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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

Other regions were oppressed AND kept down economically. There was even innovators, like Barreiros, a galician-born car and truck manufacturing brand that was cut off from growing more because of SEAT, that had quite a big impact in Catalonia, in terms of capital flows, jobs etc.

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This is true. Galicia has been continuously kept down since centuries so that Madrid could take the spotlight.

Part of my family is Galician, I'm Portuguese myself. Still, instead of breaking Spain apart I would actually prefer to see the whole of Iberia working together as a union.

The main problem seems to be where the capital would be placed since only Castilians would want Madrid. I only wish that we could agree on a small but memorable place like Santiago de Compostela as centre for that union.

Fragmented even more, our Iberia has little voting power in regards to negotiating with France and Germany in the European Union. If Catalunya has to separate, so let it be. In the end of the day we are all together on the same boat, can only wish that we could row together too.

I still think an Iberian federation is possible in the future. The main impediment IMHO is that the Castillian/Spanish political leaders - and hence probably their voters - never understood the multi-national nature of this gorgeous peninsula. Mediterranean greetings my fellow Iberian :)

Castella follows a model similar to France in regards to centralization, where Madrid should be central to Iberia. Other regions openly refuse (or reluctantly conform) to that location since they know that Madrid will mostly only serve its own interests.

This was the reason why Portugal split from a joint Spanish kingdom centuries ago.

Then we should see the foreign interests. France and UK profit from fragmentation in Iberia. Smaller countries are easier to place against each other instead of being an economical threat to them. Portugal remains a strong UK ally over the centuries while Spain sides with France, and now further fragmented as Madrid doesn't open the hand to a decentralized model.

Really sad. People in Iberia consider themselves more or less as part of the same family (which is true to large extent). We should be working together.

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