The constitution and the politics of national identity in Spain

Abstract

The 1978 Spanish Constitution enshrined the recognition of linguistic, cultural, and some degree of 'national' pluralism in the country and outlined procedural mechanisms for the creation of regional 'autonomies', which has given rise to a de facto asymmetrical federal state. This article begins by analyzing the compromise over issues of national identity embedded in the Constitution and the process by which this was forged. It highlights the articulation among political forces of contending conceptions of national identity and different projects for reorganising the territorial structure within and/or against the Spanish state. It also describes the social bases of support for the respective projects. Next, the article examines recent challenges to the parameters of the constitutional compromise. It shows that citizens' support for the basic parameters of the 1978 compromise remains high and has even become stronger. It emphasises that the preferences of the general public stand in sharp contrast with the preferences of influential sections of the Basque and Catalan regional political establishment, and it concludes that current challenges to the constitutional compromise are driven by political elites.

Refining vote choice in an ethno-regionalist context: Three-dimensional ideological voting in Catalonia and Quebec

“…The following year, Catalans widely accepted the proposal in a referendum, though with a turnout rate of just under 50%. Although accepted by Catalans, the reform package was opposed by the Partido Popular (PP) d as well as five autonomous regions d who questioned the constitutionality of the document (Martínez-Herrera and Miley, 2010). The issue eventually made its way to the Constitutional Court of Spain, which struck down many of the reform's statutes in 2010.…”

Las huellas electorales del nacionalismo español. Identificación territorial y voto en los partidos políticos de ámbito estatal, 1980-2013

“…Si bien es cierto que los acuerdos constitucionales permitieron superar el escollo de los nacionalismos periféricos en el proceso de Transición, también lo es que no significaron el apaciguamiento de la divisoria política centro-periferia (Martínez-Herrera y Miley 2010;Muñoz 2009a, Bonet et al 2010. Los partidos nacionalistas y las dinámicas de competencia electoral que se generan con la configuración de un sistema político multinivel han mantenido vigente la cuestión territorial en la política nacional (Balcells y Oriols 2012), ocupando mayor o menor espacio en la agenda electoral según la naturaleza más o menos reñida de las elecciones generales y la configuración política del poder en cada momento.…”

“…Durante los debates constituyentes, las principales élites políticas, incluidos los nacionalistas conservadores, convinieron una posición común, de mínimos aceptables para todos, en lo referente a la estructura territorial del Estado (Bastida 1998;Quiroga 2009;Martínez-Herrera y Miley 2010;Muñoz 2012). Este acuerdo cristalizaría, por un lado, en el desarrollo del modelo autonómico de descentralización territorial y, por otro lado, en un acomodo discursivo de las distintas identidades nacionales de ámbito subestatal, que podían "leerse" en clave histórico-cultural y englobadas en una identidad española de contenido político (o construida a partir de los valores constitucionales).…”

Constitutional state structure and scalar re-organization of natural resource governance: The transformation of polycentric water governance in Spain, Portugal and Germany

“…In particular, we compare the ways in which recent changes in the formal set up of water governance has developed in three member states of the European Union, each of which is constituted differently: the unitary state of Portugal, the "asymmetric federal state" of Spain (Martinez-Herrera and Miley, 2010) and the federal state of Germany. One key difference between the ways these decision-making processes are set up concerns the number of veto players involved.…”