Federalism in Spain

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States that would make up the Spanish nation according to the draft Federal Constitution of 1873. Neither Cuba nor Puerto Rico appear in the image, then two Spanish "provinces".

Federalism in Spain began in the 1830s, although it has its roots in the 1790s. The first and only attempt to establish a

federal state in Spain occurred during the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874). After this failure, federalism was a minority political current. In the Second Spanish Republic and in the Transition, an intermediate model was chosen between federalism and centralism — the integral state, in the first case; and the regional state
in the second.

History

19th century: the failure of the Federal Republic of 1873-1874

Starting in the 1830s, the most

José Marchena who already in 1792 proposed a republic made up of Spain and Portugal, or that of Juan de Olabarría, who was probably the one who drew up in 1819 a draft Constitution in which it was said that "the provinces are naturally federated" and that "the interests common to a province are within the province's competence", in addition to José Canga Argüelles who in 1826 published anonymously in London the "Letters of an American on the advantages of the federative republican governments" or of Ramón Xaudaró who in Limoges published in 1832 "Bases of a political constitution or fundamental principles of a republican system".[1]

In the republican newspaper El Huracán published between 1840 and 1841, it held the United States as a model of "pure democracy" and included the following federal and Iberian verses:[2]

First of all, dethrone the unfaithful race of

Isabel
.

Spanish nation and weakening the sub-state loyalties
.

Federalism started from the medieval "old kingdoms" to define the states that would form the Spanish federal Republic. Its great theorist was the Catalan republican politician Francesc Pi i Margall author of "Las Nacionalidades" published in 1877 shortly after the failure of the federal experience of the First Spanish Republic.[3] As Juan Francisco Fuentes has pointed out, the federalists reasoned in reverse that the Frenchified and the Moderates who "made the State the cornerstone of their modernizing project, to the detriment of the sovereign nation", because they considered "the nation would only reach the fullness of its existence if the unitary and centralist State - taxes, fifths, forces of order, covachuelas, monarchy - was conveniently scrapped", thus proposing a "kind of nation without a state."[4]

The federalists' conception of Spain has been defined as a "multi-state nation that would make citizens and territories alike free", a "strange hybrid", according to

Valentí Almirall and, finally, in the draft Federal Constitution of 1873, whose 1st article read: "The States that make up the Spanish Nation are Upper Andalusia, Lower Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, New Castile, Old Castile, Catalonia, Cuba, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia, Navarre, Puerto Rico, Valencia, Basque Country".[7][8]

According to

Spanish nation and the weakening of the sub-state loyalties, which "contributed to creating the conditions so that, when other factors acted, [the] Spanish national unity would end up being broken" than in 1875, despite everything, no one questioned.[9]

Second Spanish Republic

In the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which governed the Second Spanish Republic, a territorial model was established halfway between federalism ―which was no longer defended by the republican parties due, among other reasons, to the influence of regenerationism and the failure of the federal experience of 1873-1874 ―[10] and centralism ― for example, Republican Union conceived the State as "an interaction of municipal and regional autonomies within the indestructible unity of Spain". This new formula was called the "Integral State, compatible with the autonomy of the Municipalities and Regions."[11] But it was not agreed that the autonomy regime would be for everyone by demanding a very broad support from the population ―two thirds of the electoral census― in the “regions” that demanded access to it ―in fact only Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia undertook the process.[12]

Transition and democratic consolidation

Flag of Spain and flags of the 17 autonomous communities and the two autonomous cities on the facade of the Senate building in Madrid.

In the

Constitution of 1978. In article 2 it was said that the Constitution "recognizes and guarantees the right to autonomy of nationalities and regions", where "nationality" was a term that had never been used in the history of Spanish constitutionalism and whose concrete meaning was not specified in any of the following articles.[14][15] As recognized by the socialist Gregorio Peces-Barba years after the Constitution was approved, the distinction between "nationalities" and "regions" was inspired by the exiled socialist Anselmo Carretero's idea of Spain as a "nation of nations".[16]

The "

Autonomous Communities of the "slow track" of Article 143 of the Constitution and of the "fast track" of 151 (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia), it did not achieve its main objective: that the various nationalisms existing in Spain agree on the type of State acceptable to all. The sub-state nationalisms were not satisfied with the autonomic solution, nor with the "coffee for all" ―the generalization of autonomies― which was finally adopted and they continued to demand a confederal model and even independence.[17] However, the so-called "coffee for all" model has been compared to a symmetrical federalism.[18]

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Catalan socialist Pasqual Maragall, who advocated the concept of "differential federalism"—the center of his political thought[19]—proposed through the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006 the fit of Catalonia in Spain within a federal model [20][21][22] inspired in a certain way by the traditionally supported "asymmetric federalism" for the peripheral nationalisms.[23]

See also

References

  1. ^ Fuentes 2013, pp. 186–187
  2. ^ Fuentes 2013, p. 187
  3. ^ Núñez Seixas 2018, p. 34
  4. ^ Fuentes 2013, p. 188
  5. ^ Fuentes 2013, p. 187
  6. ^ Fuentes 2013, pp. 187–188
  7. ^ Fuentes 2013, pp. 188–189
  8. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 21
  9. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 22
  10. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 114
  11. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, pp. 114–115
  12. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, pp. 116–117
  13. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 197; 199
  14. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 200
  15. ^ Juliá 2013
  16. ^ Núñez Seixas 2018, pp. 133–136
  17. ^ De la Granja, Beramendi & Anguera 2001, p. 203
  18. ISSN 0188-7017. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 21 October 2012.
  19. ^ Duarte i Montserrat 2011, pp. 321–322.
  20. El Pais (in Spanish). Barcelona
    . 27 October 2004.
  21. TV3 (in Catalan). Televisió de Catalunya
    . 25 March 2003.
  22. ^ "Carod lamenta que hi hagi "un cert classisme etnicista" en part del nacionalisme català i demana més catalanistes "de l'Espanyol"". El Debat (in Catalan). 23 September 2009. Archived from the original on 28 September 2009.
  23. ISBN 848021452X
    .

Bibliography
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