Federalism in Spain began in the 1830s, although it has its roots in the 1790s. The first and only attempt to establish a federal state in Spain occurred during the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874). After this failure, federalism was a minority political current. In the Second Spanish Republic and in the Transition, an intermediate model was chosen between federalism and centralism — the integral state, in the first case; and the regional state in the second.
Starting in the 1830s, the most radical factions of the democratic-republicans defended federalism as a form of political organization of the Spanish nation, sometimes even leading to Iberism — the formula of a federal republic that encompassed Portugal and Spain. There are, however, antecedents dating back to the end of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth century by the work of exiled liberals ― which Juan Francisco Fuentes has called "proto-federalism of exile" and of which he recognized that it was a very minority position. This is the case of José Marchena who already in 1792 proposed a republic made up of Spain and Portugal, or that of Juan de Olabarría, who was probably the one who drew up in 1819 a draft Constitution in which it was said that "the provinces are naturally federated" and that "the interests common to a province are within the province's competence", in addition to José Canga Argüelles who in 1826 published anonymously in London the "Letters of an American on the advantages of the federative republican governments" or of Ramón Xaudaró who in Limoges published in 1832 "Bases of a political constitution or fundamental principles of a republican system". [1]
In the republican newspaper El Huracán published between 1840 and 1841, it held the United States as a model of "pure democracy" and included the following federal and Iberian verses: [2]
First of all, dethrone the unfaithful race of Bourbon,
federate ourselves in droves,
with the worthy Lusitanian
and be a sovereign people
without Cristina nor Isabel.
Federalism started from the medieval "old kingdoms" to define the states that would form the Spanish federal Republic. Its great theorist was the Catalan republican politician Francesc Pi i Margall author of "Las Nacionalidades" published in 1877 shortly after the failure of the federal experience of the First Spanish Republic. [3] As Juan Francisco Fuentes has pointed out, the federalists reasoned in reverse that the Frenchified and the Moderates who "made the State the cornerstone of their modernizing project, to the detriment of the sovereign nation", because they considered "the nation would only reach the fullness of its existence if the unitary and centralist State - taxes, fifths, forces of order, covachuelas, monarchy - was conveniently scrapped", thus proposing a "kind of nation without a state." [4]
The federalists' conception of Spain has been defined as a "multi-state nation that would make citizens and territories alike free", a "strange hybrid", according to Juan Francisco Fuentes, "between federalism and Jacobinism". [5] This mixture can be seen in a document from the junta insurrecta of Barcelona in 1842 in which after reaffirming "the union and pure Spanishism of all Free Catalans" and denouncing "the tyranny and perfidy of power that has led the Nation to the most deplorable state," declared the "independence of Catalonia, with respect to the Court, until a just government is reestablished." [6] It appears again in the "Bases for the Federal Constitution of the Spanish Nation and for the State of Catalonia" by Valentí Almirall and, finally, in the draft Federal Constitution of 1873, whose 1st article read: "The States that make up the Spanish Nation are Upper Andalusia, Lower Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, New Castile, Old Castile, Catalonia, Cuba, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia, Navarre, Puerto Rico, Valencia, Basque Country". [7] [8]
According to José Luis de la Granja, Justo Beramendi and Pere Anguera, the failure of the federal proposal of the First Spanish Republic blocked the process of broadening the social base of the Spanish nation and the weakening of the sub-state loyalties, which "contributed to creating the conditions so that, when other factors acted, [the] Spanish national unity would end up being broken" than in 1875, despite everything, no one questioned. [9]
In the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which governed the Second Spanish Republic, a territorial model was established halfway between federalism ―which was no longer defended by the republican parties due, among other reasons, to the influence of regenerationism and the failure of the federal experience of 1873-1874 ― [10] and centralism ― for example, Republican Union conceived the State as "an interaction of municipal and regional autonomies within the indestructible unity of Spain". This new formula was called the "Integral State, compatible with the autonomy of the Municipalities and Regions." [11] But it was not agreed that the autonomy regime would be for everyone by demanding a very broad support from the population ―two thirds of the electoral census― in the “regions” that demanded access to it ―in fact only Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia undertook the process. [12]
In the Transition the hybrid territorial model ―neither centralist nor federalist― of the Integral State of the Second Spanish Republic was adopted with some variations. [13] This was embodied in the Constitution of 1978. In article 2 it was said that the Constitution "recognizes and guarantees the right to autonomy of nationalities and regions", where "nationality" was a term that had never been used in the history of Spanish constitutionalism and whose concrete meaning was not specified in any of the following articles. [14] [15] As recognized by the socialist Gregorio Peces-Barba years after the Constitution was approved, the distinction between "nationalities" and "regions" was inspired by the exiled socialist Anselmo Carretero's idea of Spain as a "nation of nations". [16]
The "State of the autonomies" that ended up being constituted by progressively equalizing the competencies and institutional architecture of the Autonomous Communities of the "slow track" of Article 143 of the Constitution and of the "fast track" of 151 (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia), it did not achieve its main objective: that the various nationalisms existing in Spain agree on the type of State acceptable to all. The sub-state nationalisms were not satisfied with the autonomic solution, nor with the "coffee for all" ―the generalization of autonomies― which was finally adopted and they continued to demand a confederal model and even independence. [17] However, the so-called "coffee for all" model has been compared to a symmetrical federalism. [18]
In the first decade of the 21st century, the Catalan socialist Pasqual Maragall, who advocated the concept of "differential federalism"—the center of his political thought [19] —proposed through the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006 the fit of Catalonia in Spain within a federal model [20] [21] [22] inspired in a certain way by the traditionally supported "asymmetric federalism" for the peripheral nationalisms. [23]
In Spain, an autonomous community is the first-level political and administrative division, created in accordance with the Spanish Constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy of the nationalities and regions that make up Spain.
