Statute of Autonomy

Statute of Autonomy I

The Constitution of 1978 marked the beginning of a decentralised process that took us to the current autonomies system. However, this was not the result of a new idea agreed among some politicians. The Constitution needed the general consensus and the Law for the Political Reform of 1976 facilitated the appropriate changes. However, an ideological undercurrent, of tens of years, was at the background of these changes.

The most immediate historic precedent, would be the anticentralist movements that happened through out the XIX and XX century in our country. These movements were against the vision of a centralised Spain and they followed the centralist system, since the beginning. There is no doubt of the federalist influences, which go back to the dawn of the Spanish constitucionalism, at the beginning of the XIX century. This way, we find that the first signs of anticentralism are the regional, Carlist, and federalist ideas. The failure of the Federal Republic of 1873 will mark the climax of the attempts to implement decentralised schemes.

Since the Law for the Political Reform of 1976 until the Spanish Constitution of 1978, Spain will go through a particular process of provisional regimes of autonomies given by government decree to those territories interested, after negotiations with the Central Government. The process starting point is the government decree of 29th September 1977, by which the Catalan autonomous government is restored. After it, almost all the territory, except Madrid, Ceuta, Melilla and Navarra, was affected by the regimen that took place before the creation of the autonomous regional governments.