In this paper, we consider gas dynamical models of spiral galaxies in which there is a rigidly rotating, weakly barlike structure in the central regions. It is found that, in the neighborhood of the corotation circle, this barlike structure forces atrailing spiral wave. Such a driven wave could then propagate inwards to the bar and complete a feedback loop to maintain the spiral structure. For basic distributions typical of our Galaxy, if a ten‐per‐cent oval distortion is assumed, the strength of the induced spiral field is found to be of the order of a few per cent of the axisymmetric field, in agreement with observational d