Spain is a diverse country integrated by contrasting entities with varying economic and social structures, languages, and historical, political and cultural traditions. The Spanish constitution responds ambiguously to the claims of historic nationalities (such as the right of self-government) while proclaiming a common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards.Second article.
The terms nationalities and historical nationalities, though never officially defined, refer to territories whose inhabitants have a strong historically constituted identity; or, more specifically, certain autonomous communities whose statute of autonomy—their basic institutional legislation—recognizes their historical and cultural identity.
In Spanish jurisprudence, the term nationality appears for the first time in the current constitution, approved in 1978 after much debate in the Spanish Parliament. Although it was explicitly understood that the term referred to Galicia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia, the constitution does not specify any communities by name. Between the strong centralist position inherited from Franco's regime and the nationalist position of the Galicians, Basques, and Catalans, a consensus developed around this term. It was applied in the respective statutes of autonomy once all nationalities and regions acceded to self-government or autonomy, and were constituted as autonomous communities.
Several of the writers of the current Spanish Constitution have said that the concept of nationality is synonymous with nation. However, the Spanish Constitutional Court has explicitly ruled against this interpretation.
Currently, the term "nationality" is used in reference to Aragon, Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and Andalusia. The rest of the autonomous communities (Castile-La Mancha, Murcia, La Rioja, Extremadura) are defined as historical regions of Spain. Asturias, Cantabria, and Castile and León are referred to as "historical communities". Navarre is defined as a chartered community in the re-institution of its medieval charters, and the Community of Madrid is defined as neither a nationality nor a region, but a community created in the nation's interest as the seat of the nation's capital. Catalonia was originally defined as a "nation" in the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006. However, the Constitutional Court of Spain declared that unconstitutional. The court considered that the references made, in the preamble of the statute, to Catalonia to a nation "lack legal effectiveness".
Historical background
The formation of Spain can be viewed as an alliance and progressive union of several peninsular kingdoms, and nationalist or regionalist tradition in Spain has historical roots in such beginnings. No serious attempt was made to centralise the administration until the reforms of the eighteenth century, to become a nation state.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, the Spanish government had become strongly centralised, as was the case in certain other European nations. The State did not recognise the nation's regional diversity. Later during this same century, Catalonia and the Basque Country became rapidly industrialised and were areas of swift progress in establishing commercial capitalism. These changes occurred much more slowly in the rest of the country, which remained largely agricultural. Nationalistic sentiments began to grow in the more industrialized areas. Some writers of the time expressed their concepts of a Catalan or Basque fatherland, or even nationhood. These two nationalist movements had much in common, in that both arose in areas that enjoyed higher levels of prosperity and literacy, were the only areas in the country to develop modern industry, and each possessed a distinct and independent linguistic tradition. Activists worked to revive use of both the Catalan and the Basque languages, including publication of literature in these languages. A similar revival began of the Galician language. Scholars began to explore the histories of these regions, to tell their own founding stories: Catalonia rediscovered her prowess as a Mediterranean Medieval empire within the Crown of Aragon, and the Basque Country focused on the mystery of its origins.
Under medieval and early modern charters, several parts of Spain, including the Principality of Catalonia and the Basque provinces, had exercised a considerable level of independence, even in the period of Habsburg Spain; however, later Bourbon Spain such independence was lost and the Basque Country and Navarre exercised only fiscal autonomy. The larger economic development that occurred in these historically delimited ethnic communities enhanced the regions' own identities.Sàpiens.cat: Les institucions polítiques de la Catalunya medieval
In the early twentieth century, nationalist discourse in Galicia, Catalonia and especially in the Basque country was infused with racialist elements, as these ethnicities defined themselves as distinct from the peoples of the center and south of Spain. With the growth of nationalistic sentiments, demands by these groups for self-government also grew. In some sectors, activists demanded outright independence.
The appearance of the so-called peripheral nationalism in the aforementioned regions of Spain occurred in a period when Spaniards began to look into their own concepts of nationhood. In the traditionalist view, religion had been integral to defining the Spanish nation, intrinsically and traditionally Catholic, and strongly monarchical. In a later, liberal view, sovereignty was considered to reside in the nation and to be expressed in the people, as opposed to the monarch. Some activists sought a uniform centralised State, while others preferred decentralization or republicanism.
