THE REAL INFLUENCE OF THE AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITIES AND OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT IN REFORMING STATUTES OF AUTONOMY
As a matter of fact, not all efforts to enact and reform the statutes of autonomy have originated with the autonomous communities, the autonomous-community-based political parties, or the territorial branches of the Spanish-wide parties.
Often the impetus has come from the top down, from central institutions themselves.In the founding stage, at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the impetus from the bottom up to enact statutes of autonomy was clearly seen in those regions that had a greater desire for self-government and that had been demanding political autonomy throughout the Franco regime. This was the case in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and to a lesser extent Galicia. There was also a notable impetus from the bottom up in Andalusia, in which, against the opinion of the party in power in the central government (the UCD), the PSOE of Andalusia expressed a desire to move toward self-government and become an autonomous community by the fast-track method used for Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia.19 In contrast, in the remaining regions the impetus for and the guidance for enacting their respective statutes and becoming, thus, autonomous communities came from the Spanish-wide parties. Actually, that was all promoted and developed by means of the 1981 Agreement signed between the UCD, the party then ruling in the central government, and the PSOE, the main opposition party, soon after the attempted coup d’etat in February of that same year. As a result, thirteen new autonomous communities were created following the slow track set by the Spanish Constitution.
As for the reforms of the statutes, one can distinguish two distinct models: top-down and bottom-up. Following the top-down model, by means of the 1992 Agreement, the party in office in the central government (the PSOE) and the opposition (the PP), set in motion a generalized process intended to reform the statutes of the slow-track autonomous communities.
These reforms certainly responded to the previous demands of these autonomous communities to acquire and hold powers similar to those held by the fast-track autonomous communities. However, the way in which the whole process was conducted by the PSOE and the PP reduced the reform of the statutes of autonomy to an act of simple ratification. In effect, the central government accepted the autonomous communities’ demands, but instead of directly reforming the statutes of autonomy one by one on the basis of an agreement, the central institutions relied on a provision in the Spanish Constitution that allowed them to delegate specific powers to the autonomous communities. The central institutions delegated the same competencies uniformly for all slow-track autonomous communities, so that the reform of the statutes of autonomy proceeded by means of a single article that declared the content of the Spanish law of transfers to be incorporated into each of the statutes of autonomy.20 This process, controlled from the top down, failed to arouse any significant political debate. Only a few scholars warned that the legislators, both the autonomous-community parliaments and the Spanish one, had used the law improperly and had perverted the Spanish transfer laws regarding the powers and the process of reforming the statutes of autonomy.21Following the bottom-up model, in contrast, the reform processes begun in 2003 and still under way as of 201122 generally give a leading role to the autonomous communities and to the autonomous-community-based parties and the branches of the Spanish-wide parties. This helps to explain the intensity of the debate that has arisen with regard to the reforms and the fact that proposals for suppressing the “dispositive principle” have multiplied. In Catalonia, which along with the Basque Country pioneered the reform process during this second phase, the impetus arose from the Catalan Parliament with the support of all the parties, including the Catalan Socialists’ Party (PSC), which in fact played a crucial role in the reform, even though it is affiliated with the PSOE.
Only the PP remained uninvolved.Of particular interest is the role played by the autonomous-community branches of the PP in promoting the reform process in two autonomous communities in which they govern, despite the lack of support and the negative position of the PP central apparatus. Eventually, the latter had to accede to pressures exerted from the autonomous-community “barons,” who did not want to miss the chance of improving the self-government of the respective autonomous communities or, above all, to risk falling behind the other autonomous communities. Paradoxically, this participation by the PP regional branches did not stop the party from bringing Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy to the Constitutional Court, even though some of the statutes the PP had spurred and supported are almost exact copies of the Catalan Statute. Although the reform put forward by these autonomous communities is less ambitious than, for instance, the Catalan one in terms of form, in practice it may well have the same results.
The situation is also very revealing in Andalusia, where the then prime minister of the autonomous community, Manuel Chaves, was at the same time chairman of the PSOE. Despite the reluctance of important sectors of the party, Chaves decided to head the reform of the Andalusian Statute of Autonomy, and the leader of the Andalusian Popular Party felt obliged to support the reform to avoid giving his electors the impression of being opposed to improving the autonomous community’s self-government. Although the PP did not support the statute in the Andalusian Parliament, eventually it did so in the Spanish Parliament. The position of these autonomous-community “barons” changed and influenced the final position of the autonomous-community branches of these two parties in Andalusia, leading the PSOE and the PP to support subsequent reforms of their respective statutes of autonomy. The current reform process has highlighted the importance of autonomous-community leaders belonging to Spanish-wide parties, and while it has energized those who wish to remove the “dispositive principle,” it has also underlined the fact that the autonomous communities will need to be taken into account in any reform of the territorial power structure.