Between justice and politics: the role of theSpanish Constitutional Court in the state ofautonomies

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://rsa.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtep20 Territory, Politics, Governance ISSN: 2162-2671 (Print) 2162-268X (Online) Journal homepage: https://rsa.tandfonline.com/loi/rtep20 Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy, Gonzalo Sola Rodríguez & José Cruz Díaz To cite this article: Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy, Gonzalo Sola Rodríguez & José Cruz Díaz (2018): Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies, Territory, Politics, Governance, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2018.1557073 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2018.1557073 Published online: 18 Dec 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 61 View Crossmark data Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy a , Gonzalo Sola Rodríguez b and José Cruz Díaz c ABSTRACT This study focuses on the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies between 1980 and 2014. It questions the evolution of the court in two fields. First, it demonstrates that the court profoundly shaped the contours of the devolution process through a dynamic of ‘judicialization’. Second, this research analyzes the politicization process of constitutional justice by territorial actors. This dynamic led to the quasiparalysis of the court from 2008 to 2012 through the ruling of the reform of the Catalan statute. This paper concludes the court can be best interpreted as a ‘trustee’aspiring to remain an independent arbiter within a framework lacking alternative fora for regulating intergovernmental relations. KEYWORDS territory; Spain; Constitutional Court; devolution; Catalonia; federalism; conflict; intergovernmental relations HISTORY Received 15 June 2017; in revised form 25 November 2018 INTRODUCTION In recent years, the decisions adopted by the Spanish Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional) in the field of centre–periphery relations have provoked significant popular reactions – especially in Catalonia. For instance, on 9 July 2010, thousands of people demonstrated in Barcelona against the ruling of the court concerning the new statute of Catalonia (Lázaro, 2010). Those massive rallies demonstrated that the court was a central actor in the territorial politics in Spain. However, they also indicated that a significant part of the Catalan population considered the court to be an institution driven by political interests that favour centralism. Consequently, those two readings seem to contradict the official vision of the court as an impartial guardian of the Constitution. Drawing on the recent literature about the role(s) of constitutional courts in multilayered countries, this paper addresses the question of what the current role of the Spanish Constitutional Court is with respect to the ‘state of autonomies’(Aroney & Kincaid, 2017). In order to address this question, this paper focuses on the two constitutive dimensions of the court’s role (Ferejohn, 2002). On the one hand, the court can be considered as a policy-shaper of the laws adopted by the executive and the legislature in the field of territorial governance; this evolution is part of a process © 2018 Regional Studies Association CONTACT a (Corresponding author) [email protected] Political Science and Administration Area, Universidad Pablo de Olavide Seville, Spain. b Political Science, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain. c Constitutional Law Area, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2018.1557073 of judicialization of territorial politics. On the other hand, the role of the court must be understood in the broader context of the political pressures exerted by state-wide political parties on judges, that is, the dynamic of the politicization of constitutional justice. The study of constitutional courts in federal and decentralized countries constitutes a consolidated strand in the literature on comparative federalism. This issue has been explored extensively in Germany through the study of the Federal Constitutional Court (Benz, 2017), in Australia with the High Court (Chordia & Lynch, 2014), and in Canada (Schertzer, 2013) and the United States with their respective supreme courts (Banks & Blakeman, 2012). In Spain, the nexus between the Constitutional Court and territorial politics has caught the attention of public law specialists since its creation (Alonso García, 1984; Borrajo Iniesta, 2004; García de Enterría, 1982), but it has been relatively ignored by political scientists. This literature gap has been partially filled by a set of recent studies. On the one hand, some authors have focused on the drivers of the intergovernmental litigations handled by the court. Sala (2010,2014) demonstrated that regional and central governments modified their strategy of litigation according to the composition of the court or their past successes in a given policy area. Sala concluded that the central government was favoured by the rulings of the constitutional judges when it tackled an area where it had won in the past, and when the justices were known for their lack of regional sensibility (Sala, 2011). From a more institutionalist perspective, Harguindéguy, Rodríguez, and Sánchez (2017) have shown the importance of parliamentarian equilibriums for explaining the rise of intergovernmental conflicts before the Constitutional Court. On the other hand, some scholars have attempted to identify the variables explaining the court’s decisions on a series of issues since the late 1980s (del Castillo, 1987). Drawing on agency theory, Garoupa, Gómez-Pomar, and