Spain experimented with decentralisation during the First Spanish Republic (1873-1874), but social and political chaos, which had started even before the change of regime with a change of monarchical houses, led to its failure. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the two political discourses of Spanish nationalism, the traditional and the liberal, continued to be present and opposing, advocating for different political regimes. However, the appearance of peripheral nationalisms, namely the Basque and Catalan nationalistic movements, produced the unification of many Spanish nationalists as a counter-force, and Spanish nationalism became a dialectical struggle between the center and the periphery.
During the final stages of the turno pacífico, a staged pacific alternation of power between liberals and conservatives in the Spanish Parliament, Catalonia was granted a limited form of self-government. The Commonwealth of Catalonia () was established in 1913, with its own Regional Assembly. The Assembly drafted a Statute of Autonomy that was, however, rejected by the General Courts (the Spanish Parliament). The Commonwealth of Catalonia was dissolved during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in 1923.
In 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was established, and a new liberal constitution allowed the "regions" of Spain to attain self-government. It created the "autonomous region" as a first-order administrative division. Catalonia was the first to approve a Statute of Autonomy, later sanctioned by the Spanish Parliament. Its Generalitat, the Catalan institutions of government that had operated since medieval times until the early eighteenth century, was restored. The Basque Country and Galicia each sought autonomy in 1936, but only the Statute of Autonomy of the first was approved before the Spanish Civil War erupted.
After the war, Franco's regime (1939–1975) forcefully enforced centralism in an effort to establish and preserve the unity of the Spanish nation. His attempts to fight separatism with heavy-handed but sporadic repression and his oftentimes severe suppression of language and regional identities backfired: the demands for democracy became intertwined with demands for the recognition of a pluralistic vision of the Spanish nationhood.
After Franco died, Spain entered into a phase of transition towards democracy. All democratic groups were forced to face the Catalan, Basque and Galician question. On 11 September 1977, more than one million people marched in the streets of Barcelona (Catalonia) demanding "llibertat, amnistia i estatut d'autonomia", "liberty, amnesty and [a] Statute of Autonomy", creating the biggest demonstration in post-war Europe. A law was passed that allowed for the creation of pre-autonomías, "pre-autonomies" or provisional regional governments for all regions, the "historical nationalities" included. Catalonia was the first to be so constituted, and it again revived the Generalitat. The Basque Country quickly followed suit.
In the 1977 election to the first democratically elected Parliament since the times of the Republic, regional Catalan socialists (Socialists' Party of Catalonia) and Basque nationalists (Basque Nationalist Party) both won significant positions in representing their regions and their aspirations. This newly elected Parliament was entrusted to formulate a new constitution.
"Nationalities" in the constitution of 1978 The demands for the recognition of the distinctiveness of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia within the Spanish State became one of the most important challenges for the newly elected Parliament. In fact, the writing of the second article, in which the "nationalities and regions" of Spain were recognized, was the most hotly debated in the Parliament. Its acceptance was not smooth: the right vigorously opposed it, while the nationalists and the left firmly objected to leaving it out. The natural corollary to debating the term "nationalities" was debating the term "nation". At the end of the spectrum there were those who thought the term "nationalities" was unnecessary, or that there was only one "nation" and "nationality"—Spanish—while at the opposite end of the spectrum there were those who advocated for defining Spain as a plurinational State, that is, a State integrated by several nations. In the end, the second article was passed along with the term "nationalities" but firmly stressing the indivisible unity of the Spanish nation. It reads:
The article united two historical trends in Spain: centralism and federalism, and in the words of one of the seven fathers of the Constitution, Jordi Solé Tura it was "[...] an authentic point of encounter between different concepts of the Spanish nation [...] In it, two great notions of Spain merge." It aimed to give an answer to the nationalistic aspirations that had been silenced during the four decades of Franco's dictatorial regime.
The constitution itself did not define the term, despite the diverse meanings and interpretations that its proponents and opponents had—ranging from "an expression of historical and cultural identities [...] in the superior unity of Spain" (Landelino Lavilla, from the Union of the Democratic Centre), "communities with a prominent cultural, historical or political personality" (Rafael Arias-Salgado, from the Union of the Democratic Centre), all the way to making it equivalent to "nation", (Manuel Fraga from the People's Alliance, in stern opposition to the term "nationalities" precisely because of its alleged synonymity with "nation") or defining it as a "nation without a State [...] within the plurinational reality of Spain [...] as a Nation of nations" (Miguel Roca Junyent, from the Convergence and Union).