**  INTRODUCTION (see below)  **

If you need additional information about the 11 topics of this chapter, please call or write to:,

   ECONOMIC AND COMMERCIAL SECTION OF THE EMBASSY OF SPAIN
   151 Slater Street, Suite 801
   Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 5H3
   Canada
   Phone Number 613. 236 0409
                613. 236 0400
   Fax 613. 563 2849   

The 11 Topics Are:

1. The National Highway Network
2. Housing Policy
3. The Oil Pipeline Network
4. The Gas Pipeline Network
5. The Railroad Network
6. Maritime Traffic
7. Air Traffic
8. Telecommunications
9. Retevision
10. Hispasat
11. Environmental Policy

Thank-you very much.

Introduction:

Spain's economic development process in the 1960s, interrupted in the following decade by the energy crisis, left Spain with a need of infrastructures, especially in its qualitative aspect. During the 1980s, the strong economic reactivation showed just how urgent the need was to close this gap which separated the country from the EC, in order for Spain's economy to successfully overcome the challenge of integration into a borderless market. As of 1985, different transportation and communications infrastructures plans were put into practice to show the entire effort put forth to make the basic infrastructures of a modern society equal to its needs.

In 1992 a process of global planification was undertaken for all the different modes of transportation, which has crystalized in the Directive Plan of Infrastructures (PDI), presented to Parliament for its approval. By 2007, the existing provisions aim at a road network of additional 10,600 kms. long; regarding railroads, 1,200 kms of high speed lines and 3,000 more for big capacity (speed between 160 and 220 kms./h.). In ports and airports, many improvements are planned to ensure the efficiency of the service in conditions of economic-financial equilibrium.

Important Urban Actions, such as interurban transportation, for which directive schemes based on the criteria of satisfying demand, territorial balance, an all over efficient system, and environmental impact, are also under consideration.

Spain's rapid pace of development, launched in the 1960's, was not accompained by any type strategy to combat problems of pollution and destruction. This, inevitably, produced a progressive imbalance leading to the deterioration of the environment.

The situation, which needed to be remedied and prevented as rapidly as possible so it would not lead to worse problems, has been undergoing corrective measures since Spain began to adopt the EC's environmental policies with its accession to the Common market in 1986. Although it is only recently that one has been able to speak of a protectionist and even regenerationist policy for the environment in Spain, there are interesting precedents to such. Most of them date back to the end of the 19th century, a period of reflection caused by the country's political, economic and cultural decline that crystalized in the crisis of 1898. The consequent regenerationism implied the establishment of the first national park in the Picos de Europa and the centraq Pyrenees in the 1920's. These actions, both concrete and restricted, came to be added to a fairly diffuse concept that the physical environment -the coasts, the inland waters and the seas, the subsoil- was public property, the heritage of all Spaniards. In the 1960's, in the fervour of the development and planning preoccupations for a general policy in defense of nature began to crop up, which were more theroretical and rhetorical than real and legal. However, the rapid economic expansion which had been initiated in this period aggravated the destruction which the environment had always suffered. Indiscrimate industrial development and urban speculation became the order of the day.

As a result of this process, the historic deforestation of our country increased, and desertification worsened in certain southeastern areas of the Peninsula and in the river Ebro valley. This deterioration was neither controlled nor detained by the intense reforestation policy which was carried out in the 1940's for purely economic motivations, that did not succeed in impeding the ecological destruction nor in restoring the traditional ecological equilibrium, nor its old pictoresque panoramas.

Over the years, in contrast to the progressive destruction of nature, a higher level of social sensitivity has fomented an increase in demand of environmental wealth.

Please, ask for any of the above mentioned topics for more details. Thank-you.