MzH_Miley2010

The constitution and the politics ofnational identity in Spain

ENRIC MARTINEZ-HERRERAn AND THOMASJEFFREY MILEYnn

nUniversity Autonoma de Madrid, SpainnnUniversity of Cambridge, UK

ABSTRACT. The 1978 Spanish Constitution enshrined the recognition of linguistic,cultural, and some degree of national pluralism in the country and outlinedprocedural mechanisms for the creation of regional autonomies, which has given

rise to a de facto asymmetrical federal state. This article begins by analyzing thecompromise over issues of national identity embedded in the Constitution and theprocess by which this was forged. It highlights the articulation among political forces

of contending conceptions of national identity and different projects for reorganisingthe territorial structure within and/or against the Spanish state. It also describes thesocial bases of support for the respective projects. Next, the article examines recentchallenges to the parameters of the constitutional compromise. It shows that citizens

support for the basic parameters of the 1978 compromise remains high and has evenbecome stronger. It emphasises that the preferences of the general public stand in sharpcontrast with the preferences of inuential sections of the Basque and Catalan regional

political establishment, and it concludes that current challenges to the constitutionalcompromise are driven by political elites.

KEYWORDS: Basque Country; Catalonia; federalism; nationalism; Spain

By the end of the Franco era, partially in reaction to the unitary nationalistconception of Spain associated with the authoritarian regime, the democraticopposition came to identify with peripheral nationalist claims in the BasqueCountry and Catalonia (and to a lesser extent Galicia) for recognition oflinguistic, cultural, and national differences and even for some degree of self-determination. Accordingly, the 1978 Constitution took many of theseaspirations into account. The Constitution enshrined recognition of linguistic,cultural, and some degree of national pluralism, and outlined proceduralmechanisms for the creation of regional autonomies, or self-governingcommunities. The ofcial recognition of this plurality was further accom-plished with the passing of regional Statutes of Autonomy. Though theConstitutional prescriptions were not explicitly federal, they allowed for theemergence of a de facto asymmetrical federal state.

This paper begins by analyzing in some detail the nature of the compromiseover issues of national identity embedded in the 1978 Constitution. It sketches

Nations and Nationalism 16 (1), 2010, 630.

r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010

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the process by which this compromise was forged. It focuses on the articles inthe Constitution as well as the Basque and Catalan Statutes of Autonomy inwhich the collective subject of sovereignty was established, highlighting: fourcontending conceptions of national identity articulated by different politicalforces; four corresponding projects for reorganising the political territorialstructure within and/or against the Spanish state; and their respective bases ofsocial support.

The paper then traces the evolution of citizens attitudes, demonstratingcontinuing high and even increasing levels of support for the basic parametersof the 1978 compromise. Finally, it examines recent challenges to theparameters of the compromise driven by political elites, and it highlightshow, in the country as a whole, and in the Basque Country and Catalonia inparticular, the preferences of the general public stand in sharp contrast withthe preferences of inuential sections of the regional political establishment.

The forging of the constitutional compromise over national identity during thetransition to democracy

On the eve of his electoral victory in the rst postauthoritarian legislativeelection in June 1977, Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez declared his intention toelaborate a Constitution in collaboration with all the groups represented inthe Cortes (Powell 2001: 222). An agreement was soon reached between thegovernment and the opposition in favor of the creation of a seven-membercommittee composed of parliamentarians one that incorporated threemembers from the governing UCD, alongside one from the continuist ex-Franquist right (AP), one from the social-democratic PSOE, one from thecommunists and one intended to represent nationalists both in Catalonia andthe Basque Country.

From August to September 1977, these seven would together elaborate apreliminary draft behind closed doors.1 By November, part of the draft hadbeen leaked to the press, and by January 1978 the whole thing had beenpublished in a prominent periodical. The leak set off an intense publicdiscussion about the more controversial aspects of the preliminary draft.Among the issues most passionately debated was the drafts treatment of thenational question in general, as well as, more specically, the ambiguousguidelines it seemed to sketch for the transformation of the centralist stateinto something else.

The committee had been composed in an ideological climate in which themajor political players repeatedly expressed their commitment to the ideal offorging a constitutional consensus of sorts.2 The message was consistentlyrepeated that the imposition of some over others had to be avoided at allcosts. The determination to transcend the historic rupture between the twoSpains loomed large in the minds of leaders from virtually all politicalpersuasions. Such an ideological climate facilitated the willingness of the


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committee members to strike compromises on the wording of the preliminarydraft. The tacit assumption was that this draft needed to serve as a minimalframework for forging consensus.

During the preparation of the preliminary draft, the most difcultchallenge was the task of forging a fragile consensus on the articles directlyrelated to the national question.3 These articles were the ones intended to xthe extent of symbolic recognition for regional and/or peripheral national-ist aspirations, as well as to dene the contours and the scope of the juridicaland institutional space for accommodating such aspirations. What theframers came up with was a rather ambiguous formula. On the one hand,they decided to declare the Spanish people as the subject of sovereignty,from whom all powers of state organs allegedly emanate (Article 1.2). Inthe same vein, they decided to insist that the Constitution is founded uponthe unity of Spain. But, on the other hand, they suggested, the Constitution issimultaneously founded on the solidarity between the peoples of Spain; andmore importantly, they also maintained that the Constitution recognises theright to autonomy of the nationalities and regions of which Spain as acollective subject is claimed to be composed (Article 2) (emphases added).

The fundamental ambiguity in this formula lies in the inclusion of the termrecognise. The term seems to signal a source of rights and/or authoritythat both precedes the constitutive moment and cannot in any obvious way beclaimed to emanate from an indivisible Spanish people as such. Rather, itappears that this authority emanates from the nationalities and regionsthemselves, who are thereby already constituted as collective subjects beforethe constitutive moment, rather than as mere parts of an indivisible Spanishpeople. By extension, the rights of these already-constituted collectivesubjects not only precede the constitutive moment; they also transcend thatmoment. As such, in this preliminary draft, the framers seem to relegate therole of the Constitution to that of recognising the already-existing status ofthe nationalities and regions as collective subjects from whom certain rightsemanate, rather than the role of constituting those categories as collectivesubjects and then conferring rights upon them.

The framers were thus attempting to square a circle of sorts. For they triedto have the preliminary draft enshrine the indivisible unity of the Spanishpeople as a collective subject, from whom the constitutive authority wasalleged to emanate; but at the same time, they tried to have the text recognisethe existence of other collective subjects as well. By no means can thefundamental ambiguity of this formulation be attributed to haste or neglect.On the contrary, the leaders of virtually all parties seemed convinced of thecritical importance of getting the wording of these articles just right (Entrena-Cuesta 1985).4

Even so, the fragile consensus forged on the national question soon cameunder serious stress. The government was exposed to much pressure from itsown ranks to remove any mention of the term nationalities. For a while, itlooked as if the consensus was going to crumble until after the UCD agreed


8 Enric Martnez-Herrera and Thomas Jeffrey Miley

to accept the term in exchange for the communists and the MinoriaCatalanas acceptance of new off-setting references to Spain as the commonpatria and to its unity as a nation in the same article. Thus, the nal draft ofArticle 2 read:

The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation, the commonand indivisible country of all Spaniards, and recognises and guarantees the right toself-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and solidarityamongst them all.

