When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

Action research for tourism planning in rural areas? Examining an experience from the Couto Mixto (Galicia,Spain)

This paper reviews a tourist planning experience developed for the Couto Mixto in 2007–2008. The Couto Mixto is a small territory of three hamlets situated in Galicia (Spain) and bordering Portugal that, until the end of the 19th century, used to be a virtually independent state of 25 km². This tourism planning process is compared and contrasted with the well‐described Action Research (AR) approach. The paper begins by providing the conceptual foundations of tourism planning which were used as a framework for the research. Then, the tourism planning experience is introduced in detail, focussing on the results of the interviews conducted to identify the tourism resources of the area. Therefore, 23 resources were inventoried and further audited to determine their various degrees of potential for the purposes of tourism planning. Previous AR experiences and the tourism planning initiative developed for the Couto Mixto share a common objective to facilitate change in communities in trouble. However, the case‐study tourism planning experience was not fully compliant with genuine AR in several respects. We conclude by recommending AR as a worthy approach for tourism planning as a way to effectively put the local community in focus.     

Holocene fire history of black colluvial soils revealed by pyrolysis-GC/MS: a case study from Campo Lameiro (NW Spain)

The colluvial soils of Galicia (NW Spain) are records of Holocene environmental change. In spite of the omnipresence of charcoal fragments in these soils, the effect of fires on the development of the Galician landscape and the potential role of past societies are poorly understood.     

In search of the other Europe: The city of Ivano-Frankivs’k in the works of Yurii Andrukhovych

Yurii Andrukhovych is one of the first writers in post-Soviet Ukraine who created their own concept of Central Europe with a particular focus on the historical region of Galicia as a legacy of the Habsburg Empire. The West Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivs’k, the author’s place of birth and residency, appears in his texts as a part of the historical region of Eastern Galicia and the embodiment of Andrukhovych’s vision of the region and, by extension, Central Europe. Showing the relationship of the city to the Habsburg monarchy while referencing his own family memories, Andrukhovych combines the pre-war history of the town with contemporary history. Thus, Ivano-Frankivs’k is depicted by the writer not only through the prism of its Habsburg era, but also through post-Soviet reality. Furthermore, in his first publications, the Habsburg history of Galicia represents the idea of belonging to European civilization as an alternative to the more recent totalitarian past, but Andrukhovych has always attempted to create a new image of modern Ivano-Frankivs’k rather than to reconstruct the Austro-Hungarian past of the region: the subjective and personalized Austrian past of the city is more akin to a point of reference and signpost to other perspectives. Both Ivano-Frankivs’k and Eastern Galicia are portrayed by the author as ambivalent and hybrid spaces. On the one hand it is a peripheral area between East and West; but, on the other hand, it is Andrukhovych’s personal part of Europe, where the processes and figures that shaped the continent gain an individual, unique dimension.     

Labour mobility in the Euroregion Galicia–Norte de Portugal: constraints faced by cross-border commuters

ABSTRACT

Removing barriers to labour mobility is expected to contribute to processes of spatial integration in cross-border regions, by an efficient allocation of labour and consequently a convergence between territories separated by a common border. Nevertheless, despite the de-bordering process within the European Union, administrative, legal and language barriers still hamper cross-border labour mobility, preventing the process of labour market integration. The aim of this paper is to identify obstacles to the mobility of cross-border workers commuting within the Euroregion Galicia–Norte de Portugal. The methodology employed combines the analysis of official data on labour mobility with qualitative data gathered from interviews with cross-border commuters, aimed at finding explanations for the different attitudes towards cross-border mobility inside this Euroregion. While traditional push and pull factors remain relevant in explaining cross-border labour flows, the qualitative information offers new insights into different levels of indifference from cross-border workers. The result is a fragmented labour market where Norte de Portugal is providing low-qualified, low-wage labour, whereas Galicia is contributing with well-paid, qualified labour.     

Marble Pieces in the Romanesque Portal of Glory of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. New Data through a Multi-Analytical Approach

ABSTRACT

Probably the most important Romanesque artwork in Spain, the Portal of Glory of Santiago de Compostela is essentially made in granite, the most abundant stone in the NW of Iberia, with the only exception of five marble pieces. Different hypothesis on the origin of these marbles have previously been proposed based on visual assessment or by directly assuming a local source. To shed light on their quarry provenance, a multi-analytical study was performed combining polarized-light optical microscopy, cathodoluminescence microscopy, XRPD, SEM-EDS and stable C and O isotopes. The comparison of the results with the available databases reveals the use of marbles from the Estremoz Anticline (Portugal) in the three exquisitely carved columns strategically placed in the central arcade, whereas the other two pieces are local marbles, illustrating a more complex consumption of this noble material than that initially expected.