to protection of their health. The law recognizes a right to health services for all citizens and for foreigners resident in Spain. Second, Title VIII of the Constitution confers upon the autonomous communities broad purview in matters of health and health care. The autonomous communities have first-order importance in this area, and the law permits devolution of these functions from the central government to the autonomous communities, in order to provide a health care system sufficient for the needs of their respective jurisdictions. Article 149.1.16 or the Constitution, a further basis for the present law, establishes substantive principles and criteria that allow general and common characteristics to be consistent throughout the new system, providing a common basis for health services throughout Spanish territory. The administrative device set up by the law is the National Health System. The presumption underlying the adopted model is that in each autonomous community, authorities are adequately equipped with necessary territorial perspective, so that the benefits of autonomy do not conflict with the needs of management efficiency. Thus, the various health services fall under the responsibility of the respective autonomous communities, but also under basic direction and coordination by the central state. The respective health services of the autonomous communities would gradually realize a transfer of health resources from the central government to the autonomous communities. Law of Cohesion and Quality (2003) The General Health Law was complemented in 2003 by the Law of Cohesion and Quality of the National Health System (Ley 16/2003 de cohesión y calidad del Sistema Nacional de Salud), which maintained the basic lines of the General Health Law, but modified and broadened the articulation of that law to reflect existent social and political reality. By 2003, all of the autonomous communities had gradually assumed purview in matters of health and had established stable models to finance the assumed purview. Meanwhile, in the 17 years since the original law, Spanish society had undergone many cultural, technological and socioeconomic changes that affected people's ways of life and affected the country's patterns of disease and illness. These posed new challenges to the National Health System. Therefore, the 2003 law establishes coordination and cooperation of public health authorities as a means to ensure citizens the right to health protection, with the common goal of ensuring equity, quality and social participation National Health System. The law defines a core set of functions common to all of