ABSTRACT
Cross-border cooperation has developed fundamentally at the internal borders of the European Union. The border between Spain and Portugal, known as the line (raya in Spanish and raia in Portuguese), is one of them. Numerous cooperation projects have been developed there in recent years, although with a heterogeneous geographical distribution. The border seems to disappear, but far from doing so, it is just transformed, as the study of the dimension of national security shows, which is now largely binational. One of the highest levels of cross-border cooperation that has been achieved is that of integrated local units, called eurocities, with diverse objectives. We address the study of various dimensions of this eurocities with the aim of better understanding where they are created, in what political context and what is their demographic, economic and cultural impact.
1. Introduction
The modern nation-states formed in the nineteenth century developed a specific territoriality to strengthen control over access to the territory. This operation transformed the territory into a synonym for the State sovereignty, reifying power through its direct link to the territory and hiding the social relations of domination as well (CitationAgnew, 1994; Walker, Citation1993). In the construction of the territories of the States it became necessary to precisely set the limits, in cartography and on the terrain to demarcate the imagined community, that of sovereign States and national markets. Thus, in the nineteenth century the borders of several modern States were established, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.
Indeed, the Boundary Treaty between Portugal and Spain was signed in Lisbon on September 29, 1864 and ratified in Madrid on May 19, 1866. The Treaty left the southern section unresolved, from the confluence of the Cuncos River (Caia – Elvas / Badajoz) to the Guadiana River, due to the Olivenza issues and the Moura Contention. On June 29, 1926, the Boundary Agreement was signed to ratify the southern border, up to Castro Marim / Ayamonte, integrating the 1893 agreement related to the Moura Contest and leaving it out of the agreements and, therefore, without marking the Olivenza lands, where the Portuguese government do not recognize Spanish sovereignty (CitationCairo & Godinho, 2013).
The territoriality of the modern nation-state develops through its autonomous power (CitationMann, 1984). The substantial support of this autonomous power is the bureaucracy, in general, and those in charge of the treasury, in particular, and the state security and the armed forces as well. But the role of these has been greatly reduced, because the borders have lost most of their military functions (there are no longer physical barriers like the Maginot Line, and most of the neutral zones of separation have disappeared) and because economic liberalization has led to a very large reduction in the rates and fees associated with trade as well. The police function is the one that remains, even increasing its importance, to prevent access to the territory under sovereignty of what CitationAndreas (2003, p. 85) calls ‘clandestine non-state transnational actors’, in full expansion in times of globalization.
The blurring of some of these border functions went with restructuration in the territoriality of nation-states. These reforms can be perceived in most States, but especially in those that are part of that political experiment that is the European Union (EU). In the case of the EU, programs and projects of cross-border cooperation (CBC) have specifically focused in interstate borders in order to erase barriers to the integration leaded by the institution. Starting in 1990, Interreg is an iconic and well-known cross-border cooperation program that set EU internals borders as spaces of development (CitationBasboga, 2020; CitationProkkola, 2011; CitationReitel et al., 2018). Interreg funded actions have projected internal borders as strategic places for the EU construction (CitationCairo et al., 2022). Other initiatives, such the police and custom CBC, perform borderlands as the scale for security cooperation.
The aim of this work is to approach the cartography of CBC processes in a specific case, that of the Spanish-Portuguese border. Since borders have become essential spaces for EU governance, our purpose is to map some dimensions of cross-border institutional actions in order to underline not only the making of EU policies related spaces, but also some particular aspects related to them (objectives of CBC interventions, demography, electoral support, security).
2. Materials and methods
The map-making process of an exploratory cartography of CBC governance in the Portuguese-Spanish border is an exercise of construction of variables and data itself. Statistical repositories are state-centric and finding data on CBC institutional agreements is decidedly problematic. The difficulty in finding common cartographic sources, particularly at certain scales (such as municipal) required the integration of data from different sources. At the same time, administrative units do not match, election dates are different etc. In terms of methods, border acts as an impediment to develop an exploratory approaching to CBC maps.
Said so, the methodology involved a combination of vector layers with various tables containing the statistical data intended for representation. Statistics about CBC between Portugal and Spain were found in the official web page (https://2007-2020.poctep.eu/es). To measure the demographic tendencies, we used data of the national ten-year census in the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Estadística (https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/es/categoria.htm?c=Estadistica_P&cid=1254735572981) and the Portuguese Instituto Nacional de Estadística (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpgid=ine_tema&xpid=INE&tema_cod=1115). Electoral data were found in the web portal of the State departments of both countries: the Spanish Ministerio del Interior (https://infoelectoral.interior.gob.es) and the Portuguese Ministerio de Administração Interna (https://mai.gov.pt).
