CURRENT SPAIN
For more clarification on what Spain is like today, the following text of wall is a summary of the important details of the current political and economic situation of the country
Despite neither the media nor the politicians even mentioning it (discussions about the economy were completely absent during the debates) is still relevant to understand what is going on, and how it affecting and will affect the rest of the EU, since they are paying for all of this circus
The Autonomic state model
After the death of the General Franco the transition to democracy was done under a constitution that divided Spain in 17 pieces made out of autonomous communities where each acts pretty much as its own independent nation
Each province has a full fledged government infrastructure, that has from parliaments and senates to even dozens of embassies to foreign countries per province
This state model gives the different provinces of Spain more autonomy in regards to the central state than the different member states of the European Union have to the EU commission
There are people specifically hired to create endless rules and regulations, and it has reached the point where it is easier and cheaper for a business in Madrid to expand to France in the bureaucratic nightmare that is the EU than to move to another province of Spain
Spain has more than 3.2 million public employees, roughly 2 million of those were selected for their job by politicians without any real checking or qualifications, think of it as giving a job to your family member
The estimated waste in spending from useless public employees, extra politicians and duplicated institutions between provinces and within the provinces themselves (and its subsequent institutions created to communicate these 2 incompatible infrastructures that serve the same purpose) is estimated at 100k million € or 10% of the Spanish GDP
36k million of these go to duplicated administration organisms used to give jobs to their families and friends
All the councilors from any town hall in the country have a personal official car and an official chauffeur (who is also overpaid)
In Spain the salary of a public job is roughly 50% higher than a private job
As far as I know, this is only the case in countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and to a lesser degree in Luxembourg
Apart from the duplicated administrative organism, they also have created public companies, observatories, consortium and other types of money leeches, with ~10k all around Spain that, unlike the duplicated ones, that still provide a somewhat useful service, these are just to get people to suck the public tit
Some examples include public companies such as "public company of water", "public school observatory", "public tunnel observatory", "climate change observatory", etc.
Except for politicians, all these jobs are live long jobs that are not revised at x number of years
In a more centralized country, such as France, the expense from the provinces is roughly a 1/3rd of all expense, whereas in Spain is 2/3rds
A province in Spain such as Catalonia has a budget of more 60k million €
For reference, the cost of the army, police, ministries, government, etc. by the centralized state is around 30k million €
You can sort of imagine the public sector in Spain as an amalgamation of public companies orbiting around regional government and town halls
Special mention goes to the Basque economic agreement, that dates from the XIX century, that gives the Basques and Navarra a special fiscal regime that cost 14k million € to the Spanish taxpayer
This comes from the difference of what they should be paying if they had the same fiscal regime as the rest of Spain plus, as well as
Whenever a product manufactured in the Basque region is sold within the National territory, the money acquired trough taxes do not go to the national treasure, but the Basque government, and they later return a minimal amount of said money to the national treasure
Another special mention is Healthcare, which was given from the central government to the regional provinces to handle, which has almost duplicated the cost and reduced its quality.
The waiting lists can easily reach 1 year from the moment you ask for anything, quality has decreased since many people were put there without any qualifications, and some not even in medical positions
The Hospital in Madrid Gregorio Marañón has 500 people working in the kitchen, 10 times the amount of what other hospitals of similar size have, with around 35h a week
Another example, the biggest hospital of Valencia, La Fé de Valencia, has 120 phone receptionist
And from La Fé de Valencia as well, the entire hospital was rebuild from scratch, and they made 4 big building blocks, carried by the president of the football club Madrid no less, from which they're only using 2 and a half, and these only work during the morning, and when they had to get new equipment for the new infrastructure, all the existing material from the old hospital was discarded, or given or sold to someone else, and they bought everything new (because the cut they got from the money was fantastic)
The systems of the different healthcare institutions of different provinces are of course non-compatible, so, if you go from one province to another, the medical personnel won't know what vaccine to give to a child because they cannot even access to check what vaccines has the child received so far
Or another case, if a medic gives prescription and you go to another province the recipe is worthless.