Grembi (2013) argued that the court’s preferences could be framed neither as the pure application of the law nor as the simple result of pressures exerted by political parties on the justices. Other elements such as peer pressure, the search for consensus and the aim to increase the legitimacy of the court mattered in the decision-making process. In the same vein, López Laborda, Ródrigo, and Sanz Arcega (2016) aimed to identify the drivers of the Constitutional Court’s decisions on conflicts of competence opposing the Spanish central government and the autonomous communities. They concluded that the Constitutional Court was not a simple instrument used by the central government against the Spanish regions. All these studies have helped to shed a light on the evolution of constitutional justice in the field of territorial governance in Spain, but they also had some limitations. From a methodological viewpoint, the quantitative treatment of centre–periphery litigations says little about the importance of some of them. For instance, the conflict over the 2006 regional statute of Catalonia was far more relevant for territorial governance than the 2016 controversy concerning the competence over bullfighting shows. Consequently, a more qualitative and fine-grained view is needed to understand the ambivalent role of the court within the state of autonomies, and its importance in the Spanish devolution process. The central hypothesis of this paper is that judicialization and politicization affect all the constitutional courts operating in federal states; but in Spain those dynamics have led to an institutional deadlock. In order to provide such a perspective, this study was conducted from March 2015 to June 2016. First, it consisted of collecting the academic publications and official reports dealing with the Constitutional Court in order to elaborate descriptive statistics about the main trends of constitutional justice in Spain from 1980 to 2014. A series of 30 interviews were then undertaken with civil servants (constitutional judges and members of the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration –Ministerio de Hacienda y Administraciones Públicas or MINHAP), politicians (at the state and regional levels), and experts (academic experts and journalists). Those interviews lasted between 40 and 60 min and focused on the role of the Constitutional Court, its problems of politicization, the impact of its rulings and the behaviour of political actors. 2Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy et al. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE The paper is structured as follows. The next section centres on the creation of the Constitutional Court and its specific role within the Spanish quasi-federal system. The third and fourth sections tackle the processes of judicialization and politicization of Spanish territorial politics. Finally, the question of how federal issues affect the court is addressed in the conclusion. THE RELEVANCE OF THE COURT FOR TERRITORIAL ISSUES A Spanish adaptation of the Kelsenian model After 40 years of Francoism, the rise of decentralization and the absence of a constitutional regulation of this process quickly converted the Spanish Constitutional Court into a pivotal actor in intergovernmental relations. Drawing on the Kelsenian tradition, Spanish constitutionalists adopted a model of concentrated judicial review: the Tribunal represents the highest body in the field of constitutional law and it is independent from judicial power. 1 It holds a monopoly on the interpretation of the Constitution, and its decisions cannot be appealed. This court is ruled by constitutional articles 159–165 and by the 3 October 1979 Organic Law (Ley Orgánica del Tribunal Constitucional –LOTC) (Elvira Perales, 2013). The Constitutional Court includes 12 justices. All must be experienced jurists. The justices are elected for a single nine-year mandate, and four of them are replaced every three years. Four candidates are proposed by the Congress (by a majority of three-fifths); four are proposed by the Senate (also by a majority of three-fifths) among the candidates presented by the regional parliaments; two candidates are proposed by the Cabinet; and two are proposed by a majority of three-fifths of the General Council of Judicial Power [GCPJ] (Consejo General del Poder Judicial). The president sets the agenda of the court and has the last word in the case of a tie. At least eight judges have to be present on the court for a decision to be reached (LOTC, 1979). An important difference separates Spain from France and Italy (Sala, 2010). Actually –just as in Germany and Belgium –the access to the Constitutional Court is open to a wide range of plaintiffs in Spain. Ordinary judges, the ombudsman, regional parliaments, the state legislatures (50 deputies or senators), central and regional governments, and even individuals (through the amparo procedure) can initiate the constitutional review procedure. According to Section 161.2 of the Constitution, regional acts are suspended ex lege, when challenged by state’s government. The obligation to send a request (requerimento) before challenging a state regulation is compulsory for regional governments and optional for the state government in the cases of a conflict of powers and devolved issues (but not in the case of a complaint of unconstitutionality). There are two basic proceedings for centre–periphery litigations in Spain: the recursos de inconstitucionalidad (complaints of unconstitutionality) and the conflictos de competencias (conflicts of competences). The former occurs when a regional or central administration challenges a law because it believes that the act is not consistent with the rules established by the Constitution. The latter happens when regional and central administrations contest the sharing of powers in a given policy area. Theoretically, regional and central executives can be involved in other types of litigation, such as the infrequent negative conflicts of competences (conflictos negativos de competencias) or the prior review of constitutionality (control previo de constitucionalidad) that disappeared in 1985 (Fernández Farreres, 2005). 