Despite this rhetorical reinforcement to reassure advocates of the primacy ofthe Spanish nation, the new compromise on the wording did little to alter thefundamental ambiguity at the core of the preliminary draft the references toboth nationalities and recognise remained. In other words, the conceptionof Spain thus embedded in the text was a somewhat paradoxical one whichSole-Tura (1985: 101) (the representative for the communists on the Con-stitutional draft committee) would later label a nation of nations.

While Article 2 thus xed the fundamental ambiguity at the core of theConstitutions conceptual apparatus, the guidelines for determining thecontours and scope of the institutions that could be created for such purposeswere sketched elsewhere in Title VIII. The preliminary draft of Title VIIIoutlined the procedural mechanisms for the emergence of something approx-imating a federal system (Moreno 2001; Solozabal 2004a). It thus bore themark of the preferences of both the Communist Party and the Socialist Party,in general, and of their respective representatives on the committee, Sole-Turaand Peces-Barba, in particular.

Peces-Barba was an enthusiastic proponent of what he called functionaland organic federalism. In this vein, he advocated the formulation of a set ofguidelines promising to lead to the generalisation of autonomy and thus thecreation of a symmetrical, regionalised state. In the process of arguing for hisown position, he explicitly contrasted his conception of the appropriateterritorial organisation for the state with the alternative conception embodiedin the Second Republic. For the Second Republic, so-called Estado integralallowed for some provinces to remain within a regimen comun thus engender-ing dysfunctional asymmetries (Peces-Barba 1988: 735). The communistdelegate Sole-Tura basically concurred with his formulation.

However, both the APs Fraga and Minora Catalanas Roca, for diame-trically opposed reasons, received this proposal with extreme reticence. ForFraga, the problem with the federal formulation was not rooted in a concernabout the structure of its proposed organisational form per se; rather, it wasrooted in a principled objection to the structure of justication for this form specically, in that the term nationalities had once again been employed. Bycontrast, for Roca, the problem with Peces-Barbas formulation was preciselythe opposite i.e. that it did not take the term nationalities seriously enough.As Roca saw it, Peces-Barbas federal proposal was not rooted in referenceto the term nationality at all, but in abstract rationalist considerations such



as efciency and functionality. For Roca, the proposal failed to take sufcientaccount of the fact of cultural peculiarity or difference as the mainjustication for the right to self-government therefore it could not live upto the structure of justication for granting autonomy implicit in Article 2(Peces-Barba 1988: 64).

Meanwhile, the three UCD delegates were themselves split. Whereas two ofthem (Cisneros and Perez-Llorca) disliked the federal proposal because theysympathised with Fragas objections; the other (Herrero de Minon) disliked itout of sympathy with Rocas objections.

The net result was that a majority in favor of Peces-Barbas federal formulacould not be formed; and yet another ambiguous compromise would have tobe struck (Peces-Barba 1988). Rather than coming up with a completelyalternative formula, the committee members essentially agreed to disagree.They proceeded to water down Peces-Barbas initial proposal, trying to leaveas much as they could unstated.

Their failure to forge an unambiguous constitutional consensus on thiscrucial point meant that they agreed to leave it up to the processes of normalpolitics to determine whether the state would evolve according to Fragas,Peces-Barbas, or Rocas competing and contradictory visions visions whichwe can label decentralised, symmetrical, rationalist federal and asymme-trical, organic quasi-federal and/or confederal, respectively.

The nal product of the Draft Committees negotiations was an utterlyambiguous and hybrid formulation in which the right of nationalities andregions to self-government would again be recognised and guaranteed;but in which, at the same time, any explanation or enumeration of theterritories tting into each category would be avoided altogether. Instead, twoalternative procedures were spelled out for exercising the vaguely denedright to self-government. The rst was a fast-track, intended to apply tothose territories that had already held referenda on proposals for autonomyduring the Second Republic namely, the Basque Country, Catalonia, andGalicia.5 Meanwhile, for the rest of the other as-yet undened regions, analternative, slow-lane procedure was devised.6

The nal draft thus did not impose any solution whatsoever on the issue ofthe future territorial organisation for the Spanish state. Instead, it left at leastthree options open. Even so, in the Constitution itself, and against the explicitobjection of Fraga, a fundamental ambiguity about the nature of thecollective subject and by extension, about the source, scope and contentof the rights of alternative collectivities within it had denitely beenembedded. This in turn meant that the juridical seed for the deconstructionof the Spanish nation as collective subject, and therefore as source of rightsand of sovereignty, had been planted.

It was through this ambiguous formulation that the incorporation of theCatalan nationalists of Converge`ncia into the constitutional consensus wasthus consolidated. However, the same could not be said for their Basquenationalist counterparts in the PNV. For the leaders of this party would



remain intransigent in their demand for nothing less than the restoration ofthe traditional foral institutions i.e. rights and privileges dating to theMiddle Ages and abolished by the liberal monarchy in 1839 and 1876 andthe subsequent formulation of a pact with the Spanish Crown. In a last-ditcheffort to get the PNV to sign up to the Constitutional consensus, a so-calleddisposicion adicional primera was added to the text, to reassure that theConstitution protects and respects the historic rights of the territories withfueros.

With this addition, the recognition of historic rights preceding andtranscending the constitutive moment, and emanating from a source otherthan the Spanish people, would be made still more explicit. Even so, it didnot sufce for the PNV. Nor did this prove enough for the EE, whichpresented an amendment calling for the recognition of the right to self-determination. By this point in the game, virtually all of the parties on thepolitical scene had agreed to abandon any mention of this subject; and so theamendment would be voted down on the oor of the Congress by anoverwhelming majority of deputies.

After the EEs proposed amendment had been voted down, it became clearthat the Basque nationalists could not be incorporated into the consensus.On 31 October 1978, when the time came to vote on the nal text, out of 350seats, the EEs deputy was among the six who chose to vote against it, and thePNVs seven deputies were among the fourteen who chose to abstain (Powell2001). The other ve no-votes came from some of the deputies representingthe AP, who, alongside another three AP representatives who decided toabstain, broke ranks with Fraga over his support for the Constitution, largelybecause they believed the presence of the term nationalities rendered the textintolerable.

On six December, the new Constitution was put to a referendum before thecitizenry. The PNV campaigned for abstention, while the EE campaigned fora no-vote. Meanwhile, every single other party with representation in theCongreso campaigned in favor of it. As it turned out, throughout all of Spain,the percentage of votes in favor of the new Constitution were extremely high(eighty-seven per cent). In Catalonia, the results were marginally moreimpressive still a ninety-one per cent yes-vote with a sixty-seven per centturnout. In the Basque Country, however, only forty-ve per cent of thepopulation participated, and only sixty-nine per cent of these registered a yes-vote (see Table 1). Even so, these numbers still amounted to a democraticmajority.

