The erosion of regional powers in the spanish ‘state of autonomies’

Abstract

The particular complexity of federalism in Spain must be considered before going any further. The federalisation of the Spanish State did not result historically from an agreement between pre-existing states, but from a consensus regarding the political decentralisation of a heavily centralised state. However, this initial statement must be considered in the context of at least two additional and decisive circumstances. First, it must be pointed out that the Spanish federal State was created by the Constitution of 1978, and was in good measure a system to bind the nation together.1 That is, it was designed to accommodate the historical demands for self-government in the nationalities of Catalonia, the Basque Country and to a lesser degree, Galicia, which arose in the late nineteenth century. From this emerged the constitutional recognition of nationalities and regions within the Spanish nation and the design of a procedure to rapidly facilitate their access to self-government. Thus, the initial approach – to bring together – is altered by overlaying the general decentralisation of the State into Autonomous Communities (ACs) with an accommodation of the historical nationalities and regions through various forms of asymmetry.2.