2 An ordinary court for territorial issues? The Constitutional Court was initially conceived by constitutionalists as the last step for regulating intergovernmental conflicts. Alternative institutions were supposed to prevent the rise of territorial litigations through institutional arrangements. Nevertheless, since the beginning of democracy, the Tribunal is used as an ordinary court of last resort for channelling centre–periphery Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies 3 TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE tensions (Gordillo Pérez, 2007). The central position of the court in the field of territorial governance relies on four related dynamics. First, Agranoff and Ramos Gallarin (1997) showed that intergovernmental relations in Spain were mostly vertical; that is, they principally focused on the central Cabinet and its regional counterparts as the main actors of the territorial system. Consequently, ‘Horizontal relations among regional governments are practically non-existent’(interview with a top-level civil servant, Madrid, October 2015). According to Arbós Marín, Colino, García Morales, and Parrado (2009), this configuration can be best explained by the lack of autonomy of Spanish regions in the field of transregional projects. Alternatively, other authors (de Pedro Bonet, 2011) stress the lack of political will of regional executives. Likewise, Spanish intergovernmental relations are also predominantly bilateral. Despite the creation of sectorial conferences (conferencias sectoriales) in 1983 –and the conference of presidents in 2004 –these meetings between central and regional ministers still lack a real power of decisionmaking. Moreover, sectorial conferences are convened by the central state’s representatives and can only adopt symbolic agreements with no binding effects. This explains the survival of a series of two-sided administrative mechanisms, such as the bilateral conferences, especially when the collaborating tiers are governed by the same political party (León & Ferrín Pereira, 2011). Intergovernmental relations in Spain also suffer from a lack of institutionalization (Aja & Colino, 2014). The most visible aspect is the lack of a federal senate, as is found in Germany. The current Spanish upper house (Senado) faces two limitations for channelling territorial interests. The first problem is related to its composition, since the Senado mostly consists of representatives elected by the provinces (Castellà Andreu, 2006). Nevertheless, some senators are elected instead by alternative constituencies such as autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla) and autonomous communities. The second main limitation is the absence of any real veto power, since the Senado cannot block bills proposed by the Congress (Congreso) and Cabinet for more than two months. For these reasons, the Congress has become the central forum for intergovernmental negotiations between state- and region-wide parties (Harguindéguy, Coller, & Cole, 2017). Lastly, according to several authors, the consolidation of the Constitutional Court in Spain was favoured by the lacunae of the 1978 Constitution (Aragón Reyes, 1986; Fernández Farreres, 2005; García de Enterría, 1982). Given the complex bargaining between political forces after the death of Franco, this text states general principles of territorial organization –and, more specifically, a large number of competencies shared between the regions and the central state –but it also leaves considerable room for interpretation to the political actors. Consequently, constitutional judges are frequently asked to make certain legal aspects clear through their decisions (Aja, 1989). The initial ambiguity explains the relevance of the Constitutional Court in relation to the whole process of decentralization in Spain, as will be demonstrated in the next section. THE FORCED JUDICIALIZATION OF TERRITORIAL POLITICS The regulation of intergovernmental conflicts Judicialization has been defined by Hirschl (2011, p. 121) as ‘the reliance on courts and judicial means for addressing core moral predicaments, public policy questions, and political controversies’. As such, the judicialization of territorial politics is not something specific to Spain; it also affects other countries such as Colombia and Brazil (Ferreira do Vale, 2013), or the United States (Somin, 2017). 3 The central position of the Constitutional Court can be assessed from a quantitative viewpoint. The MAP-LEXTER data set includes the complete litigation between autonomous communities and the central government between 1980 and 2014 (N= 1624). 4 The examination of this data set demonstrates that the Constitutional Court has been a relevant player in the field of territorial 4Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy et al. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE governance since the very beginning of the state of autonomies. Once again, it must be stressed that the court is used as an ordinary mechanism of intergovernmental regulation. First, it can be observed that autonomous communities adopted proactive behaviour, since they litigated twice as many times as the central government (66.5% and 33.5%, respectively). 