A fact little noticed in this country is the discontent
of parts of Spain with the unity of the kingdom. Castile, as the dominant province, likes that unity, and the South accepts it because of its poverty, but the North, which is rich and industrial, does not like it at all, Catalonia and Biscay declaring that they pay for all Spain, while the South reaps all the benefit. This idea has now been formulated by the mer- cantile and industrial associations of Catalonia and embodied in a petition to the Queen. They ask that the Central Government should be restricted to war and foreign politics, and that Spain should be divided into "Regions," each of which would be self-governing on the American plan, with the addition that all or any could enter into economic agree- ments, including, we imagine, the control of tariffs. A movement in this direction is quite possible, for it has this attraction for the peasantry, that, Spain once split into provinces, they could revolutionise the tenure, which is as much detested in Spain as in Ireland. All centrifugal move- ments are much favoured by the configuration of Spain, which is a gridiron with fertile interstices, but there must be a strong centripetal force at work too. Otherwise, why has Spain lasted as a single entity for four hundred years?
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