Public opinion and the constitutional compromise

The result of the referendum provides an important piece of prima facieevidence that the Constitution as a whole initially enjoyed widespread supportamong the Spanish public. But to what extent did the positions of the mainpolitical forces on issues related to the so-called national question in



particular (and the compromise forged among them as embodied in theconstitutional text) reect the preferences of different segments of Spanishsociety, especially in the Basque Country and Catalonia?

A good way to start to learn about these preferences is by exploring thediffusion of sentiments of national identity among the citizenry at the time ofthe drafting of the Constitution. Since the 1970s, the Centro de InvestigacionesSociologicas (CIS) has asked citizens to place themselves on a scale thatmeasures, in relative terms, Spanish identity as compared to regionalidentities.7 Specically, the question asks interviewees whether they identifythemselves as only Basque (or Catalan or Galician), more Basque (etc.) thanSpanish, equally Basque (etc.) and Spanish, more Spanish than Basque (etc.),or Spanish only. Let us highlight, in particular, the low percentages of citizenswho rejected any identication with Spain in spite of the claims articulated bysome of the more extreme nationalist organisations. As shown in Table 2, thelevels of outright rejection of Spanish identity in 1979, the year following thepassage of the Constitution, stood at a signicant thirty-six per cent in the

Table 1. Results of the 1978 Constitutional referendum in the Basque Country,Catalonia and Spain at large (percentages out of voters and out of totalelectors)

Yes No Blank Invalid Total voters Abstention Total electors

Spain 87.9 7.8 3.5 0.7 17,873,301 32.9 26,632,18059.0 5.3 2.4 0.5 67.1

Basque country 69.1 23.5 5.7 1.6 693,310 55.3 1,552,73730.9 10.5 2.6 0.7 44.7

Cataluna 90.5 4.6 4.2 0.7 2,986,790 32.6 4,428,17361.0 3.1 2.9 0.5 67.4

Source: Congreso de los Diputados (2003). Own elaboration.

Table 2. Relative identications in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia,19771982

Date

Basque country Catalonia Galicia

Oct-77 May-79 Nov-79 Dec-82 May-79 Dec-82 May-79 Sep-80 Dec-82

Spanish only 12.6 23.5 13.9 8.6 28.7 21.8 16.2 15 14.3S4R 2.6 5.8 4.5 6.1 8.2 4.5 6 5.8E5R 22.1 26.4 24.1 33.1 38.8 42.7 41 48.7

EoR 10.1 12.1 16.5 11 16.6 11.1 15 9.5Region only 41.4 33.9 38.2 42.6 13.7 8.7 23.9 22 10.9DK/NA 5.3 7.8 3.8 3.6 7.4 5.8 1.6 0 10.9

(n) 1,589 928 1,011 950 1,230 1,249 516 1,686 534

Source: CIS (1977, 1980); all other studies by DATA, S.A.



Basque Country, twenty-four per cent in Galicia, but only fourteen per cent inCatalonia. In fact, in each of the three territories with relevant minoritynationalist parties, a majority of citizens overwhelming in Catalonia registered identication with Spain, and most of them identied as much as,or more, with Spain than with their region.

Another question posed to the Spanish public allows us to learn specicallyabout preferences regarding the territorial organisation of the State. During thetransition to democracy and in its immediate aftermath, Linz and his colla-borators at DATA inquired about citizens preferences among four differenttypes of organisation. The results they obtained are reproduced in Table 3 (Linzet al. 1981; Linz 1986). The data for all of Spain reveal a signicant degree of

Table 3. Evolution of attitudes on preferred territorial organisation for theSpanish state in Spain at large, Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, 19771982

1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1982

Spain

Centralism 43 42 29 33 28 28Autonomism 45 42 49 41 36 47Federalism 6 9 14 11 9 11

Independentism 3 3 5 7 4 4DK/NA 3 5 3 8 22 9(n) 6,340 8,837 5,898 5,499 24,998 5,463

Basque country

Centralism 26 15 14 16 12 13Autonomism 48 46 46 41 32 43Federalism 12 18 21 13 24 18

Independentism 11 16 17 21 21 24DK/NA 2 5 3 10 11 2(n) 434 923 810 323 1,497 313

CataloniaCentralism 33 23 19 22 19 19Autonomism 53 52 44 41 54 54Federalism 8 17 25 16 1 16

Independentism 2 5 11 15 3 7DK/NA 2 2 2 7 14 4(n) 1,147 1,688 928 892 4,130 884

GaliciaCentralism 34 35 34 44 24 28Autonomism 49 41 49 40 26 53

Federalism 10 7 10 7 8 7Independentism 6 3 3 3 6 3DK/NA 1 14 4 6 36 10

(n) 474 926 442 444 1,964 441

Source: Juan J. Linz (1985: 587).



support for centralism among the general public especially at the beginning ofthe period. Indeed, in 1977, approximately two out of every ve Spaniardsendorsed this option. Yet between 1977 and 1978, this proportion dropped fromforty-two per cent to twenty-nine per cent; and throughout the rest of the period,it hovered around that level. Undoubtedly, the sudden and rather precipitousdecline in support for centralism reected the fact that none of the mainstatewide parties advocated it not even the AP (Linz 1985).

The data for the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, like those for allof Spain, reveal autonomy to be the most popular of the four optionsthroughout the entire period of the transition to democracy. At the beginning,only one in twenty citizens in Catalonia endorsed the alternative of indepen-dence; but between 1977 and 1979, support for it tripled, to embrace fteenper cent of the population. Nevertheless, by 1982, the waxing of independent-ism had ended, and support for it had waned back to seven per cent. The trendreected an initial arousal of nationalist aspirations, followed by the con-solidation of Catalonias status as an Autonomous Community within Spain,three years after the passage of the Statute of Autonomy and two years afterthe celebration of the rst regional elections there. By contrast, in the case ofthe Basque Country, and in spite of ETAs agitation and extreme violence, thestarting level around sixteen per cent increased only up to twenty-odd percent. Thus, autonomism was the most consensual option among the citizenry,both in Spain at large and in the regions with a relevant presence of minoritynationalist forces.

Both of these pieces of evidence tend to conrm widespread levels ofsupport among the Spanish public at large, as well as in the Basque Countryand Catalonia in particular, for the basic terms of the constitutionalcompromise, ambiguous though it may have been.

The terms of discussion of the 1979 Basque and Catalan autonomy statutes

While the Constitution drafts were still being debated and negotiated, theBasque and Catalan parliamentarians were already preparing their respectiveprojects for autonomy statutes. All of this occurred against a backdrop thatincluded actual and potential political violence from two extremes die-hardsections of the state security forces (included in the so-called bunker) and theBasque nationalist terrorist organisation ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, orBasque Country and Freedom). In order to understand the comparativeintransigence of the Basque nationalists throughout the constituent process,it is important not to lose sight of the backdrop of violent political conict especially the dialectic of terrorist action and state repression that had beensparked by ETA in the mid-1960s and that had been spiraling ever since. Fromthe outset of the transition, this dialectic hindered both Suarezs capacity tonegotiate as well as the PNVs capacity to maneuver. Let us briey explain.

