yet to be defined idea emanating from the Statutes of Autonomy they had during the II Republic.
The first version of the Constitution, usually called Gades constitution, as the draft was created in the Gades restaurant, had this concept of a two tier system, similar to Italy, where there are regions with an ordinary statute, and regions with autonomy (Sardinia, Sicily, Trentino-Alto Adige, Valle d'Aosta, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia). You can see this concept in article 2 of the Spanish Constitution.
With the Constitution, we have what is called "Estado de las Autonomías", the State of the Autonomies, wherein the State has devolved just about all of the powers to the autonomous communities, except for Defense, Foreign Affairs, infrastructures that go through more than one community, and not much else. This devolution of powers has resulted in what we call "taifas", paying homage to the 11th through 13th centuries, where the different unitary muslim states eventually crumbled to pieces and Al-Andalus ended up being a collection of mini-kingdoms.
Spain keeps a relatively strong cohesion, and I will incide on the relative. Most of the people feel Spanish, or Spanish + regional identity. The problem comes from different sides. Franco incided an awful lot on the Spanish identity, in detriment of the regional identities, which resulted in the leftist parties reneging from any hint of Spanish nationalism, or even Spanish patriotism, and will embrace any anti-Spanish proposals from the peripheral nationalism. The logic for this is simple: Franco was very nationalist, Spanish nationalist. So, the only altrernative for the left to be leftist is being anti-Spanish.
The system Spain has now is quasi-federal, or federal in all but name. There is even a term for that: asymmetric federalism. Which means that it is federal, but not all the regions are equal. Some autonomies have more devolved matters, the Basque Country and Navarre have a special economic agreement, etc.
What stops the regions from breaking away? Articles 2, 8, 155, and 116 of the Spanish constitution, mostly. The only time that article 155 (federal coercion mechanism) has been used was in 2017 when the independentist majority of the Catalan parliament staged the fake referendum and declared independence (kinda sorta maybe). Also, let's not forget that the independentists, though majority in the regional parliament, are in the social minority, having never surpassed the 50% of the votes landmark.