The Limits of the State of Autonomies as a Crisis Management Strategy to the Post-2008 Financial Crash in Spain: a Cultural Political Economy of Fiscal Consolidation

The nationalist challenges to the post-Franco Spanish liberal state project is one of the most visible outcomes of the financial crisis in Spain. The decentralised political structure, the State of Autonomies, has emerged as a key reference point for explaining the origins of the crisis and its possible solutions. I draw on Cultural Political Economy in order to examine the interactions between the State of Autonomies and other contextual processes in two key crisis moments in the post-Franco period. I argue that while the State of Autonomies has shaped the political and economic path of post-Franco Spain the current political crisis is better understood as the contingent outcome of normalising the financial crash as a failure within, rather than of, the global financial system.