In October 1977, after a period of long and difcult negotiations betweenthe government and the Basque nationalists, Suarez declared a general



amnesty, in an effort to overcome the dialectic of violence and repression(Domnguez-Iribarren 1999; Powell 2001). But the gamble did not pay off for not only did ETA refuse to give up the armed struggle but, seeking todestabilise the situation, it dramatically stepped up the violent attacks (Jaimeand Reinares 1999; Martnez-Herrera 2008). The backdrop of escalatingviolence put the Suarez governments plans for democratic reform in avulnerable position, especially given the fact that for close to forty yearsFranquist propaganda had associated democracy with the failure to maintainpublic order (Jackson 1965). Conservative opinion predictably interpretedSuarezs amnesty as a capitulation and as a catalyst for a descent into furtherlawlessness. This in turn made it near impossible for Suarez to carry out thenecessary democratic reforms in the security agencies (Domnguez-Iribarren1999). Moreover, the consequent continuation of authoritarian methods inthe police forces served to erode the governments democratic credentials(Carr and Fusi 1979). The result was a very real potential of militaryopposition to the democratic transition under way a threat that wouldaffect the entire process (Linz and Stepan 1996: 99).

Meanwhile, the dialectic of violence and repression hindered the PNVscapacity to maneuver, too by facilitating the radicalisation and polarisationof the Basque population, and therefore fostering the emergence of arelatively strong anti-systemic alternative linked to ETA (Herri Batasuna,HB), with which the PNV were forced to compete for hegemony of thenationalist cause (Dez-Medrano 1995). Such competition from the radicalnationalist ank made it more difcult for the PNV to cooperate with thecenter lest it risk losing its nationalist credibility. By contrast, the morecooperative Catalan nationalists in Converge`ncia experienced no comparablecompetition from their radical nationalist ank.

After the approval of the Constitution in December, Suarez called a newgeneral election, in which the voters validated his mandate. Almost immedi-ately, negotiations began between the government and representatives fromthe three historic regions, on the content of their respective Statutes ofAutonomy. The Basque Statute was the rst to be passed. In the summer of1979, a mixed committee of representatives of the assembly of Basqueparliamentarians and the Comision Constitucional began debating the Basqueparliamentarians proposal, amidst an unprecedented wave of intensied ETAviolence.

The two sides of this committee clashed over several precepts of theproposed Statute. At the core of their disagreements was the claim, in itsrst article, that national sovereignty resides in the Basque people, fromwhom the powers of the Basque Country emanate, without making anyreference to Spain (Powell 2001: 248). In the end, the government imposed adrastic revision, so as to exclude the reference to Basque sovereignty and toinclude the explicit reference to Spain.8 A similar kind of revision was imposedupon the proposals Disposicion Provisional. The version presented to themixed commission included a thinly veiled reference to the right to



self-determination namely, the claim that acceptance of the Statute by nomeans implies the renunciation of the Basque People to the rights whichcorrespond to it in virtue of its History and its will to self-government (Powell2001: 248). By contrast, the nal version was watered down so as to only makean oblique reference to such rights.

By the end of July, in what turned out to be essentially bilateral negotia-tions between Suarez and the PNV leader Carlos Garaikoetxea, the PNVaccepted such revisions. Next, the Basque Statute was passed in the SpanishCongress with the support of all the parties represented there, save for the AP.Despite the revisions imposed, the PNV considered that the new Statuterepresented a noticeable improvement over the Statute of 1936. The institu-tional powers granted to the region even included the creation of a regionalpolice corps, and the so-called concierto economico (economic agreement) wasre-established the terms of which guaranteed the Basque Country the bestscal deal by far in all of Spain. The PNV therefore called for a yes-vote in thereferendum ratication to be held in October 1979. The newly created, radicalnationalist HB (associated with ETA), predictably, would call for abstentioninstead. As shown in Table 4, whether for explicitly political reasons or not,the turnout was only fty-nine per cent; even so, fully ninety per cent of theserecorded their support. The Basque autonomous region had thus been reborn but the conict in Euskadi remained far from being resolved.

Meanwhile, in Catalonia, as early as September 1978, an assembly ofparliamentarians, led by the PSC-PSOE and the PSUC (the main parties onthe left), had begun to work on a draft for the Catalan Statute. Among theserepresentatives, a climate of relative consensus was sustained throughout theprocess (Landn, Monreal and Salas 1982; Milian i Massana 1988). Soon aftertheir draft had been completed, negotiations with the Constitutional Commis-sion began. In large part because of their multilateral nature, these negotia-tions proved much more difcult than the ones over the Basque Statute. Theimportant presence of socialists and communists, in addition to Converge`ncia,in the assembly made it more difcult for Suarezs government to stonewallthe aspirations included in the draft. In addition, the direct participation oftwo framers of the Constitution (Roca and Sole-Tura) in the elaboration of

Table 4. Results of the 1979 referenda of the statutes of autonomy for theBasque Country and Catalonia (percentages out of voters and out of totalelectors)

Yes No Blank Invalid Total voters Abstention Total electors

Basque country 90.3 5.2 3.4 1.2 921,436 41.1 1,565,54153.1 3.0 2.0 0.7 58.9

Catalonia 88.1 7.8 3.6 0.5 2,639,951 40.3 4,421,965

52.6 4.6 2.1 0.3 59.7

Source: Congreso de los Diputados (2003). Own elaboration.



that draft lent it an a priori air of constitutional legitimacy that the Basquedraft never enjoyed. Even so, the government still managed to stand rm,forcing a few critical revisions.

Most signicantly, Suarezs government insisted upon two modications tothe drafts rst article. The rst concerned the original reference to the act ofconstituting the Catalan territory as an Autonomous Community as anexpression of its national reality; the second concerned the related issue of theoriginal reference to powers emanating from the people, understood as theCatalan collective subject. The government objected that such wordingeffectively granted the Statute an independent constitutive status, derivedfrom the rights of the Catalan people, rather than a status ultimatelyderivative of the Constitutional order. In the end, both references werewatered down. To begin with, the nal version of the rst article of theCatalan Statute still mentioned Catalonias status as a nationality, butwithout claiming that the act of constituting it as an Autonomous Communitywas an expression of such a reality. Likewise, the nal version stillmentioned that powers emanate from the people, but only after insistingthat they emanate from the Constitution and from the present Statute aswell.

