Abstract
This paper considers that there is a clear and important relationship between the procedure for amending the Constitution and the territorial structure of the state, as has been noted by authors such Ackerman. However in the evolution of Spanish territorial system, which has undoubtedly become a federal state, the rules of constitutional reform do not sufficiently take into account the will of the Autonomous Communities. According to this logic a reform of the procedure of amending the Constitution to allow a solution that can be shared by both supporters of constitutional reform and supporters of the referendum is proposed.
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- 1.
- 2.
This is what, since Bickel, has been known as the counter-majority aspect of constitutional justice. Cfr. See Ahumada Ruiz (2005).
- 3.
“We have become a nation-centered People stuck with a state-centered system of formal amendment” (2007, 1743). So “The great challenge for constitutional law is to develop historically sensitive categories for understanding these developments” (2007, 1743). See also: “I don’t suggest that Americans think of themselves as citizens of a unitary nation-state on the model of, say, nineteenth-century France. We remain Pennsylvanians or Oregonians as well as Americans, but the textual promise of the Fourteenth Amendment has finally become a living reality: we are Americans first. And as the priority of national citizenship has become a fixture of the living Constitution, the inadequacy of other state-centered forms inscribed in the text, and unchanged since the Founding, has become a very serious problem” (2007, 1749–1750).
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In reality, the third, which is the one espoused by the National Government during this legislature, is to keep the edifice unscathed. This is the equivalent of the Titanic strategy: musicians playing their sombre melodies as the majestic ship sinks.
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See Constitutional Court Judgments 42/2014 and 259/2015.
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- 8.
See the proposal of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Available at http://web.psoe.es/source-media/000000562000/000000562235.pdf. Cfr. Also Cámara Villar (2016) and Solozábal Echevarría (2014).
- 9.
This idea was rightly, of course, echoed during the first doctrinal discussion over the Second Generation Statutes (Balaguer Callejón 2015, p. 366).
- 10.
And not just this: the pyramid’s replacement with the circle as the best descriptive device for the contemporary legal system had already been observed by Nieto (1983) at a very early stage.
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We could even say that he was thinking about the specific model of a unitary state of parties, as is derived from the fact that Article 166 of the Spanish Constitution states that popular initiative is excluded from among those authorised to propose it. See Presno’s Linera (2014) reform proposal.
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For instance, Ridao (2014).
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In fact, it is a concept that the right to decide relegates to the sidelines.
- 15.
Regarding this in general, see Guillén López (2015).
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See Azpitartes’s recent and very interesting approach (Azpitarte Sánchez 2016).
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The supposed constituent power of the Catalan people is the key concept about which are articulated the two laws intended to serve as supposedly enabling legal framework for the rupture of the constitutional model during 2017. I refer to the Law of the Parliament of Catalonia 19/2017, of September 6, entitled “of the referendum on self-determination” (declared unconstitutional in CCR 114/2017, of. October 17, 2017) and to the Law of the Parliament of Catalonia 20/2017, of September 8, entitled “the Act on Foundational and Legal Transience of the Republic” (declared unconstitutional by CCR 124/2017, of November 8, 2017).
- 18.
Ground 5 in particular. “The submission of all to the Constitution is “another form of submission to popular will, expressed on this occasion as constituent power” [CCR 108/1986, of July 29, FJ 18, and 238/2012, of December 13, FJ 6 b)]. In the Constitutional State, the democratic principle cannot be separated from the unconditional primacy of the Constitution, which, as this Court declared in CCR 42/2014, FJ 4 c), “requires that every decision taken by authority, without exception, be subject to the Constitution, without the existence, for public authority, of spaces free of the Constitution or areas of immunity with respect to it”.
To guarantee that the latter does not occur we have the system of our Constitutional State of Law—public authorities, but also the citizenry—and, ultimately, when so required, this Constitutional Court. To which corresponds “in its function of supreme interpreter of the Constitution (art. 1 LOTC), the safeguarding of the permanent distinction between the objectification of constituent power and the actions of the constituted powers, which shall never exceed the limits and the competences established by the former” (CCR 76/1983, August 5, FJ 4)”.
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Here we should refer to the most Habermasian ideas possible. This understanding of the right to decide coincides with the Constitutional Court’s favourable interpretation of it in Judgment 42/2014.
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Pinon (2015) expressly shows this.
- 22.
In this regard, we should recall Peter Häberle’s doctrine of the open society of constitutional interpreters, applicable in this case in that majority opinion that is consistent and maintained over time must be relevant to the content of a right, over which those who are entitled to the right have control (Häberle 2008).
- 23.
The relationship between regulation and fact, and between validity and effectiveness in constitutional reform in general is extraordinarily well encapsulated in Zagrebelsky (2003, pp. 18, 19).
- 24.
With this system, an Autonomous Community could always count on support if it understands that its positions are not going to be specifically addressed by the Constitution, since there is not a single Community that does not share an analogous set of concerns with the others. I think this consideration would probably only need appropriate correction to apply to the cases of the Canary Islands and the Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla.
- 25.
Zagrebelsky (2003), p. 23.
- 26.
In this regard I agree with the theory of Montilla Martos (2016).
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Guillén López, E. (2019). Constitutional Reform and Federalism in Spain. A Modest Proposal. In: López-Basaguren, A., Escajedo San-Epifanio, L. (eds) Claims for Secession and Federalism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59707-2_30
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