Democratic Citizenship and Limits to the Multiculturasl Exercise of Fundamental Rights in Spain

Abstract

The following paper deals with the well-known issues of citizenship and multiculturalism from the point of view of democratic constitutional law. It focuses on nationality (citizenship in a formal sense) and citizenship in a substantive sense of the word as the two main constitutional conditions of external multiculturalism within a democratic state. It is argued that both institutions play a role as promoters and at the same time as sources of limitations upon the development of multiculturalism. On the one side, the democratization of nationality and citizenship makes of them the proper constitutional tools for enhancing multiculturalism through its culturally open safeguarding of fundamental rights. But on the other side, the need to preserve the democratic and national character of citizenship implies a certain limitation of the scope of multiculturalism in four different ways: the liberal-democratic understanding of fundamental rights that flows from the constitutional texts; the provision of compulsory civic-democratic education at schools; the political and cultural requirements established for naturalization; and finally the definition of the fundamental rights agenda by the cultural majority that is embodied in a democratic frame of government.