The Lisbon Treaty and Spain: Background, Context and Impact. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Special Issue 1, August 2012

The year 2010 will be remembered in the European Union (EU) circles of governmental Spain as a crucial milestone regarding the role of the country in one of the most important alliances of world history. During the first semester, from January to June 2010, Spain had previously been scheduled to hold the rotating presidency as done since the times of the inception of the predecessor of the EU, the European Economic Community (EEC). Furthermore, on June 12, Spain would be ready to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its adhesion (along with Portugal) to the European integration experiment, by signing the treaty, effectively acceding to the European Community (EC) on January 1, 1986. While all of this was set to occur, the new Reform Treaty (“of Lisbon”) was set to be implemented as a substitute for the failed constitutional text floated during the first years of the new century. Moreover, these spectacular events unraveled in the middle of one of the worst economic crises of the world, with considerable impact on the evolution of the EU and, most especially, Spain. This paper will review the background, context and impact of particular novel aspects of the new treaty governing the EU and several milestones regarding the experience of Spain in the European process.

European Policy Uses of International Comparisons of Academic Achievement. ACES Working Papers, 2012

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) and the resulting ranking of countries in key academic subjects have become increasingly significant in the development of global performance indicators and national level reforms in education. As one of the largest international surveys, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has had a considerable impact on the world of international comparisons of education. Based on the results of these assessments, claims are often made about the relative success or failure of education systems, and in some cases, such as Germany or Japan, ILSAs have sparked national level reforms (Ertl, 2006; Takayama, 2007, 2009). In this paper, I offer an analysis of how PISA is increasingly used as a key reference both for a regional2 entity like the European Union (EU) and for national level performance targets in the example of Spain (Breakspear, 2012). Specifically, the paper examines the growth of OECD and EU initiatives in defining quality education, and the use of both EU benchmarks and PISA in defining the education indicators used in Spain to measure and set goals for developing quality education. By doing so, this paper points to the role of the OECD and the EU in national education systems. It therefore adds to a body of literature pointing to the complex relationship between international, regional, and national education policy spaces (cf. Dale & Robertson, 2002; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2009).

Information Guide: Spain. February 2017

A guide to information sources on the Kingdom of Spain, with hyperlinks to information within European Sources Online and on external websites (For other language versions of this record click on the original url)

Why the future of European renewables policy may be decided in Washington and not in Brussels. CEPS Commentary, 13 July 2016 Wednesday, 13 July 2016

In the last few years, several EU member states have reduced support to renewable energy, leading to numerous claims that these policy changes retroactively affected existing investments and that the practice of ‘grandfathering’ should have been observed. Among these, the case of Spain stands out, both due to the material size of the cuts and the large volume of investments affected, although the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Italy have also introduced reforms with deleterious consequences to their renewable energy sectors.

A potential case of attitude change: The Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga and used on social network sites

The Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga, as Andalusian Spanish in general, was in the past often times considered an incorrect, low prestige variety of Spanish which was strongly associated with the poor, rural, backward South of Spain. This southern Spanish variety is easily recognised because of its innovative phonetic features that diverge from the national standard, even though in the past years in the case of some features a convergence to the standard could be observed. Despite its low prestige the local variety of Spanish is quite often used on social network sites, where it is considered as urban, fashion and cool. Thus, this paper aims at analysing whether the Spanish used in the city of Malaga is undergoing an attitude change. The study draws on naturally occurring speech, data extracted from Facebook and a series of questionnaires about the salience, attitude and perception of the local variety of Spanish. The influence of the social factors age and gender is analysed, since they are both known to play a crucial role in many instances of language change. The first is of special interest, as during the Franco dictatorship dialect use was not accepted in schools and in the media. Results show that, on the one hand, people from Malaga hold a more positive attitude towards non-standard features used on social network sites than in spoken language. On the other hand, young female users employ most non-standard features online and unsurprisingly have an extremely positive attitude towards this use. However, in spoken Spanish the use and attitude of some features is led by men and speakers educated during the Franco dictatorship, while other features, such as elision of intervocalic /d/, elision of final /ɾ/, /l/ and /d/ and ceceo, are predominantly employed by and younger speakers and women. These features are considered as salient in the local variety and work as local identity markers.