The government also insisted upon other important modications. Perhapsmost signicant was the reduction of the Generalitats jurisdiction overeducation and scal powers. In comparison with the Catalan Statute of1932, the nal product entailed a somewhat higher level of self-government onissues such as education and the media, but a somewhat lower level in areassuch as the justice system, public order, and local administration (Balcells1991). Well aware of the latent threat of military intervention, the Catalannationalists came away decidedly content with what they had grabbed.Consequently, the totality of groups with political representation in Cataloniacampaigned for the new Statutes approval in the subsequent referendum. Theresult was an overwhelming eighty-eight per cent support for it though witha rather small turnout (sixty per cent) (Table 4).

Thirty years later: citizens, elites and recent challenges to the constitutionalcompromise

We have seen evidence of high levels of support around the time of thetransition to democracy among the Spanish public as a whole as well as in theBasque Country and Catalonia for the basic contours of the compromiseforged in the constitutional text. We will now turn to examine what hashappened to such support, before concluding by describing how, since the late1990s, an escalation of the aspirations of Basque and Catalan nationalism hasoccurred, at least within the regional political parties representing thosemovements, which has led to renewed demands for substantial constitutionalreforms openly challenging the constitutional compromise.



Thirty years later: citizens national identities

Let us start by examining the evolution, if any, of citizens national identitiesin Spain and in the regions with powerful mobilized nationalist movements.Have national identications shifted substantially, thus setting the stage fornew demands for constitutional reform concerning the conceptions of thenation in Spain and its nationalities? We can track the indicator thatdescribes citizens relative identications with Spain vis-a`-vis their regionsas introduced in the previous section. Considering rst national identicationin Spain at large, Figure 1 shows that, in 1980, more than thirty per cent ofSpaniards identied themselves as primarily Spanish, thirty-eight per cent asequally Spanish and of their region, and twenty-four per cent identify mainlywith their region.9 In 1989, after the nationwide establishment of regional self-government institutions, primarily Spanish identication falls to twenty-veper cent, those with equal identication rise to above fty per cent and thoseidentifying primarily with a region decline to eighteen per cent. Such levelsremain relatively stable throughout the following decade, albeit moreSpanish identication continues to decline, and by 2005 it is a full elevenpercentage points below the 1980 level.

Rather than a loss of identication with Spain, what this means, however,is a boost of the relative weight of regional identication a legitimisation ofboth the autonomous communities and the decentralised state of autonomiesas a whole. In fact, while this move from primarily Spanish to dualidentication occurred, there was also a dramatic drop of preferences for acentralised state among the same citizenry a correlation that also occurs at

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E>RE=RE

the individual level. Specically, support for centralism decreased from forty-three per cent in 1976 to nine per cent in 2005. This evidence conforms, andprovides richer evidence, to lend credence to the claim that the state ofautonomies became consolidated and that autonomous communities gainedtheir popular support as political communities within one decade (Garca-Ferrando, Lopez-Aranguren and Beltran 1994; Martnez-Herrera 2002).

Figure 2 describes, in turn, the trends of exclusive regional identication inthe Basque Country and Catalonia. In spite of claims by some of the moreextreme nationalist organisations, between 1982 and 2005, the refusal of anySpanish identity in the Basque Country dramatically fell from a level of aboutforty-three per cent of the population to around twenty-ve per cent. Thistrend lends credence to the hypothesis that political decentralisation andpower-sharing foster integration of the nationalist minorities. Yet the resultsfor Catalonia are less straightforward, as the levels of rejection in 1979, afterfalling in the mid-1980s, returned to their original level in the 1990s(Martnez-Herrera 2002).

Another theoretical dimension of attitudes towards political communitieshas to do with the views or conceptions that citizens have about their politicalcommunities. These include the conceptions of either their state or theirregion as a nation or otherwise. Survey research in the Basque Country andCatalonia has inquired into this since 1990, when an appropriate question wasrst devised (Garca-Ferrando, Lopez-Aranguren and Beltran 1994). Itswording by the CIS reads: Which term do you prefer to use to refer to theBasque Country/Catalonia?, the closed answers supplied being a nation and

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Year

%

Source: Martnez-Herrera (forthcoming). Figure 2. Percentages of rejection of Spanish identication in the Basque Country andCatalonia, 19772007.



a region, and offering also the option to spontaneously declare alternativeviews. Figure 3 describes their development. Throughout the period 19902005, the proportion of Basques regarding their autonomous community as anation has remained quite stable at around an approximate average ofthirty-six per cent. In turn, an even more stable tendency to the nationalconception for Catalonia is noticeable, most of the time around thirty-veper cent.10

But what about the state-wide political community? Before the death ofFranco, Linz (1973: 99) famously wrote:

Spain, today, is a state for all Spaniards; a nation-state for a large share of thepopulation; and only a state, not a nation, for important minorities.

The question now is how Basques and Catalans see Spain. The CIS hasinquired into these views since the mid-1990s. Table 5 describes the answers tothe question What does Spain mean for you? between 1996 and 2005. Theresponse option that expresses the Spanish nationalist view of the politicalcommunity in its most straightforward manner a nation I feel a member of only attains about ten per cent in both regions. However, in Spain, thealternative my country expresses a similar meaning in a softer manner, thusavoiding the die-hard Spanish nationalist stance associated by many with theimagery and discourse of the previous regime, and suggesting instead aninclination to a civic patriotism of sorts. Altogether, the options demonstrat-ing more affection for Spain i.e. my nation, my country and something

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

Year

Sources: For 1990, Garca-Ferrando et al. (1994); for all other years, seeMartnez-Herrera (forthcoming).

%

Basque CountryCatalonia

Figure 3. Conceptions of the region as a nation in the Basque Country and Catalonia,19902005.



special made by history, uniting us are selected by about half of Catalansand hardly a third of Basques. In turn, the somewhat ambiguous, in affectiveterms, my state is chosen by between a quarter and a fth of the Basques andaround sixteen per cent of the Catalans.

Moreover, Spain was portrayed in 1996 as a state made of severalnationalities and regions by another quarter of Basques and almost a thirdof Catalans. The gure changes remarkably in the Basque Country in 1998and 2005, as the pollsters substituted the expression a state of nationalitieswith a state of autonomies and suppressed the option an alien state.Interestingly enough, the categorical rejection of Spain allowed in 1996 wasgiven by only three per cent of Catalans, but by twelve per cent of Basques. Itis also worth pointing out that the gures for rejection of Spain in the BasqueCountry are fairly similar to the voting gures for the radical nationalists ofthe coalition HB (later named Euskal Herritarrok or Batasuna) by the mid-1990s, but in Catalonia these are far smaller than the vote-shares of EsquerraRepublicana (ERC).11

We can safely conclude that, by the mid-2000s, in comparison with the late1970s, the proportion of citizens refusing to identify themselves with Spainhas dramatically dropped in the Basque Country and, after a temporarydecrease, has remained the same in Catalonia. In turn, citizens views of theSpanish and the regional communities are by no means homogeneous. Yetthey are quite stable and there are always more people who regard Spain as atheir nation or country than who confer on their region the category ofnation.

