Possibly a simplistic solution, but have you tried using negative lookahead? For instance:
abowley@krait:~$ (echo 'Madrid(Spain' && echo 'Madrid(Spain)') | perl
+-pe 's/\((?![^)]*\))/ /g;'
Madrid Spain
Madrid(Spain)
Breaking the regex down:
s/
\( # an open bracket
(?! # _not_ followed by
[^)]* # anything except brackets (e.g. 'Spain')
\) # followed by a bracket
)
/ /gz;
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