Three different cartographic sources were utilized. For the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), Esri shapefile data accessible on the Eurostat website was employed (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/administrative-units-statistical-units/nuts). For municipalities in Spain, Esri shapefile data available on the website of the National Geographic Institute of Spain was used (http://centrodedescargas.cnig.es). Regarding the municipalities in Portugal, Esri shapefile data accessible on the official web for European data was used (https://data.europa.eu/en).
3. Scales of cross-border cooperation: EU geographies of governance
EU cross-border cooperation (CBC) programs and projects are implemented in border areas of 2 or more EU state members. To set a cross-border space for policymaking means to make new spaces of politics projection and decision, delimitating territorial units for governance purposes.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Eurostat – the statistical office of the EU – set up the NUTS classification (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) as a single, coherent system for dividing up the EU’s territory. The NUTS classification is a hierarchical system for dividing the economic territory of the EU for the purpose of collection, development and harmonization of European regional statistics, and the socio-economic analyses of the European regions. This nomenclature already defines a sort of proper scale for EU governance.
For around thirty years, the implementation and updating of the NUTS classification was managed under a series of ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ between the Member States and Eurostat. But in July 2003 the Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1059/2003 gave NUTS a legal status. In any case, NUTS are not for ever: sometimes national interests require changing the regional demarcation of a country, as in the case of Portugal in 2014, in this case, as a consequence of the Commission Regulation (EC) No. 808/2014, adopted in August 2014 (CitationEurostat, 2023).
Portugal and Spain entered simultaneously in the European Union, in 1986. Since then, the NUTS zoning is also part of the governance scales in both countries. In terms of cross-border policies purposes, new ‘spaces of cooperation’ (CitationPOCTEP, 2007–2013) are formed by the aggrupation of several NUTS in both sides of the border in order to jointly apply for EU cross-border cooperation projects. Our focus is on two CBC governance generated scales: that of the administrative units called NUTS 3, acting as project partners across the border and that of the municipalities, where inter-municipal cooperation initiatives are set, mainly in the form of Eurocities, an essential result of local cross-border cooperation for rural and urban areas in the Spanish-Portuguese border.
The NUTS 3 match with previous territorial-administrative divisions ( and Main Map): the Spanish provinces in one side, and to the Portuguese subregions in the other side. The spaces of cooperation encompass not only borderlands NUTS but also other NUTS, defining a wider geography of CBC governance. In the case of the municipalities, the Eurocities embrace mostly adjacent borderland towns, except in the case of the Spanish municipality of Ciudad Rodrigo. Again, CBC spaces shape geographies for border policies, not only overlapping with previously set scales but also enabling wider geographical areas as spaces for EU CBC actions.
Table 1. Spaces of cooperation and Eurocities in the Spanish-Portuguese border.
4. Interregional cross-border cooperation dimensions: the topics
The diverse dimensions of cross-border cooperation in the raia may also be approached by analyzing the joint projects and initiatives of ‘Spain-Portugal cross-border cooperation operational program (POCTEP)’; that is, the Spanish-Portuguese border division of the already mentioned Interreg, re-named as POCTEP since the operational period 2014–2020. As of today, the program remains as ‘Spain-Portugal Interreg program (POCTEP) 2021–2027’. Based on a study of the problems and opportunities in/of the border, different public and private organizations have fostered and participated in cooperation projects funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the financial umbrella of Interreg.
The Spanish-Portuguese border has more than 1.200 km. For CBC purposes, six areas (C-BCA) have been demarcated: Galicia/Norte de Portugal (C-BCA 1); Norte de Portugal/Castilla-León (C-BCA 2); Castilla-León/Centro Portugal (C-BCA 3); Centro/Extremadura/Alentejo (C-BCA 4); Alentejo/Algarve/Andalucía (C-BCA 5) and Pluriregional (C-BCA P), all of them integrated by several NUTS 3 (Main Map).
