Elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, November 28th

The Spanish Government has come to an agreement with the Basque Nationalist Party and Canarian Coalition to get the necessary support for the passing of the Budget Bill for 2011
The Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, has come to an agreement with the chairman of the Basque nationalist party (PNV) and the chairman of the Canarian nationalist party (CC) to get the necessary parliamentary support for the Central Government to pass its 2011 Budget Bill. The agreement also includes their further support to other bills the Government may submit to surmount the economic crisis.
(+) to know more about the Budget Bill negotiation.

Immediately after its final approval in June 2006, the new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia was challenged before the Spanish Constitutional Court by 99 MPs of the Spanish conservative party, the Partido Popular. Four years later and after a long and extremely politicized process in which the judges failed to agree on several draft rulings, in June 2010 the judges reached an agreement and finally delivered their sentence which established that 14 articles were totally or partially unconstitutional and which specified how several other articles should be interpreted in the future.

The ruling had an impressively negative impact upon the Catalan civil society. On 10th of July, between 1, 5 million –according to the organizers and the Catalan official statistics office- and 100,000 people -according to some centralist-leaning media– marched in Barcelona to protest against the ruling and to claim that Catalonia be a nation.

The ruling had, of course, highly controversial academic and practical impacts. From an academic point of view, the ruling has generated a high controversy. We have selected some publications and documents that analyze the ruling and its practical consequences. Three of these publications are special issues of different journals. The contents are in Spanish and Catalan. In addition, we have included in this selection the first issue of a new digital publication, In-Transit, a quarterly publication in English about Catalonia.

Apart from these periodical publications, the selection includes an IEA document summarizing the main legal points about the ruling; an article by the IEA director, Prof. Carles Viver on the legal consequences of the ruling; and the report that the Government of Catalonia commissioned to analyze the legal impacts of the Court’s ruling on the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. The first two documents are in English. The third one is in Spanish but soon, in the next following weeks, would be available in English at our web page. Apart from all these documents, we echo the reaction that, in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament, a MP of the Party of Wales/Plaid Cymru had about the ruling through an Early Day Motion.

Special issues
In-Transit
Revista Catalana de Dret Públic
Activitat Parlamentària
El Cronista del Estado Social y Democrático de Derecho

Documents
Summary of the Ruling

“The legal effects of the ruling on the Catalan Statute”, Carles Viver Pi-Sunyer, (the article was originally published in Spanish in El País, 20 July 2010).

Report on the Legal Consequences of the Constitutional Court’s Ruling on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (in Spanish). The document would be soon available in English at the IEA web page.

Early Day Motion 509, 14.07.2010

Proposal to reform the Statute of Autonomy of Extremadura
Currently there is only one process in progress: the proposal to reform the Statute of Autonomy of Extremadura which is still pending in the Spanish Lower Chamber (Congreso de los Diputados). Regarding other processes, it should be noted the withdrawal of the proposal to reform the Statute of Castile-La Mancha, as well as the passing of the reform of the Organic Law on the Reintegration and Improvement of the Foral Regime of Navarre, the equivalent to an Statute of Autonomy for Navarra.
Comparative table of the reforms of the statutes of Catalonia, Navarre and Extremadura (in Spanish).
Public file about the Proposal to reform the Statute of Extremadura, Congreso de los Diputados (in Spanish).

The Withdrawn of the Proposal to Reform the Statute of Autonomy of Castile-La Mancha
Three years after the initial steps to reform the Statute of Autonomy of Castile-La Mancha were taken, the regional parliament, at the initiative of the socialist group, passed a resolution addressed to withdraw the proposal from the Congreso de los Diputados . The regional parliament approved the withdrawal of the proposal on April, with the support of twenty-six votes out of the 47-seats regional parliament, all from the socialist parliamentary group – in government. The remaining 21 parliamentary members, all from the Conservative group (PP), voted against it.

