Il Mediterraneo, portale di informazione di 24 paesi e 400 milioni di persone

MADRID - It is not just a matter of getting their clocks to tell the same time by doing away with the old time-zone difference: Portugal's citizens are becoming increasingly favourable to the idea of an integrated Iberian state with Spain, as there is strength in unity, especially with Europe.

This is the message coming from the latest annual survey conducted by the University of Salamanca, which has been presented today. While, in 2009, 39.9% of Portuguese supported the idea of a federation of Iberian states and 30.3% of Spain's citizens shared their opinions, these percentages have risen in 2010 to 45.6% and 31% respectively.

Conducted in collaboration with Lisbon's Centre of Sociological Investigative Studies, the report is based on around 2,000 individual interviews. Presenting the survey to the media, the heads of the study, Salvador Santiuste and Mariano Fernandez, explained that the barometer proposed four different formulas of integration, which attract great consensus as they become more flexible.

By these measures, on a scale from 1 to 10, neither the Portuguese nor the Spanish are in favour of a model along the lines of the French republic, which got on 3.82 among the former and 3.30 among the latter. The different notion of a federal state attracted a higher average mark: 4.08 from the Portuguese and 4.63 from the Spanish.

But this was still below the support given to the idea of a confederation along Swiss lines, which got a mark of 4.74 from the Portuguese and one of 4.12 from their Iberian cousins. The model of integration with the greatest appeal was one according full rights to citizens of each of the neighbouring countries.

The Portuguese gave this a warm 6.61 points and the Spanish 6.20; this was similar to the result attained by the proposal for creating a stable alliance within the European Union and ahead of Latin America (6.14 from the Portuguese; 6.20 from their neighbours).

Overall, there has been growth in the number of citizens considering relations between the two countries to be "good or very good" (74.4 of Portuguese and 74.3% of Spaniards).

The more than one thousand kilometres of shared borders are not considered to be a problem, although, following the arrests of ETA members in Portugal, there was a rise in the number of Portuguese who considered the closeness of the two countries to be "very, or quite problematic": up at 39.1% compared to the 25.3% from 2009.

As for collaboration in various fields, close cooperation in policing, in the courts and in military matters was considered a priority, given that 94% of Portuguese interviewees and 92.8% of Spanish interviewees were of this opinion.(ANSAmed).

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