Forty years after its adoption, the Constitution is in the center of the debate. Although very few politicians and lawyers question its validity as an instrument that has led to progress and social advances in Spain and its autonomous community, the consensus about its potential to overcome the crisis, Catalan or lace future of the Basque country, is broken. The exlehendakari of the basque Government, José Antonio Ardanza (Elorrio, Biscay, 1941) and the exvicepresidenta of the Constitutional Court, Adela Asúa (Bilbao, 1948), agree that there is a text update to improve the fit of the different nationalities. However, they needed “a moratorium” pending the current tension, politics, and the lack of majorities sufficient to stop step to a new time.
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Both have analyzed its effect, problems and prospects on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Constitution, in the Auditorium of the University of Deusto, in Bilbao, in an event that has taken place this Wednesday and that is in addition to a series of debates that THE COUNTRY and the chain BE organized as part of the special coverage of that event. The first between the presidents of the Government that more years have been in office, Felipe Gonzalez and Jose Maria Aznar, in Madrid. In Bilbao, the debate has been moderated by the former director of THE COUNTRY, Jesus Ceberio, who has remembered the peculiarity of the basic Law in the Basque country, the only community in the abstention rate exceeded 55% and the yes’s just showed up to 30% compared to 60% of the rest of Spain.
“The reform of the Constitution has to be linked to the evolution of society in every moment”, has said the exlehendakari “but keep in mind that there are very difficult times like this that we hear speeches that call for the re-centralization of powers and the suppression of the concert”. The magistrate and exvicepresidenta of the Constitutional Court attributed the difficulty to cope with reforms and the lack of consensus, “which contrasts with the spirit of the framers of the Constitution”, he said, but also that “we are the newbies in the constitutional system”, compared to other countries that face changes frequently. “What we lack is the education to the new generations, that of transferring to young people the spirit of the Fundamental Law. One perceives that in France or in the united States is explained as the basis of coexistence.”
If Ardanza and Asúa have shared the idea of a moratorium before facing any type of reform, Lunabet the judge has ruled in favor of not interfering in the debate. “You have to start with the discussion on the territorial distribution of power, on the distribution of powers to the State because during these 40 years, there has been actually a composite State, quasi-federal. A State that is a reality that we’re consolidating, but some levels are just not transmit correctly. And perhaps to finish of making of the composite State would be a fundamental reform of the Senate,” said the magistrate.
The conflict Catalan has not been left out of the debate. Before the crisis of the territorial model designed in 1978 and the possibility of bankruptcy policy and coexistence, which suffers from Catalonia to the root of the procés independentista spread to the Basque country, Ceberio has asked if it is not essential to “a disarmament” of the positions of all the parties in Catalonia. The exlehendakari has said yes. “The waters have to calm down, you are calling traitors among them, and there to ward off any kind of possibility of that happen what happened here,” said Ardanza.
For the exvicepresidenta of the High Court there is a substantial difference between the open doors of the case law and the closing of political parties to addressing that issue. “The constitution has recognized in a ruling that, in light of the demands of a society, you must apply the democratic principle, that is to say, listen and look for solutions,” said the magistrate. “I repeat, the Constitutional Court in a decision in which I participated, recognizes the existence of the democratic principle and the need to listen to the will of the majority of a society”, he insisted. Asúa was in the organism when in march of 2014, she studied a resource to a declaration of the Catalan Parliament in which he stated formally in his first point, that proclaimed the sovereignty of catalonia, and the capacity of decision of the Catalan people.
In the Basque country, the covenant pro-sovereignty between the PNV and EH Bildu for the reform of the statute of Gernika has caused the rejection of the rest of the matches. The exlehendakari believed that we would have to analyze in depth the preliminary title of the Constitution “in that confused State with sovereignty”, to rephrase that Spain is a multinational State with various nationalities and sovereignties are shared. For the judge, who defends the possibility of improve and regulate a federal State asymmetrical, it is a pity that some parts are symbolic of the Constitution are becoming insurmountable problems to achieve that end, “when they are not”.
