  We consider a large class of self-adjoint elliptic problem associated with
the second derivative acting on a space of vector-valued functions. We present
two different approaches to the study of the associated eigenvalues problems.
The first, more general one allows to replace a secular equation (which is
well-known in some special cases) by an abstract rank condition. The latter
seems to apply particularly well to a specific boundary condition, sometimes
dubbed "anti-Kirchhoff" in the literature, that arise in the theory of
differential operators on graphs; it also permits to discuss interesting and
more direct connections between the spectrum of the differential operator and
some graph theoretical quantities. In either case our results yield, among
other, some results on the symmetry of the spectrum.