The Catalan Countries are those territories where the Catalan language is spoken. They include the Spanish regions of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencian Community, and parts of Aragon and Murcia (Carche), as well as the Principality of Andorra, the department of Pyrénées-Orientales in France, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia (Italy). It is often used as a sociololinguistic term to describe the cultural-linguistic area where Catalan is spoken. In the context of Catalan nationalism, the term is sometimes used in a more restricted way to refer to just Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The Catalan Countries do not correspond to any present or past political or administrative unit, though most of the area belonged to the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages. Parts of Valencia (Spanish) and Catalonia (Occitan) are not Catalan-speaking.
The politics of Catalonia takes place within the framework of its Statute of Autonomy and 1978 Constitution, which grants a degree of self-government to Catalonia and establish it as an autonomous community of Spain with the statuts of a nationality, operating as a parliamentary democracy. The Generalitat de Catalunya is the Catalan institution of self-government, which includes the Parliament of Catalonia, the President and the Executive Council. The Parliament of Catalonia is one of the oldest in the world.
The Galician People's Party was a Galician political party in the first years of the Spanish democracy.
Galicianism is a regionalist political movement in Galicia.
The creation of the tradition of the political community of Spaniards as common destiny over other communities has been argued to trace back to the Cortes of Cádiz. From 1812 on, revisiting the previous history of Spain, Spanish liberalism tended to take for granted the national conscience and the Spanish nation.
The Partido Galeguista was a Galician nationalist party founded in December 1931. It achieved notoriety during the time of the Spanish Second Republic. The PG grouped a number of historical Galician intellectuals, and was fundamental in the elaboration of the Galician Statute of Autonomy.
Valentí Almirall i Llozer was a Catalan politician, considered one of the fathers of modern Catalan nationalism, and more specifically, of the left-wing variety.
Francesc Pi i Margall was a Spanish federalist and republican politician and theorist who served as president of the short-lived First Spanish Republic in 1873. He was also a historian, philosopher, romanticist writer, and was also the leader of the Federal Democratic Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Pi was turned into a sort of secular saint in his time.
Dereita Galeguista was a right-wing Galician nationalist party active in the final months of the Second Spanish Republic.
The Galician Nationalist Party–Galicianist Party is a Galician nationalist and liberal political party, coming from a split of the Galician Coalition. The PNG–PG had 132 members in 2002. Xosé Mosquera Casero is its secretary general, after the VIII Congress in September 2011.
Galician Solidarity was a Galician regionalist political organization active between 1907 and 1912.
Galician Coalition is a political party in Galicia, Spain with a Galician nationalist and centrist ideology. Since 2012 CG is part of the coalition Compromiso por Galicia.
The Republican Nationalist Party of Ourense was a Galician nationalist party founded in late 1930 based in the province of Ourense. The main leaders of the party were Ramón Otero Pedrayo, Xaquín Lorenzo Fernández, Florentino López Cuevillas and Vicente Risco.
The Catalan Republic was a state proclaimed in 1931 by Francesc Macià as the "Catalan Republic within the Iberian Federation", in the context of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. It was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, and superseded three days later, on 17 April, by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan institution of self-government within the Spanish Republic.
The Catalan State was a short-lived state proclaimed during the events of 6 October 1934 by Lluís Companys as the "Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic".
The People's Army of Catalonia was an army created by the Generalitat of Catalonia on December 6, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. Its existence was more theoretical than real, because the original structure of the popular militias continued to exist despite the efforts of the Generalitat. After the May Days it was dissolved and its structure assumed by the Spanish Republican Army, which definitively militarized the militias of Catalonia and Aragon.
The Crop Contracts Law was a law passed by the Parliament of Catalonia on March 21, 1934, and enacted on the symbolic date of April 14, 1934. The basic purpose of the law was to protect the tenant farmers from the Rabassa Morta and promote their access to the land they were cultivating. The law was not implemented because it was revoked by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees. The negotiation that followed between the Spanish and Catalan governments was interrupted by the Revolution of October 1934, that included the proclamation of the Catalan State. Both events resulted in failure.
Nosaltres Sols! was a Catalan nationalist paramilitary political movement from the 20th century. It was born in 1931, in a rented space property of the political party Unió Catalanistaand created a weekly journal with the exact same name as well. The purpose of the organization was to confront those who were considered enemies of Catalonia, mainly Spanish unionists, but also anarchists, communists and fascists.
Javier Moreno Luzón is a Spanish historian, professor of the History of Thought and Social and Political Movements at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is an expert in the political history of Restoration Spain.