Different programs have been implemented in these areas, following the priorities set for the general POCETP program. To deliver a sample of CBC in the Spanish-Portuguese border, we have elaborated a map with the distribution of thematic objectives in the six C-BCA in two periods (2007–2023; 2012–2020). This sort of exploratory cartography is proposed in two consecutive periods as an illustration to read into the changes and continuities of CBC governance goals implemented in each area. However, it is also a track to read tendencies in the local interests on those CBC thematic actions in different areas (CitationArencibia & González, 2013; Trillo-Santamaría & Rayssac, Citation2015).
In the 2007–2013 period, the POCTEP thematic objectives were ‘Competitiveness and employment promotion’ (related to innovation and economic dynamization); ‘Environment, heritage and natural landscape’ (related to environment, tourism and natural resources management); ‘Accessibility and territorial planning’ (related to improving connections and infrastructure); and ‘Promotion of economic and social cooperation and integration’ (related to the joint management of different social services) (CitationPOCTEP, 2007–2013). For the 2014–2020 program, these were ‘Innovation’ (related to technological development and research); ‘Business competitiveness’ (related to improving business initiatives); ‘Risk prevention and natural resources’ (related to improving natural resources management and adaptation to climate change) and ‘Institutional cooperation/public administration’ (related to improving cross-border public sector efficiency) (CitationInterreg, 2014–2020).
The map shows that the C-BCA 1 concentrates more projects (73 in the period of 2007–2013 and 64 in the period of 2014–2020). The thematic objective ‘Competitiveness and employment promotion’ concentrated 49,3% of the initiatives for 2017–2023. This objective was also the most important in the C-BCA4 and the C-BCA P. For the CBC 2 and C-BCA 3 ‘Environment, heritage and natural landscape’ was the objective with more projects involved. In CBCA-5 ‘Competitiveness and employment promotion’ and ‘Promotion of economic and social cooperation and integration’ concentrated the majority of interest.
As for the period 2014–2020, ‘Risk prevention and natural resources’ was the thematic objective with major concentration of initiatives in all areas. The cluster related to improving natural resources management and adaptation to climate change concentrated more of the 30% of projects in all areas, representing 39% of actions for C-BCA 1.
5. Eurocities
In Europe, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, agglomerations or cross-border urban communities were made based on cities located on different sides of the borders of EU state members. They are the Eurometropolises or Eurocities gathering more than 25 million people (CitationEGTC, 2015). They certainly did not have much recognition at the beginning, but since the approval of European Territorial Cooperation Groups (EGTC) in 2007 as a legal arrangement to promote interregional work, a good number of Eurocities or Eurometropolises use this figure to start joint services. The first two EGTCs were the Eurometropolis Lille/Kortrijk/Tournai (France-Belgium) and Ister/Granum (Hungary-Slovakia).
In October 2020, the municipal plenary session of Ciudad Rodrigo (province of Salamanca, ES) unanimously approved the Statutes of the Eurocity ‘Gateway to Europe’,Footnote1 made up of Ciudad Rodrigo and Fuentes de Oñoro (ES) and Vilar Formoso and Almeida (PT).Footnote2 That day, the last of the seven Eurocity initiatives established along the Spanish-Portuguese border since the creation of Chaves-Verín in December 2007, was officially launched ( and Main Map).
The development of cross-border projects linked to Eurocities between Galicia and the North of Portugal is particularly remarkable. Of the seven cases of Eurocity, four are located in this region; the other three are dispersed in the rest of the border. Furthermore, the first case of Eurocity (Chaves/Verín) (Lois, Citation2013) is also placed in this region.
5.1. The impact of Eurocities on population
The problem of depopulation in the borderlands of Portugal and Spain is long-standing, intensified in recent decades. In fact, the ‘retention, attraction and settlement of people, companies and new activities’ through ‘economic development and territorial innovation’ is one of the five axes of intervention contemplated in the document Common Strategy for Cross-Border Development of September 2020 (CitationPOCTEP, 2020) where Spanish and Portuguese governments updated CBC common plans and objectives. Moreover, the fight against depopulation in borderlands is also often invoked as an argument to support the creation of Eurocities and other institutional agreements.
However, almost three decades after the creation of the first Eurocity and taking the population growth as indicator of development, the impact of Eurocities is not significant (Main Map). In several cases, the Eurocity do to overcome the negative growth: Chaves (PT)/Verín (ES) grows remarkably in the first intercensal period (2001–2011), but failures in the second (2011–2021). In the case of Elvas (PT)/Badajoz (ES)/Campo Maior (PT) also presents a reduction of population, which is greater on the Portuguese side than on the Spanish side, where it remains stable. This also happens in the cases of Tui (ES)/Valença (PT) and Salvaterra de Miño (ES)/Monção (PT), which is in line with the behavior of the population in the two countries to some extent, which in the last intercensus period grew by 1.24% in Spain and decreased by 2.07% in Portugal.