Having described the main characteristics of national identity of theBasque and Catalan publics three decades after the adoption of the constitu-tional compromise, and observing the consolidation of citizens attachment toits basic tenets, let us just sketch the substantially different views that an

Table 5. Understandings of Spain as a nation or otherwise in the BasqueCountry and Catalonia, 19962005

Basque country Catalonia

1996 1998 2005 1996 1998 2005 1996

My country 20.5 15.7 18.9 38.7 38.5 34.1 51.8A nation I feel a member of 9.8 6.4 5.2 12.0 9.9 11.2 23.5Something special made by history,uniting us

3.3 4.8

The state I am a citizen of 24.7 17.3 17.0 11.9 15.7 18.3 10.2State of nation alities/autonomies 24.0 35.6 35.1 33.6 28.1 30.5 11.0An alien state 12.4 13.0 2.8 5.3 1.4

DK/NA 8.6 21.7 10.8 0.9 3.1 0.5 2.0(n) 429 613 576 747 1003 920 498

Source: Martnez-Herrera (forthcoming).



inuential section of the political class holds on this matter. In the nalsection, parties current positions will be described as they have beenexpressed and advocated in the political process. Yet current research hasrendered information available about the individual attitudes of one inuen-tial segment of the political class the political class of Catalonia.

Research into the political attitudes of the political class and publicservants of Catalonia reveals that nationalist standpoints are strongly over-represented as compared with attitudes in the adult population at large. TheCatalan language is the rst language (or mother tongue) of less than fortyper cent of the population in Catalonia, and less than forty per cent were bornin Catalonia and have both parents born there as well. However, nativeCatalan-speakers and those with parents born in the region are both stronglyover-represented among the political class and public servants of Catalonia.With a few exceptions, this is especially evident among leadership positions(see Matas 1995; Miley 2005, 2006). Similarly, although no studies on theirattitudes are available, the preeminence of autochthonous Basques in theBasque public administration is patent as well (Mansvelt-Beck 2005; Tejerina2001).

A study on Catalonia (Miley 2005, 2006) has revealed that, in 1999, sixty-eight per cent of the CiU Members of the Catalan Parliament (MCPs)declared that they feel only Catalan while none of them felt as Spanish asCatalan, as shown in Table 6. By contrast, in the whole population, thebreakdown was fourteen per cent who identied only with Catalonia and

Table 6. Self-identication and understandings of Catalonia as a nation or aregion in Catalonia: elites (1999) versus masses (19981999)

General public

Constituencies MCPs

CiU PSU CiU PSC

Spanish Only 9 3 13 0 0S4C 6 4 9 0 0S5C 45 41 55 0 60SoC 23 33 15 32 35Catalan only 14 18 5 68 5DK/NA 3 1 3 0 0(n) 3,589 1,194 819 19 20

Region 47 37 60 0 0Other 7 5 7 0 30Nation 37 51 26 100 70

DK/NA 9 8 7 0 0(n) 1,003 293 178 19 20

Sources: For the general public and party constituencies understandings of Cataloniaand relative identications, CIS (1998 and 1999, respectively); for Members of CatalanParliament (MCPs), Miley (2005, 2007).



forty-ve per cent registering balanced dual identity. Even the voters for CiUwere more moderate than their representatives, as only eighteen per cent ofthem felt Catalan only. Concerning their perceptions of Catalonia as anation or as a region, all CiU parliamentarians as well as an overwhelmingseventy per cent of the PSC parliamentarians chose the term nation, while, in1998, a majority of the citizens of the region (forty-seven per cent) preferred touse region. The stance of the parliamentarians was more nationalist thanthat of their voters, too, as only fty-one per cent of the CiU constituency andtwenty-six per cent of the PSC constituency chose that option. This gapbetween elites and masses is explained by origin and language only partially,however it has also roots in the ideology that is acquired throughout thefunctional socialisation of the regional political elites (Miley 2007).

Thirty years later: ongoing pressures for constitutional reform

Having thus illuminated the persistent and even increasing social bases ofsupport for the basic parameters of the constitutional compromise that wasforged during the transition to democracy, let us examine and discuss tworecent challenges to the constitutional compromise adopted in 1978 challenges that have been proposed by political elites in the Basque Countryand Catalonia, respectively. The rst of these challenges has, for the timebeing at least, been effectively stonewalled by the unied opposition of todaystwo main statewide parties, Jose Luis Rodrguez-Zapateros governing PSOEand Mariano Rajoys conservative Partido Popular (PP). The second, how-ever, has managed to split these two main statewide parties, and has therebyprecipitated a crisis of constitutional legitimacy of unprecedented proportionsin the posttransition period. We will examine the nature of each of thesechallenges in turn.

The roots of the rst challenge, coming from the Basque Country, can betraced back to the mid-1990s, when a series of shocking revelations implica-tioning the socialist government, over the course of the previous decade, in astate-sponsored dirty war against ETA exacerbated the already extremepolarisation of Basque society. Then, in 1997, after the kidnapping andassassination of a young PP city councillor, a wave of open indignation andcitizen protest broke out in the region in the aftermath of which the PNVdecided to negotiate secretly with ETA. In those negotiations, the PNVessentially agreed to openly break with the constitutional order in exchangefor ETAs promise to put down its arms. In short order, this process led, rst,to the end of all collaboration between the socialists in the Basque Country(PSE-PSOE) and the PNV; next, to the declaration of an indenite cease-reon the part of ETA; and, nally, to the signing of the so-called Pacto deLizarra, which included the institutional collaboration between PNV, EA andthe political branch of ETA (at the time, named Euskal Herritarrok) and thesupport of the latter for the investiture of Ibarretxe as President of the region.By the autumn of 1998, the PNVs sovereigntist turn was complete. Even



after ETA decided to pick up its arms once more, there would be no turningback.

In October 2003, the lehendekari was presented, and the Basque legislaturepassed the Plan Ibarretxe. The plan that was passed declared that theBasque people have the right to determine their own future . . . in accordancewith the right to self-determination.12 The incompatibility between thisformulation and the carefully worded compromise contained in Article 2 ofthe Constitution is so obvious that it requires little comment. The EE-proposed amendment that had been explicitly voted down in the course ofthe constituent debates has thus been resurrected with a vengeance.13

The Plan Ibarretxe does not call for outright independence for the BasqueCountry; instead, it proposes a new con-federal status of Free Associationwith the Spanish State, one characterised not only by the right to unilateralrecourse to the referendum as the appropriate mechanism for exercising thealleged right to self-determination, but also by institutionalised mechanismsof bilateral consultation and negotiation between the Basque and Spanishexecutives.14

Finally, the plan includes even in its scheme for its own implementation adenitive shift in the ultimate locus of sovereignty from the Spanish to theBasque collectivity. More specically, the plan explicitly breaks with theconstitutionally enshrined procedures for Statute reform, by insisting thatafter approval by an absolute majority in the Basque Parliament, should anagreement not be reached in the Spanish Congress within a period of sixmonths, the lehendakari has the right to ratify it unilaterally instead viareferendum in the Basque Country.15

In February 2005, the two main statewide parties stood together andjointly voted down a Basque nationalist initiative to have the Plan Ibarretxedebated on the oor of Congress. In so doing, they effectively fended off thechallenge to the existing constitutional order, at least in the short run. Evenso, subsequently, the threat of a unilateral referendum called by the lehenda-kari would long loom large. By late 2007, the threat escalated after Ibarretxepromised to convoke such a referendum by 25 October 2008. To this end, theBasque legislature went so far as to pass a law xing the terms and the date forthe said plebiscite. However, once again Spains socialist government and themain conservative opposition stood united on this issue, both lodging anappeal to the Constitutional Court against what they deemed to be anobviously unconstitutional law. As it turned out, the Court concurred; andjust over two months before the foreseen date, the plebiscite was in fact ruledunconstitutional.

