Empire Rising: Spain

Baron Angelo Orkaho only needs to pay extra attention to those small factories to ensure that these small factories dutifully execute the government’s orders.

Those who can move into the industrial zone are generally factories with some strength. These factories are capable of completing the government’s reform orders, which reassures Baron Angelo Orkaho to some extent.

Besides implementing the government’s decrees, Baron Angelo Orkaho also set up a large number of large trash bins in the industrial zone to collect the garbage generated in the workers’ daily lives and to destroy it centrally.

This has already been realized on some streets in Madrid. Spain’s thermal power plants can also burn this garbage for power generation, although the emissions from burning will pollute the environment, it is still better than letting the garbage pile up randomly in the corners of the industrial zone.

The downside is that regularly cleaning these trash bins also requires some manpower, which represents an additional expense.

Fortunately, the industrial zone is not short of money, and bearing this expense alone is entirely feasible. According to Spain’s tax system, all the factories in the industrial zone have to pay taxes to the industrial zone government on time.

The industrial zone government retains a portion as the fiscal budget, and the remaining part is directly transferred to Spain’s financial department.

In this regard, the fiscal level of the industrial zone government is equivalent to that of the various regional governments. Generally, city taxes have to be submitted to the regional governments, who then summarize all the city’s taxes and submit them to the Kingdom Government.

Because the fiscal budgets of the regional and city governments come from a portion of the fiscal revenue the government receives, this also causes their fiscal situations to be completely different.

In large cities like Madrid and Barcelona, or a large industrial zone like Barcelona’s, the fiscal budgets are quite sufficient.

But some small cities and regions with few populations are not so lucky. If the Cabinet Government did not allocate some funds to support these regions with less fiscal income, they would probably not even be able to complete basic construction.

Last year, Spain’s total fiscal revenue reached 897.9 million Pesseta, of which nearly 80 million Pesseta were distributed to various regional governments to help some regions with fewer populations or poorer economies alleviate fiscal pressure.

This year, the funds allocated to the regional governments are expected to be even more, as the renovation of workers’ living and working environments requires a large sum of expenditure.

Fortunately, the development of Spain’s twin cities and the Barcelona Industrial Zone is quite smooth, otherwise, Spain could not afford such a large expenditure.

Currently, Spain can be said to be fully developing its twin cities and an industrial zone, the development of these two cities and an industrial zone is related to the overall development of Spain.

Only by allowing the two cities and one industrial zone to achieve sufficient development, under the situation where the rich drive the less rich, can other areas in Spain develop as well.

If there were no key development goals and each region developed blindly, none of the areas in Spain would be able to develop.

This plan placed in the development of government regions still has hopes of being realized. After all, with the Cabinet Government’s central regulation, these initially prosperous regions would not possibly hide their wealth, and they will try to help other regions develop within their capacities.

As for other situations, it’s hard to say, because human nature is greedy, and not everyone is willing to take out their funds to help others.

As for Spain’s current administrative division, Carlo has plans to make adjustments.

Spain has only 506,000 square kilometers and less than 20 million people, yet it has 16 regional-level administrative divisions.

Out of these 16 regional-level administrative divisions, only 6 have a population over a million, and the remaining 10 have varying scales of populations, even including some with only tens of thousands to 200,000 people.

In Carlo’s view, such administrative division is somewhat unnecessary. What use are regions with tens of thousands to 200,000 people? It’s nothing more than adding a set of governmental systems and a regional parliament.

Besides accommodating more officials and parliamentarians, they bring no benefit to Spain. These extra officials and parliamentarians would increase Spain’s financial burden. What’s the point of having so many officials in a region with only tens of thousands of people?

In Carlo’s view, Spain’s 16 regional-level administrative divisions should eventually be reduced to about 12.

These 12 regional-level administrative divisions should also include the Madrid Region and the Barcelona Region.

Yes, Carlo plans to establish a separate region for Barcelona, separating it from Catalonia.

There are two reasons for establishing a separate region for Barcelona: first, Barcelona’s population is approaching 500,000. It should be noted that this only accounts for the population in the city of Barcelona.

Including the suburban population and the workers in the industrial zone, Barcelona’s population will exceed one million, making it the most populous city in Spain.

The population of Barcelona’s city already exceeds some regions, which is one reason why Barcelona is qualified to establish a region.

The second reason, of course, is Carlo’s intention to weaken the influence of Catalonia. Barcelona is very important to Catalonia. If Barcelona can be established as a separate region, Catalonia’s importance will also be weakened, and the Catalans will not pose a significant threat.

If you count the suburban and industrial zone population, the proportion of Catalans in Barcelona has dropped below half. When Barcelona exists as a regional-level administrative division, it can radiate the entire Catalonia Region like Madrid does for the whole of Spain, ensuring the stability of the whole Catalonia Region.

In the future, Madrid and Barcelona will become the two brightest pearls of Spain. Madrid will be Spain’s cultural center, political center, and economic center. Barcelona will be Spain’s biggest seaport, secondary economic center, and industrial center.

The two cities complement each other, compete with each other, and help each other, facilitating the faster development of Spain’s industry and economy.

Some of the future officials Carlo values will also serve in these two cities, to inspect and train their capabilities.

Although the Spanish Prime Minister election conditions only require being a member of the Lower House, the actual election is not that simple.

If there is no glorious political resume or outstanding work experience, it is impossible to become the Prime Minister of Spain.

Although the Spanish Prime Minister’s position does not require overly outstanding abilities, Carlo does not want the leader of the Spanish Government to be an incompetent fellow.

Whenever Carlo promulgates decrees, he needs a smart person cooperating with him to lead the Spanish Government to fully execute Carlo’s orders.

In summary, the condition for the Spanish Prime Minister’s appointment is that loyalty is more important than ability, though ability is also very important.

The positions of mayors of Madrid and Barcelona will be very important in the future. Perhaps a considerable portion of the future Spanish Prime Ministers will have served as mayors of these two cities.