Water management and, most specifically, the political intention to include in the Statute of Autonomy certain aspects related to the management of cross-regional water transfers (a matter falling under the powers of Central Government) was by far the most controversial issue. Once the proposal had been submitted to the Congreso and parliamentary debates initiated, the water question became a highly controversial issue which generated irreconcilable discrepancies between the two main state-wide parties, the socialists (PSOE) and the conservatives (PP). Given the composition of the Congreso and the overall majority required to pass a Statute of Autonomy, no approval was possible without the votes in favour of both the PSOE and the PP. Therefore, the lack of agreement between these two parties brought the process to a total deadlock. As a result, the regional socialist government announced its intention to withdraw the proposal and so it did by promoting the parliamentary resolution in the regional parliament.

To know more about the institutional aspects of Castile-La Mancha, click on the map of the IEA web page.

One Step Forward Towards the Breaking of the Homogeneity in the Electoral Schedule of the Autonomous Communities
Last September 30, the Congreso de los Diputados passed the Bill for the reform of Organic Law 13/1982, of August 10, on Reintegration and Improvement of the Foral Regime of Navarre (LORAFNA), the equivalent to a Statute of Autonomy. This reform is basically addressed to provide Navarra with the formal institutional capacity to control its own electoral schedule. Such a reform has also been addressed in other newly reformed statutes of autonomy and, therefore, has established the institutional bases for breaking the to-day homogenous regional electoral calendar applying to the majority of the autonomous communities.
(+) to know more about electoral scheduling regulations.
In Force Regulations of the Power of the Regional Prime Ministers to Dissolve the Assembly (in Spanish).

The Seventh Meeting in Logroño between Autonomous Communities for the Development of their respective Statutes of Autonomy took place on 5 July. It was attended by Vice Presidents, Counsellors and Senior Civil Servants from nine Autonomous Communities (La Rioja, Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, Andalusia, Valencia, Aragón, Castile-La Mancha, the Balearic Islands). The Autonomous Community of Madrid, which is also part of the forum, did not attend.

The number of Autonomous Communities taking part during the year has grown. The first meeting of this year, held in Palma in March, was attended by representatives of eight Autonomous Communities, and the last one, which took place in Santiago de Compostela on 18 th October 2010, was attended by Deputy Regional Prime Ministers and Ministers representing 12 Autonomous Communities. In this meeting, the Autonomous Communities agreed to institutionalize the meetings by creating a Transversal Conference of Autonomous-Community Governments.
(+) to know more about the "Meetings".

Press Release: the creation of a Sectorial Conference of Autonomous-Community Governments (in Catalan).

Institutes of Public Opinion: Opinion Surveys
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Center for Sociological Research)
Barometer. July 2010
Barometer. June 2010
Barometer. May 2010
Barometer. April 2010
Barometer. March 2010
Barometer. February 2010

The Autonomous-Community Barometer. July 2010
In June 2010, the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) released the results of its macro-poll on the political attitudes towards the Spanish decentralized system. The sample is representative at state-wide and Autonomous-Community levels. You can find a general analysis of the results in Catalan which soon will be available in English at the IEA web pages.

Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió (Opinion Studies Centre). Government of Catalonia
Public Opinion Barometer. July de 2010
Public Opinion Barometer. May 2010

Gabinete de Prospección Sociológica (Office of sociological prospection). Government of the Basque Country
Euskal Soziometroa. Basque sociometer, 42. May 2009

:: Compilations

Autonomous-Community Legislation

Bilateral Comission Agreements

Palau Centelles, headquarters (detail)

Homogeneïtat i diferència. Sobre la teoria de la distribució de competències entre Bund i Länder a Àustria
Peter Bussjäger
"Institut d'Estudis Autonòmics" Collection #71

Nacions a la recerca de reconeixement. Catalunya i el Quebec davant el seu futur
Seminari. Mont-real, 13-15 de maig de 2009
Alain G. Gagnon, Ferran Requejo (eds.)
"Institut d'Estudis Autonòmics" Collection #72

L'atribució de competències en matèria d'immigració a l'Estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya
Ferran Camas (dir.)
"Institut d'Estudis Autonòmics" Collection #73

Palau Centelles, mosaic (detail)

Documentary and Bibliographic Collection data base search.
Novelties concerning all the documentation in the Collection.
Summaries of articles from Spanish and foreign magazines.

For any queries concerning the data base of the Documentary Collection, contact Ms. Maite Batalla (mtbatalla@gencat.cat - Telephone 933 429 806).