In the meantime, the clear break on the part of the heretofore moderateand semi-loyal nationalists in the PNV with the constitutional orderhad already done much damage. It contributed to poisoning the politicalatmosphere throughout the entire country. However, ironically enough, itultimately also contributed to the Basque nationalists defeat in the May2009 regional elections at the hands of an unprecedented alternative



constitutionalist block led by the socialists, who in coalition with theconservative Partido Popular proved capable of forging sufcient support toput an end to 29 years of PNV rule in the region. Even so, Ibarretxes Planserved to destabilise the current federal system, in no small part by helpingprovoke a spiraling of identity-based, territorial aspirations among theCatalan political establishment.

Such aspirations in Catalonia were channeled into a proposal for Statutereform that was, somewhat paradoxically, initially spearheaded by PasqualMaragall, the erstwhile leader of the socialist party in Catalonia. The proposalwas eventually passed on 30 September 2005 with the support of some eighty-ve per cent of the members of the Catalan Parliament (with the exception ofthe representatives of the PP). Albeit the Catalan proposal, in comparisonwith its Basque counterpart, was less agrant in outing the basic parametersof the constitutional compromise, it did shift the ultimate locus of sovereigntyfrom the overall Spanish nation to the particular Catalan one. This shift ismost explicit in the proposed reforms preamble, which declares the vocationand right of the citizens of Catalonia to freely determine their future as apeople. Furthermore, in contradiction of the term nationality, which, as thereader will recall, was both pillar and product of the hard-fought compromiseof the Constitution, Article 1.1 of the proposed Statute reform insisted insteadthat Catalonia is a nation.

In addition to these two explicit challenges to the Constitutional compro-mise, the proposed reform introduced at least two other, somewhat moreimplicit, transformations. The rst of these has to do with the source of publicpower. Article 1.2 of the Constitution stipulates: National sovereignty residesin the Spanish people, from whom the powers of the State emanate. Article2.4, of the Statute, however, contends that The powers of the Generalitatemanate from the people of Catalonia and are exercised according to thisEstatut and the Constitution. The inclusion of this clause constitutes animplicit challenge, insofar as the powers of the Catalan regional governmentthus stem directly from the Catalan demos, rather than indirectly from theConstitution itself, the authority of which emanates from the Spanish demosas a whole.

Finally, the proposed reform sought to exploit the fundamental ambiguityin the term recognise employed in the Constitution in order to render explicitthat the source of Catalonias collective right to self-government bothprecedes and transcends the Constitutional moment. In that vein, Article 5of the proposed reform referred to historical rights, specically proclaimingthat the self-government of Catalonia is also based on the historical rights ofthe Catalan people, on its secular institutions, and on the Catalan legaltradition, which this Estatut incorporates and modernises . . . .

From the outset, Maragalls determination to push through a reformprovoked intense and steadily increasing political debate and tension through-out all of Spain. The Statute proposal was initially an attempt on the part ofMaragall to capture and channel a certain escalation of territorial aspirations



on the part of nationalists in Catalonia, at a time when the moderatenationalist minority coalition then governing the region, Converge`ncia iUnio (CiU), had its hands tied by the support provided for them by the PP.Coming on the heels of the threat of a unilateral move to convoke areferendum on the part of the Basque nationalists, as contained in the so-called Plan Ibarretxe, Maragalls proposal met with the approval ofZapatero, both because it constituted a more moderate alternative to thePlan Ibarretxe and as a means of forging a popular front of sorts withperipheral nationalist political forces, one promising sufcient electoralweight to force the PP back into the opposition.

As a result, when Zapatero came to power in March 2004, he arrived withmore than one important campaign promise to fulll. For he had prominentlypledged to lend his support to Maragalls pet project of Statute reform. In theface of strident opposition from the PP, and despite some serious difcultiesimposing his program within his own party, Zapatero managed to make goodon this promise as well throughout the tumultuous reform process. In thetense moments that preceded deliberations on the oor of the CatalanParliament, Zapatero personally intervened to secure support for it by theconservative Catalan nationalist opposition. Before his direct intervention,CiU had credibly threatened to sink Maragalls project by holding out for amore maximalist alternative.

When the time came for deliberations on the oor of the Congreso inMadrid, Zapatero successfully marginalised powerful dissidents within hisown ranks, thereby securing the approval with relatively few alterations.Among the amendments introduced to the text, however, were the two mostexplicit challenges to the constitutional compromise discussed above. Speci-cally, the mention of the right of the citizens of Catalonia to freely determinetheir future as a people was suppressed altogether. In its place, the muchmore moderate claim that Catalonia wishes to develop its political person-ality within the framework of a State which recognises and respects thediversity of identities of the peoples of Spain was inserted. Likewise, theproclamation of Catalonias status as a nation was withdrawn as well. It wasreplaced in Article 1 with explicit reference to the hard-fought constitutionalcompromise term of nationality, albeit supplemented in the Preamble by anadditional allusion, which reads as follows:

In reection of the feelings and wishes of the citizens of Catalonia, the Parliament ofCatalonia has dened Catalonia as a nation by an ample majority. The SpanishConstitution, in its second article, recognises the national reality of Catalonia as anationality.16

Both of these modications were instrumental in causing an about-face by thesecessionist ERC, which subsequently withdrew its support for the Statute.However, despite these alterations which excluded the two most explicitchallenges to the constitutional compromise, the other two implicit challenges both the assertion that the powers of the Generalitat emanate directly from



the Catalan people and the claim that Catalonias self-government isgrounded in historical rights managed to emerge from the Congresounscathed.

In the run-up to the referendum in Catalonia, Zapatero was very active inthe attempt to mobilise an apathetic public in favor of a clear majority vote toratify the new Statute. In fact, a clear majority (73.2%) was attained withextremely low participation (48.9% only). The Prime Minister has thusproved to be willing to gamble much of his political capital on the prospectsfor a successful outcome of the reform process. So much so that, along withhis commitment to a negotiated settlement with ETA in the hopes of puttingan end to the violence, the issue came to dominate the countrys politicaldebate.

