askchapo

If you want to talk about center-periphery relations you have to define what lens you're using and what you conceive of being central to the world order and what is peripheric to it.

In terms of military presence Spain is secondary at best when compared to what the US, and a distant second France wield but they do seem to soldiers in west africa and the middle east.

If you conceive the world order as one high tech is central, then you understand that neither Spain nor anyone in Europe is of note.

If you look at the labor relations in a world of finance capitalism, Spain benefits from Euro-adjacent exchange rates and is a small industrial country that exports cars and pharmaceuticals. It runs with tourism from EU and America rather than procuring dollars purely on commodity exports. The economy as a whole is defined as being of 'high income'.

Spain runs some international construction companies on the side but that's secondary in a world where the US chose not to engage in, where China utterly dominates and where France is the declining presence.

Intra-EU relations, Spain is one of the provinces caught up on the contradictory and half assed nature of the European project and, like most of the PIGS, was unable to just become an economic corporate pillager like Ireland did. So it's down the ladder and exploited by european finance, which is then exploited by american finance. Spain benefits from cheap labor from LatAm while sending it's relatively cheap labor to the rest of the EU.

It keeps going and I'm just spitballing here, but only to say that the question can and should be made more specific.