Dogs and political identification

We are living a time, started by Cataluña and País Vasco residents, for the reformation of the Autonomy Statutes of the different Autonomic Communities forming Spain. In fact, the model of the State is being questioned and some of these territories ask for being nations inside another nation.

Undoubtedly, the philosophy of getting the power decentred and give more competences to the different Autonomic Communities is good. However, there are three Communities that started the reformation of their Statutes arguing they have an own language and special historical conditions. This made a waterfall effect in the rest of the territories.

I don’t want to talk about ideological matters, but I think this process is dangerous, first because it makes us different and creates different rights and duties depending on the place you are born or live; secondly, because there might be serious integration problems and there will be artificial barriers between Spanish people due to the bilingualism; thirdly, because a confrontation between territories might rise, and finally because it will make us be less efficient and operative when solving problems affecting different communities.

An example, no so important, but that shows what we are talking about is that every Autonomic Community has had its own register of pet animals for two years, these databases are absolutely independent ones from the others. Let’s see an example. Imagine some people from Madrid who come and spend the weekend in Mazarrón and their dog gets lost, someone finds it and takes it into the vet’s, who puts the reader over the animal and finds out it has an identification chip. If we introduce these data in just one existent database, such as Murcia’s, the message on the screen will just be “this animal is not recorded” and we will be sent to the other Autonomic Communities’ websites. The following step is to insert the chip into a European Union database, called Europet, if you are lucky, you will be told in which European country the animal is registered. After that, we have to send an e-mail to that database or call to the mentioned register, maybe, within two or three days we could have the contact phone number of the person who lost their dog, or not. Does this have any sense? Why not just one database for the whole Spain? Why not just one database for any house, town or district? Would Cataluña or País Vasco residents lose their identity if they shared a database of dogs (that do not speak Catalán language) with Murcia or Andalucía people? Are we more or less efficient with just one database? Is there any kind of technical problem to do it?

I do have a clear answer for these questions, however I’m sure it is different from some of our politicians’, so what do you think?