Almost in every town in the Murcia Region there is a plaque dedicated to the Constitution, a square, an avenue or a street with a tribute to the Magna Carta; while in the entire Basque Country there are only six municipalities with a memory for the Law of Laws, of which today marks the 46th anniversary of its ratification in a referendum by the Spanish.
In the province of BiscayIn fact, there is no trace of the Constitution on his street map. In Guipuzcoa There is only one in one town, in its capital, San Sebastián; but the square, the most emblematic of the city, received its name long before 1978, as a tribute to that of Cádiz in 1812. In Alava There are five municipalities with a plaque dedicated to the Magna Carta, Vitoria included.
The six Basque municipalities with a memory for the Constitution represent only 2% of the total of 252 localities in the Basque Country, by far the lowest percentage of all the autonomous communities, according to an analysis of the INE street map of July 2024. The Basque provinces were the territories with the highest abstention in the 1978 referendum and with the lowest percentage of support for the text. The PNV positioned itself to abstain from the vote, and the nationalist left (Herri Batasuna at the time) asked for a vote against.
Setback on the roads of Catalonia
Catalonia, which did enthusiastically support the 1978 Constitution, is the second autonomous community with the lowest percentage of municipalities with a square or road dedicated to it. Only one in ten Catalan towns has a plaque in his memory. The majority are in the provinces of Tarragona and Barcelonathe only ones with a tribute in their respective capitals. In Lleida capital, in fact, the Plaza de la Constitución recently changed its name to Plaza del Clot de les Granotes (hole of the frogs, in Spanish).
In the province of Lérida there are three fewer towns than two decades ago with squares or roads commemorating the Constitution; in Gerona, five less; in Tarragona, two less; while Barcelona remains at the same number, since it wins two (Montmeló and Esplugues de Llobregat) but loses another two (Calella and Sentmenat).
Sentmenat, in fact, is one of the Catalan municipalities that removed the plaque from the Constitution to put up one with pro-independence symbols, October 1, in memory of the illegal referendum held in 2017. It was not the only City Council to take a similar measure, with the same or another reference of Catalan nationalism, such as the square of the Catalan Countries, of the Republic or of the Catalan Cortes. Up to a dozen cases, all small municipalities.
Increase in Spain as a whole
In contrast to Catalonia, in Spain as a whole there are more squares or roads dedicated to the Constitution than there were two decades ago. In total, there are currently 3,063 distributed in 2,735 municipalities, since some have several public roads (squares, avenues, streets) with their name; while in 2004 there were 2,779 license plates in 2,507 municipalities. An increase not only attributable to urban growth, with the consequent increase in the municipal street map, but also to the addition of more City Councils to constitutional tributes. In total, there are 228 more towns with a plaque dedicated to the Magna Carta in their streets.
Basin and Toledo These are the provinces where the most municipalities have joined in adding a memory to the Fundamental Standard, 17 more each than two decades ago. Despite this increase, they are still far from being the provinces with the highest percentage of localities with a plaque to the Constitution. In Cuenca there are four out of every ten locations, and in Toledo there are seven out of every ten; while in Murcia and Cadiz nine out of ten localities have a public road with homage to the Law of Laws.
Differences between north and south
Aside from extremes, there are notable differences between the north and south of Spain in the number of municipalities with tributes to the Constitution on their streets. In the Community of Madrid, Andalusia and Extremadura, seven out of every ten municipalities have a memory of the Magna Carta; in the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, six out of ten; and in Castilla-La Mancha, five out of ten.
No region in the northern peninsula exceeds these figures. In Asturias, four out of every ten municipalities have a plaque dedicated to the Constitution; in La Rioja and Castilla y León, three out of every ten; in Aragón, Galicia and Cantabria, two out of every ten. In Navarra, Catalonia and the Basque Country, one in ten or not even that. Specifically, in Navarra, only 13%; in Catalonia, 9%; and in the Basque Country, 2%.
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