Economic convergence and regional development strategies in Spain: the case of Galicia and Navarre

During the Francoist period and the transition to democracy the Spanish economic panorama was dominated by convergence across regions (Suárez-Villa and Cuadrado-Roura 1993; CuadradoRoura et al., 1999). Regions in the southern and western Spanish peripheries were catching up with the more developed regions of north-eastern Spain and Madrid. This process of convergence came however to a sudden stop in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Alcaide 1988; Mas et al. , 1995; Cuadrado-Roura et al. , 1995; Cuadrado-Roura et al., 1999; Villaverde 1999). The slowdown in convergence was not exclusive to Spain. At a European level, several authors have pointed out that a similar exhaustion of the convergence process took place at the beginning of the 1980s (Armstrong 1995; Champion, et al., 1996; Sala-i-Martín 1996; López-Bazo et al., 1999; Rodríguez-Pose 1999)