There are two Eurocities where the population is growing or, at least, remains stable: Ayamonte (ES)/Vila Real de Santo António (PT)/Castro Marim (PT), and Vila Nova da Cerveira (PT)/Tomiño (ES). The Eurocity Ciudad Rodrigo (ES)/Almeida (PT)/Vilar Formoso (PT)/Fuentes de Oñoro (ES) is the one that presents the greatest decreasing in the last intercensal period, but, in any case, this cannot be correlated to the creation of the Eurocity since it dates from 2020 and only becomes effective in 2023. In general terms, the Eurocities located closer to the seacoast have grown or retained their population better than the inland Eurocities, which is also a general pattern in the two countries.
5.2. The electoral geography of the Eurocities
We have also tried to display blocks of electoral support tendencies in the municipalities of both sides of the border that constitute the Eurocities (Main Map). The measurement follows a temporal logic, starting with the official foundation of each Eurocity until 2023, registering municipality electoral support patterns. Conservative block encompasses the Social Democratic Party (PPD/PSD), in Portugal, and the Popular Party (PP), in Spain, and their coalitions. Progressive block corresponds to Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) and Galicia Nationalist Block (BNG), in Spain, and Socialist Party (PS), in Portugal, and their coalitions.
A symmetric electoral tendency is registered for all cases, except in D and F cases. It is significant that in almost all Eurocities the ideological orientation of the local governments matches in both sides of the border, underlining a political affinity in authorities of the municipalities involved. Furthermore, in A, C and E changes in electoral support have run parallel in both sides of the border.
Our extensive fieldwork on Eurocities also points to political affinities as a significant dimension to create and impulse these CBC arrangements. For instance, in the case A, a vote of no confidence that changed the local government in Verín (ES) in 2007 followed a public intervention of the major of Chaves (PT) censuring the lack of interest of the new major (of different political orientation) for the Eurocity project.Footnote3
6. Police and customs cooperation
The Police and Customs cooperation between Spain and Portugal are also a CBC initiative, but somehow different character from the cross-border cooperation that we have seen until now: in one side, the actors are the States and not any sub-state entity; in the other side, its objective is the security of the whole of the state territories, not just the border ones. In that sense, the regulatory bases of the security cooperation processes within the European Union had the Schengen Agreement (1985) as their starting point. The Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement document states changes in the considerations of internal borders, projecting them as bridges that allow the free movement of people and goods, in order to achieve an internal market that must be regulated based on a series of measures and rules of application between the signatory States (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: Preamble). There is a transformation, which does not mean elimination, of the idea of border security: concepts such as ‘border crossing’ and ‘border control’ are exclusively applied to the EU external borders, to third States and for non-EU citizens (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art.1). The Art. 2 of the Convention insist in the elimination of controls on the free movement of people except for reasons of public order and national security. This final point of the article allows us to see that the line of modification of the idea of border security continues, but this conception does not disappear. The internal border, now proposed as ‘open’, can continue to maintain its essence as a security device qualified by the points of the agreement, and as recourse to manage exceptional circumstances as well (CitationLois, 2020, p. 297). Along these lines, Title III of said Convention refers to Police and Security, with Chapter I relating to Police Cooperation. The art. 39 establishes the guiding principles of said cooperation based on the assistance and exchange of information between security forces in the prevention and investigation of crimes within the new reality of free movement. A cooperative starting point is established that, following the fourth and fifth points of said article, can be expanded bilaterally between States, especially in relation to cooperation regimes in border regions.
In this way, the border appears as a specific territory that not only makes bilateral extensions of the bases of said Convention possible, but also allows a series of specific regulated cooperation actions. Border crossings for ‘the surveillance of a person who has allegedly participated in a criminal act’ (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art.40) and cross-border pursuits in cases of ‘flagrant delicto’ (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art.41) highlight the idea of the border limit as a separation of jurisdictions, now permeable, from the new approach of the possibility of cooperation. In both cases, it is specified that the agents must communicate to the competent authorities the crossing of the border which, as stated in the following sections, maintains the judicial and police hierarchy of the State in whose territory the surveillance or persecution is being carried out, respecting the principle of legal separation. The agreement itself allows for forms of modification of that strict idea of separation marked by the limit, de-bordering the border at some extent. But, at the same time, its art. 44 specifically reterritorializes these border regions since it highlights the need for the States involved to establish a series of basic communication and direct link infrastructures ‘to facilitate police and customs cooperation’ (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art. 44). The border thus appears as a new re-bordered territory of cooperation.
