Els límits de l’autonomia a la mare pàtria*

The impending mess in Spain would not be happening save the People’s Party’s decision to take the 2006 Statute of Autonomy to court and the resulting court decision. That is not to say that the current impasse was inevitable given the decision; it is to say that the decision was a necessary component.

So what did the Constitutional Court actually do? (The decision is at the link.)

Other than the fact that the above picture was taken in Barcelona three years before the 2010 court decision, it captures my reaction fairly well. I’ll start with the parts of the decision that were more-or-less if-you-squint reasonable:

1. The Court let Catalan keep its “preferential status” in the schools, but insisted that it had to remain co-equal with Spanish in “public administration.” This is pretty much exactly the way Canada treats French in Quebec. (Had the court gone further and given Catalan the same de facto status that Spanish has in most American states or that French has in the rest of Canada it would have done a lot to assuage secessionism. But they did not, and to be fair, there was not really any legal reason for the court to do that.)
2. The Court upheld a provision stating that the Statute could call upon the central government to spend a portion of its infrastructure spending in Cataluña “proportional to the percentage of Catalan GDP in relation to the overall Spanish GDP,” but it also stated that a law passed by an autonomous community would not be binding on the national government. 
3. The Court overturned the provisions creating a Catalan supreme court, pointing out that the creation of courts was not one of the powers that the Constitution let the national government devolve to the communities. Unlike the other two, this one was contentious (and seems silly to American, Argentine, Australian, Brazilian, Canadian, or Mexican observers). Still Articles 148 and 149 Spanish constitution place the judiciary among the reserved powers of the central government. 

If this had been the whole thing, then I doubt that the country would be in the current mess. (Although #3 is pretty drastic and the court could have gone the other way.) But, sadly, it was not the whole thing. It also:

1. Gratuitously re-wrote the Statute to state that Catalans were not a nationality and had no inherent right to self-government, even though silly little Navarra (the land of my maternal grandfather’s ancestors) is a “historic nationality” gets to call its agreements with the national government “treaties”);
2. Weirdly insisted that Cataluña cannot set up its own tax administration (unlike Navarra and Basque Country, Basque constitution in English)
3. Prevented Cataluña from chartering its own municipal or county governments;
4. Insisted that Cataluña cannot have a direct bilateral relationship with the national government, unlike Basque Country and Navarra;
5. Was written in a most obnoxious and confrontational manner. (Link to the English text, which manages to capture the tone in slightly watered-down form.) The court insisted on discussing every single objection raised by the People’s Party at long and sympathetic length, even when the ultimate decision upheld the Catalan position.

The whole thing was a massive WTF. The Court could have written a limited decision, mildly stating that some language had no constitutional meaning, striking down the disputed clauses, and leaving the rest alone. Hell, given the vagueness of the principles being invoked, it could have just said, hey, obviously Cataluña can enjoy any autonomy that Navarra enjoys, why discriminate?

Sometimes courts really do need to follow the election results. The Spanish constitutional court decided that it would not. And now the result is this illegal election barrelling down upon us, putting the whole of the Spanish State at risk. Has there been a bigger own-goal in a judicial decision since Dred Scott?

* Forgive my Catalan. I understand no Catalan. It is close enough to Castilian to puzzle out simple written sentences, but unlike Portuguese the spoken version (or writing of any complexity) is not comprehensible. In other words, linguistically speaking, Castellano is clearly a different language from Catalan, whereas Castellano is merely a dialect of Portuguese. ☺

Comments

[Randy McDonald]

I remain impressed by the speed with which the PP managed to create a national unity crisis, and seems set to make it worse.

[J.H.]

So in which likely directions do you see the upcoming mess/crisis going? Could the situation deteriorate enough for the People's Party to find itself stuck in a kind of idiot loop, where each stupid action only leads even stupider actions because the the alternative is to back off?

[Noel Maurer]

Short answer: yes. An idiot loop is exactly the right phrase for what the People’s Party is stuck in.

I'm thinking about a longer version.

[President Tarradellas]

The kind of tax arrangement that Catalan nationalism was pushing for some years ago would had meant a rupture of the "inter territorial solidarity principle" upon which "autonomic financing" is based in the Spanish Constitution.

Catalan nationalism, famously lead by the bourgeouisie, is mostly about using the ethnic bait to avoid income sharing. The legitimate safeguard of Catalan culture and identity is nothing more than a alibi for most of them, as they don't really feel it threatened by Castillian nationalism nowadays. In their own words: http://images.eldiario.es/catalunyaplural/Cartel-CiU-Espana-Cataluna-productiva_EDIIMA20130902_0148_13.jpg

I've you for a left-of-center guy, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's a big mistake for anyone on the left to unambiguously side with these people.

[Noel Maurer]

Are you talking to me or to one of the commentators? I'm fairly sure that I've made my opinion clear.