In those days of euphoria and unlimited dreams that fueled the birth of Podemos, with the echoes of 15-M still reverberating through the squares, Pablo Iglesias proclaimed his purpose to “open the lock of 1978.” It was nothing more nor less than launching a new “constituent process.” Iglesias and his people never explained how they planned to do it, which is not surprising: the “lock” that the fathers of the Constitution devised was made to be bomb-proof and proof of unilateral initiatives.
The Fundamental Law that restored democracy in 1978 was drawn up under the memory of the Civil War and Spain's long history of sadly perishable constitutional frameworks, from the Cortes of Cádiz to the Second Republic. The primary interest was to preserve that unprecedented moment that united the entire political arc from the post-Franco right to the communists. And for this, enormous precautions were introduced against any attempt to alter that balance. Touching the core of the Constitution—for example, the concept of national sovereignty and the indissoluble unity of Spain, the articles on fundamental rights or those referring to the Crown—would require a two-thirds majority in Congress and the Senate, approval in referendum and the calling of elections so that the new Chambers could ratify it with an equally demanding majority.
But even minor tweaks require a procedure that demands broad political agreement, from three-fifths of the Congress and Senate—210 deputies in the case of the lower house—almost a chimera in the bitter Spanish political atmosphere. Hence, quite a few authors speak of a virtually irreformable Constitution.
Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo have just agreed on what will be the third specific reform since 1992. To be a very simple matter and one that no one disagrees with — replace the term “handicapped” in article 49 with “people with disabilities.” — has taken five years of tug-of-war, especially because it has come across a head-on clash between the two major parties that have prevented them from sitting down and talking about practically anything.
None of the three reforms has been an original idea of the political groups. Those of 1992 and 2011 were imposed from Europe, while this one will be born as a result of years of pressure from associations in defense of people with disabilities. The one now will be processed quickly and in January, outside the ordinary session period in the Cortes, something similar to what happened with the one agreed 12 years ago.
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Maastricht obliges. The “clean joy of the Transition,” in the words of Gabriel Cisneros, one of the fathers of the Fundamental Law, shone again in Congress on July 22, 1992, three days before the opening of the Barcelona Olympic Games. The reform process of article 13.2 of the Constitution had been carried out “in an excessively secretive, almost surreptitious manner,” according to Cisneros himself, then a PP deputy, but it attracted absolute unanimity: all 332 deputies present at the meeting voted in favor. the camera. Spain had just signed the Maastricht Treaty, which committed the 12 member countries of the European Community to allowing community foreigners to vote and be candidates in municipal elections. It was enough to add two words – “and passive” – to the article that deals with the rights of foreign residents and that already gave them the possibility of exercising the right to vote when reciprocity agreements existed.
The Constitution was about to turn 14 years old and the parties that had participated in its drafting made it clear that they did not want to go beyond a slight touch-up like that. It was ratified by PSOE, PP, CiU – through the mouth of another of the 1978 speakers, Miquel Roca – and also IU, whose deputy Nicolás Sartorius confessed his “true allergy” to undertaking major modifications. Basque nationalism saw it differently: “The taboo that the Constitution was practically untouchable is broken,” Eusko Alkartasuna deputy Joseba Azkarraga congratulated himself.
The time of austerity. The hurricane of the Great Recession devastated Europe in the summer of 2011. The markets besieged Spain despite the fact that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in the final stretch of his mandate, had paved the way for strong cuts in public spending. On August 23, the president appeared at an extraordinary plenary session of Congress and announced that, responding to a “growing consensus in the European institutions”, he intended to introduce into the Constitution the obligation to comply with the fiscal rules imposed from Brussels. The leader of the opposition, Mariano Rajoy, did not take ten minutes to give his acquiescence: “It should have been done sooner.”
The reform of article 135 unleashed a frenetic race. Three days later, PSOE and PP presented a joint text that, in addition to “making austerity a political obligation,” in the words of the popular Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, established the payment of the public debt. On August 30, the plenary session of Congress gave it the green light urgently and in a single reading procedure. The groups only had 48 hours to present amendments, and on September 2 the reform was approved with 321 votes in favor of the two major parties and UPN. The rest—IU and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Canarian nationalists—reacted indignantly and accused PSOE and PP of acting “aggressively.” The majority was absent from the plenary session so as not to participate in the vote. Two socialist deputies also spoke out against it. They all unsuccessfully requested that the issue be submitted to a referendum, even though it was not mandatory.
The then socialist spokesperson, José Antonio Alonso, had said, when presenting the reform before the plenary session, that the situation was “unsustainable” and action had to be taken “right now, without delay.” “An exercise in political responsibility and institutional maturity,” Sáenz de Santamaría described it. “A complete attack on democratic procedures,” summarized the PNV spokesperson, Josu Erkoreka. “What was sacred, inviolable and untouchable can be changed by a simple procedure typical of summer sunstroke,” claimed Joan Ridao, from ERC. During the debate, Gaspar Llamazares, on behalf of IU (where the PCE was integrated), and Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, of CiU, considered broken the constitutional consensus in which their respective parties had participated.
Not a comma. Nobody questioned it when the Constitution was being drafted, but, at the height of this century, the term “disabled” to refer to people with disabilities is offensive to many citizens. Responding to an old demand from the affected groups, a congressional commission proposed in 2018 the retouching of article 49. After successive delays, the proposal was presented in the Chamber in September 2021 only to find that the PP, under the command of Pablo Casado was opposed to materializing it, as was Vox. His argument was that, given the growing pressure for independence, it was not advisable to touch even a comma of the Constitution. “Do you know what melon you are opening?”, the popular deputy Isabel Borrego was alarmed during the debate, despite the fact that no reform of the Constitution could prosper without her party. Feijóo seemed to correct the position as soon as he assumed the popular leadership. It took him a year and a half for it to come to fruition. And again in a hurry and on vacation.
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