The advance in police CBC motivated new mechanisms and forms of support related to the exchange of information and establishment of specific legal coverage. For the exchange of information, Single Contact Points were established as a development of the forms of centralization of international police cooperation required in the Agreement (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000 : art.39.3). The implementation of the provisions of art. 39.5 of the Convention, regarding bilateral agreements between Member States with a common border, allowed not only Joint Police Stations but also Police and Customs Cooperation Centres (CCPA) to appear on the borderlands. The latter have made possible to maintain the classic police and customs control on the ground, replacing it with a cooperation and meeting point for the police authorities of the different border States fulfilling these functions within the new framework of relations established by the Schengen Agreement. It is a bilateral agreement that specifically define the bases of cooperation, objectives, operation and procedures of each of the CCPAs to address what the free mobility of people and goods entails (CitationCouncil of the European Union, 2022). As for their scale for action, and as reflected in the Schengen Convention when talking about cooperation in border regions, borderlands become the zones of actions of the CCPA (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art. 39.5).
In the case of the Portuguese_Spanish border, the Joint Police Stations were established in Caya-Elvas and Tui-Valença do Minho, in Spanish territory, and Vilar Formoso-Fuentes de Oñoro and Vila Real de Santo Antonio-Ayamonte, in Portuguese territory. In 2008, a new agreement was signed to transform the Joint Police Stations in the CCPA, and to create two more: Vilar Formoso-Fuentes de Oñoro and Alcañices-Quintanilha, both in Portuguese territory (Acuerdo entre el Reino de España y la República Portuguesa, Citation2008) (Main Map). In these centers, the Spanish security forces (Civil Guard and National Police) and the Portuguese security forces (National Republican Guard, Public Security Police-PSP, Judicial Police) outline borderland security hubs with the Tax Agency (ES) and the Portuguese Service for Foreigners and Borders (SEF-PT) (Acuerdo entre el Reino de España y la República Portuguesa, Citation2008: art.2). In relation to the possibilities of cross-border surveillance and persecution, a declaration was established regarding the maximum distance of penetration into the territory of the other country by the security forces, and the cases in which they could be carried out: 50 km or a period of two hours car driving.
Security governance agreements such as CCPA make effective on the ground the objectives of information exchange and cooperation between security forces, especially in relation to the surveillance, control and prosecution of crimes that can take place in the border area according to the agreements (Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement Citation2000: art. 41.4.a) which refers to the police and customs control tasks that the States had been carrying out at the border limits, but from a new perspective. From the idea of the boundary as a security barrier to the perspective of an effective zone for cooperation and collaboration in security terms. In other words, a buffer-zone which extension is agreed by both countries.
7. Conclusion
Mapping political geography in border areas is a complex exercise limited by data availability. This text proposed a sample of CBC maps to present different aspects of the geographies of governance in the Portuguese-Spanish border, popularly known as raya/raia (line).
The making of EU CBC policies creates specific scales of governance in the border. NUTS 3 spaces of cooperation, Eurocities, or security buffer zone intersect with the boundary and previous state-based scales, showing a constant process of de-bordering and re-bordering around the official territoriality.
POCTEP program sets common thematic objectives and spaces of action for CBC in the making of a transborder imagination logic. Eurocities display common territories, but our findings show that their implementation do not have significant effects on population previous structural tendencies of border areas. However, in terms of electoral support, certain border-related common political behavior in 5 of 7 Eurocities is noticed.
When exploring security CBC agreements, the making of the borderland as a space for joint security actions projects a buffer zone to keep safety purposes in both countries.
Our initial approach will benefit of deeper research to validate these initial findings.
Software
The software employed to draw the maps was Esri’s ArcMap 10.8.
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Data availability statement
The data presented in this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
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Notes
2 ES is the ALPHA-2 code for Spain according to the countries ISO codes as described in the ISO 3166 international standard. PT is the ALPHA-2 code for Portugal. See https://www.iban.com/country-codes.
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