Suppose a Spanish public educational or research institute wishes to hire you. Then a central committee needs to first vouch that you are actually good enough to be hired. This is done via so called accreditations.

Most prominently, there is the ANECA which is the national agency. A national accreditation will be accepted in any of the Autonomous Communities (CCAAs). Next, each CCAA has its own agency which can issue accreditations which, to the best of our knowledge, are only accepted within that particular CCAA.

Passing an accreditation is considered to be very time consuming. The system requires certificates of almost all activities making Spanish scientist have to beg for certificates at all kinds of conferences seminars and the like, both national and international.

The rationale of having a central agency judge on your competence to take on a public position probably finds its origin in fighting endogamic practices.