A Parkinson’s Law concludes that the work expands until it occupies the time allocated for its execution. THE Lei de Hanlon recommends not attributing to evil what can be explained with stupidity. Already the Lions by Upton Sinclair stipulates that it is difficult for someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it.
To these universal laws, as valid as those of Physics, we can add a national one. In honor of the Smelly Cat, let’s call him Alfama Guy Law: whenever there are problems in a certain sector of the State, new macrostructures are created without substantially altering the elements that compose them and from which the problems arise.
There are examples in Health (Executive Board of the SNS), Internal Security (Internal Security System), intelligence services (Information System of the Portuguese Republic) and in many other areas. In terms of logistics, doing justice to the character that gives our law its name, the wording will be something like: “Put more money and more people into it and things will be resolved.”
I know it will sound careless, but part of the arguments made in favor of regionalization – more macrostructures – after the catastrophe that struck the West zone do not invite sophistication. This is because we are told that the enemies of regionalization are people from Lisbon, betinhos, or even betinhos from Lisbon.
Instead of insinuations, let’s be revolutionary: let’s look at a regionalized country and draw conclusions. Just cross the border. With 17 autonomous regions – therefore, 17 regional governments, 17 Regional Parliaments and dozens of autonomous bodies – Spain is based on a deep, almost federal regionalization, one of the most advanced in Europe.
The conclusions are many. But let’s focus on the two aspects that fuel the discussion in Portugal. First, development. Before regionalization, the poorest territories in Spain were Extremadura and Andalusia. After 50 years of intense and incessant regionalization, which are the poorest regions? Extremadura and Andalusia. In other words, regionalization is not a silver bullet against regional asymmetries. Strictly speaking, it tends to worsen them, compromising territorial cohesion.
Second, crisis management. Serious challenges to the security of people and goods – such as the catastrophe caused by DANA, in Valencia, in October 2024, which killed more than 200 people – uncover the vices and trapdoors of a regionalized territory. Coordination of organizations is difficult and resource management is slow. Competition between the central government and regional governments, normal in a regionalized country, often results in rivalries that hinder the State’s action.
Furthermore, it can even lead to the most abject political use when the central and regional Executives are led by opposing parties in contexts of high polarization.
There are cases in which this second point leads to the first. Take covid-19. Within the strict scope of their competences, regional governments adopted very different confinement policies, some lax and others restrictive, which resulted in lay-offsunemployment, attraction of very asymmetric investments, deepening economic imbalances.
And as confinements affected rights and freedoms, there were moments when Spain had, objectively, first-class, second-class and third-class citizens.
In short, proposing the resolution of Portugal’s problems with regionalization is, essentially, having faith in the Virgin. Doing this in the wake of a severe crisis is typical of those who argued that the Americans would win in Iraq because they had a bomb that went there because of the smell of curry.
Write without applying the new Orthographic Agreement.
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