Upon the Statutes approval in the Congreso in Madrid, the parliamentarygroup of the PP immediately led an appeal to the Constitutional Court, asdid the Defensor del Pueblo and ve Autonomous Communities, in accor-dance with the comparatively restrictive stipulations for Constitutional appealprovided by the 1978 Constitution. As a result, the Constitutional Tribunalitself has come under much re, and its highly awaited decision is expected tobe handed down in the near future. Regardless of how the Court decides, theintensity of the conict between the countrys two principal political partiesover the issue of Statute Reform has signied a fundamental break with thebasic features of consensus and compromise that had previously characterisedthe politics of national identity and the territorial conguration of the Spanishstate, so much so that such consensus and compromise had been consub-stantial with the constitutional order itself.

Notes

1 The reections of several of the seven founding fathers of the 1978 Constitution are of

enormous value for understanding the process through which the Constitution was drafted. The

Catalan delegate for the communist party, Sole-Tura, has been particularly prolic on the subject

(e.g. Sole-Tura 1978, 1985). So too has one of the UCDs delegates, Herrero de Minon (1993,

1998). The socialist delegate, Peces-Barba, has presented his own version, too (1988). Finally, of

interest in the same vein is an edited volume containing essays from all seven of the founding

fathers, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Constitution (Cisneros and Herrero 1998).

2 For an overview of the debates that arose during the elaboration of the Constitution, see

Garrido Fallas (1985) edited volume. For other early contributions, see Hernandez Gil (1982),

Attard (1983), and Bonime-Blanc (1984).

3 For a noteworthy contribution from the eld of political theory, see Onate (1998). For a

useful discussion of the juridical implications of the wording agreed upon, see Solozabal (2004b:

Ch. 1).

4 Along with this collective sense of urgency would come a heightened level of scrutiny. Almost

immediately after its publication, the ambiguous formulation of the preliminary draft would begin

to suffer a veritable avalanche of attacks from opposite anks. On the one side, the reputed

publicist and long-time opponent of the Franco regime, Julian Maras, would kick things off with

a series of articles in which he challenged the sagacity of any mention of the term nationalities.

He would insist that the distinction made in the text between nationalities and regions



amounted to a form of clear discrimination that threatened to engender suspicion and distrust in

many areas of Spanish society (Entrena-Cuesta 1985: 43). In so doing, Maras was articulating

just a few of the fears shared by broad segments of the Spanish center and right. In fact, from the

very outset of the drafting process, Fraga had vehemently opposed the inclusion of the term

nationality on the grounds that such inclusion could only lead to confusion. Over the course

of the rst half of 1978, when the proposed amendments to the text were being debated, it became

increasingly clear that for almost everyone in the AP, as well as for large portions of the governing

UCD, the term could only be interpreted as a synonym for nation. This in turn implied for them

a fundamental incompatibility between mentioning the term in the Constitutional text and

maintaining a commitment to the unity of the Spanish nation. In other words, it implied for them

a capitulation to the separatist threat. Simultaneously, on the peripheral nationalist ank, a

very different kind of capitulation was denounced namely, that of the Minora Catalana.

Neither of the main Basque nationalist parties PNV or Euskadiko Ezquerra (EE) proved

willing to go along with what they interpreted as Rocas excessively pliant stance. Consequently,

during the period of proposed amendments to the preliminary draft, representatives from each of

these formations would repeatedly criticise the reference to Spain as a nation. As they saw it,

Spain is not a nation, but a State formed by a collection of nations (Entrena-Cuesta 1985: 43).

5 The Basque Country and Catalonia had already been granted a pre autonomous status by the

government though it had been made clear that the legal status of these regions would ultimately

be derived by the Constitutional text.

6 Whats more, the nal draft of Title VIII would remain silent on several important points. To

begin with, exercise of the right to self-government would not be obliged. Nor would the

territorial conguration of these different regions be established. Nor would the scope and content

of the right to self-government be xed. Nor even would any distinction in the kind or level of

rights recognised and guaranteed for nationalities as opposed to regions be drawn (Powell

2001).

7 The resulting gures are nicely complemented by private surveys directed by DATA. For

treatment of the data, see Martnez-Herrera (2002).

8 In accordance with such criteria, the nal draft of the article would read: The Basque People

or Euskal-Herria, as an expression of their nationality and in order to accede to self-government,

constitute an Autonomous Community within the Spanish State under the name of Euskadi or

the Basque Country, in accordance with the Constitution and with this Statute, which lays down

its basic institutional rules.

9 In this portion of the analysis, the categories Spanish only and more Spanish than of the

region, on the one hand, and of the region only and more of the region than Spanish, on the

other, are collapsed into primarily Spanish and a primarily regional identications, respec-

tively. This is because, in its rst nation-wide survey (1980), the CIS did not offered the complete

array of answering options.

10 The somewhat higher level in 1990 may well be attributed to a smaller sample size, the lack of

the other answer option, and the implementation by a pollster other than the CIS.

11 Herri Batasuna changed its name to Euskal Herritarrok in 1998, and to Batasuna tout court

in 2001 for judiciary reasons.

12 More precisely, the plans preamble declares: The Basque people have the right to decide their

own future, as was passed by an absolute majority of the Basque Parliament on the 15th of

February, 1990, in conformity with the right of self-determination of peoples, internationally

recognised, among others, in the International Pact of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

The Plan Ibarretxe can be accessed at http://www.nuevoestatutodeeuskadi.net

13 The incompatibility between the Plan Ibarretxes invocation of the right to self-determination

and the basic parameters of the constitutional compromise extends further still. For the Plan

makes clear that the collective subject of self-determination, the Basque people, being referred to

is not limited to the three provinces that compose the Basque Autonomous Community; rather, it

is intended to include Navarra, as well as the three provinces of the French Basque Country

(Iparralde). See, in particular, Articles 1, 2.1, 6 and 7 of the Plan.



14 The proposed new status of Free Association is announced in the Plans preamble, in which

said association is declared compatible with the possibilities for development within an Estado

compuesto, plurinacional y asimetrico. This new con-federal relation would include the granting of

specically Basque Citizenship (Plans Article 4). The basic institutional guidelines for governing

future foreseen bilateral relations are sketched in the Plans Title I, Article 13 of which establishes

the referendum as the mechanism through which the Basque people can freely renegotiate their

relation with the Spanish state; and Article 15 of which provides the blueprint for the composition

of a bilateral commission between the Basque and Spanish executives. On the other hand, Title

VIII of the Constitution explicitly reserves (in Article 149.1.32) the right to authorise referenda for

the central government alone.

15 The proposed procedure for implementation of the new Statute is spelled out in Article 17 of

the Plan.

16 Evidently, the Spanish legislature was wise enough to distinguish between the ample majority

registered by the representatives of the Catalan Parliament, and the beliefs of the Catalan public

itself since, as the reader may recall from Figure 2 above, the term nation has never been

embraced by even a simple majority, much less an ample majority, of the Catalan citizenry.

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