The blackmail of the Junts is not only an incident for the government coalition in Spain; It also symbolizes the red lines that mark our Constitution concerning the capacity for self-government of autonomous communities. On the occasion of its forty-seventh anniversary, the Constitution of 78, which has rendered so many great services, shows undeniable signs of fatigue among those who die regularly. I am referring, of course, to its Title VIII, the territorial organization of the State, which has been moved since its beginnings by the judgment of the Constitutional Court and, above all, by the political creativity resulting from the clash of forces between the major parties and the centrifugal dynamics of what we call “peripheral nationalism”. I come to our time of most worrying conflict, far above the left/right side.
The qualitative leap produced the independence movement of Catalan nationalism, but also the need for the blockade of leftists to be able to count on their votes to be able to govern, with the consequence of the tension that their demands rose to establish a minimum of coherence between the value of equality, which is equal, and the establishment of economic privileges for certain communities. The aspiration for the Catalan Cup, the ground constitutionally provided for Euskadi, was the best example of this contradiction. On the other front, on the left, there is a similar movement, but in the opposite direction, the centripetal turn which favors Vox. A possible victory for this bloc would subject the PP to significant pressure to reverse the path followed so far. Here again, the will to power will return to its hold on constitutional diktats, prisoner of the vice which maintains the major parties of the opposite poles.
Regarding this development, I would like to add three observations. First: as this shows the difficulty of satisfying the demands of Junts, complaints against the autonomy of mayors have practically reached the limits marked by the Constitution, and often only extend concessions to the purely economic domain. What must be done: any new concession of privileges in this area, which is not symbolic-national, breaks the principle of equality between autonomous communities. And third: in practice, the organization of the State ends up responding more to the needs of governance than to the implementation of a federal model based on clear and consensual principles, resulting from a sort of dispute in which skills and other favors are exchanged for parliamentary votes. It is a miracle that regionalist parties do not proliferate, aiming exclusively to maximize economic transfers in their favor and to be able to enter this game too.
It will be said that it is to a large extent about politics, and as such, in fact. But it is assumed that this is part of a framework of standards capable of establishing a balance between the imperatives of diversity, required in a country like Spain, and the principle of equality and solidarity between the different autonomous communities. This is what I think is broken or about to break. Both for the radicalization of peripheral nationalisms and for the reaction it provokes at the other extreme, both ready to go further than what is constitutionally authorized. To cut this Gordian knot, there would have to be a lack of agreement between the major parties, but this is precisely what seems impossible, preferring to flirt with each with their respective extremes. This is what is happening, and its effect on the Constitution is being felt, coming dangerously close to what we call in our biography the crisis of the 50th century, the moment of reinvention. This time, there is therefore no consensus.
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