5 The data also show that the litigants tended to use the actions of unconstitutionality and the conflicts of competences in equal proportion (51.5% and 48.5%, respectively). Nevertheless, only 65% of the total litigations handled by the court produced a ruling. The remaining 35% were annulated by the court or withdrawn by the plaintiffs (Table 1). Second, it appears from the percentage of victories for each side that the court favours the central state. From 1980 to 2014, the central state won 71.5% of its claims, while regional actors only achieved victory in 59% of cases. However, these data hide a two-step evolution. As shown in Figure 1, the Constitutional Court did not favour any litigant from 1980 to 2002, since the regions and the central state won alternately. However, the court clearly ruled in favour of central ministries from 2003 to 2014, and it can be observed that from 2004 to 2010 the central state won 100% of its claims. Third, the MAP-LEXTER data set puts to the fore the relevance of some policy areas of contention for the autonomous communities, such as agriculture, the economy or industry. Actually, the conflicts dealing with the division of fiscal incomes from gambling or the management of rivers are frequent. As previously stated, shared competences such as ‘agriculture, food and environment’or ‘economy and competitiveness’cause a higher number of conflicts than ‘defence’and ‘foreign affairs and cooperation’which are entirely controlled by the central government. As stressed by an academic expert interviewed in Madrid in October 2015: ‘the fuzzy sharing of competences established by articles 148 and 149 in the 1978 Constitution favours this kind of opposition’(Figure 2). Table 1. Profile of intergovernmental litigations, 1980–2014. N% Types Recursos 840 51.5 Conflictos 784 48.5 Total 1624 100 Plaintiffs a Central state 542 33.5 Autonomous communities 1082 66.5 Total 1624 100 Resolutions Accepted or resolved 1051 65 Withdrawn or rejected 573 35 Total 1624 100 Litigations b Won by the central state (out of the total state litigations) 231 71.5 Filed by the central state and resolved by the court 323 100 Won by autonomous communities (out of the total state litigations) 430 59 Filed by autonomous communities and resolved by the court 728 100 Total of won litigations (state plus autonomous communities) 661 62.9 Total filed litigations and resolved by the court 1051 100 Notes: a This item comprises the main plaintiff leading a complaint. b This item comprises the whole court’s decisions in which central and regional government are involved as single or joint plaintiffs. Sources: MINHAP (2015) and authors’own elaboration. Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies 5 TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE Fourth, the data show that intergovernmental conflicts followed a cyclical dynamic between 1980 and 2014. Obviously, those cycles of contention are difficult to synthesize because of the various issues tackled by the Constitutional Court. Nevertheless, certain trends can be observed (Aragón Reyes, 2006). According to one of the interviewed justices (Barcelona, November 2015): ‘the first period (1980–91) corresponds to the launching of the state of autonomies. Regional governments had to find their place in this brand new territorial model. This caused several conflicts’. Later: ‘The adoption of the Second Autonomous Pacts in 1992 softened the situation temporarily, but the alternation of majorities produced new conflicts of competences during the second part because of the renegotiation of autonomous statutes (1992–2008).’Finally: ‘the budgetary cuts and the absolute majority of Conservatives left no choice to the regional governments who decided to defend their self-competences before the Constitutional Court’(Figure 3). Last, the MAP-LEXTER data set reveals that the levels of intergovernmental contention differed greatly from one region to the other. At the top of the ranking, Catalonia accumulates 33.2% Figure 1. Evolution of won litigations (%), 1980–2014. Source: MINHAP (2015). Figure 2. Ranking of intergovernmental conflicts by policy sectors, 1980–2014. Source: MINHAP (2015). 6Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy et al. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE of all litigations, followed by a group of front runners constituted by the Basque Country (16.9%), Galicia (7.9%) and Andalusia (7.7%). 6 The rest of the regions represent between 0.8% and 5.4% of the total challenges. To put it another way, the autonomous communities ruled by article 151 (i.e., those that benefitted from an advanced statute of autonomy before the others) are more conflictive than the rest (Table 2). Figure 3. Evolution of intergovernmental conflicts, 1980–2014. Source: MINHAP (2015). Table 2. Ranking of intergovernmental conflicts by regions, 1980–2014. Total number of conflicts Percentage of conflicts of the total Annual average Catalonia 539 33.2 15.9 Basque Country 275 16.9 8.1 Galicia 129 7.9 3.8 Andalusia 125 7.7 3.7 Canary Islands 88 5.4 2.6 Aragon 70 4.3 2.1 Navarre 57 3.5 1.7 Castilla-La Mancha 50 3.1 1.5 Balears 49 3 1.4 Valencia 47 2.9 1.4 Extremadura 45 2.8 1.3 Asturias 35 2.2 1 Madrid 31 1.9 0.9 Cantabria 30 1.8 0.9 Castille and Leon 27 1.7 0.8 Rioja 14 0.9 0.4 Murcia 13 0.8 0.4 Total 1624 100 47.8 Source: MINHAP (2015). Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies 7 TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE Shaping territorial issues through the constitutional review Beyond the quantitative perspective, the Spanish territorial system has been profoundly shaped by the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. In 1978, the complex process of the adoption of the Constitution allowed a text to be produced with solid statements (e.g., articles about political and civil liberties) along with vague principles (e.g., those dealing with the federal organization of the state). Consequently, the court has been frequently asked to clarify some aspects of the Constitution. Though it is impossible to summarize the whole constitutional jurisprudence in territorial politics, it is important to stress the main areas of contention that have caught the attention of justices (Tribunal Constitucional, 2016). First, the court made an effort to clarify the Spanish legal order with respect to regional legislation. Indeed, it affirmed that regional autonomy and sovereignty were two different concepts (ruling 4/1981). It also proclaimed the unity of the legal order (ruling 4/1982) and that regional autonomy was political, not administrative (ruling 25/1985). Therefore, Spanish autonomous communities’historical rights were guaranteed within the framework of the 1978 Constitution (ruling 76/1988). By the same token, the court insisted on the constitutional exigence of solidarity and loyalty between territorial actors (ruling 64/1990) (Aragón Reyes, 2006). Second, the prevalence of state legislation was then counterbalanced by the fundamental ruling on the Ley Orgánica de Armonización del Proceso Autonómico (LOAPA, or Organic Law for Harmonizing the Autonomous Process). In 1981, the Union of the Democratic Centre, along with the Socialist Party, signed the first pact of autonomy and aimed to re-equilibrate the competences between Spanish regions. That decision was contested by the Basque and Catalan governments, who defended their right to establish their own regional legal orders. Through ruling 76/1983, the constitutional justices finally forbade the central legislative from modifying the sharing of power established by the Constitution and the regional statutes of autonomy (since both constitute the so-called ‘bloc of constitutionality’) through a simple law. By doing so, this ruling preserved the distinction between constituted and constituent powers and guaranteed autonomy to the regions (reaffirmed by ruling 137/1986) (Fernández Farreres, 2005). Third, the sharing of policy areas between central and regional administrations has been more complicated to define because of the vague division established by the Constitution. According to the court, the central state does not have a monopoly on shared competences; it has, rather, the role of policy-framer (ruling 173/1998). More than a strict relationship of prevalence, state institutions are supposed to collaborate with autonomous communities in order to ensure the good operation of public services (ruling 81/1997). One of the last developments in this field has been the reactivation of the debate about the legitimacy of the central government imposing European regulations concerning budget stability on autonomous communities after the 2008 financial crisis. Though the court recognized the autonomy of regions in their own areas of competence vis-à-vis the European legislation (ruling 252/1988), it also gave the power to the central government to check the compliance of those norms (ruling 252/1988). This statement had been put forth previously in 2001 (ruling 62/2001) to guarantee the budgetary equilibrium of public accounts and had been reaffirmed in 2011 (ruling 134/2011) (de la Quadra-Salcedo Janini, 2013). The Catalan bone of contention One of the most famous aspects of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has been the set of decisions dealing with the right to self-determination of minorities. Despite the Catalan case that has recently occupied the attention of the media, the first antecedent was the Ibarretxe Plan (Propuesta de Estatuto Político de la Comunidad de Euskadi). In 2003, the Basque Parliament adopted a bill in order to convert the Basque Country into an associated state of Spain. After a series of harsh discussions with the Constitutional Court, the Basque regional law 9/2008 was 8Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy et al. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE consideration, this paper analyzed the two sides of the nexus between constitutional justice and the state of autonomies. As stated in the introduction, it was hypothesized that the judicialization and politicization dynamics –present in all federations’supreme courts –went so far in Spain that they led to the blockage of the Constitutional Court. On the one hand, this investigation demonstrated that the vague principles defined by the 1978 Constitution needed to be redefined by the justices. This is why the Constitutional Court profoundly shaped the contours of the devolution process in Spain through a dynamic of ‘judicialization’of territorial politics. The analysis of the volume of litigations handled by the constitutional justices shows the relevance of this institution in managing regional conflicts since its inception. The study particularly emphasized the pivotal role of the court in managing the tensions between Catalonia and the central government in the field of shared competences between central and regional executives (such as agriculture, economy or tourism). The examination of the judicial review of the court then put to the fore its role in structuring the development of the state of autonomies (through the LOAPA case and the statute of Catalonia ruling, for instance). On the other hand, this research aimed to investigate the other side of the coin, that is, the series of pressures exerted by territorial actors on the Constitutional Court. Of course, the politicization of constitutional justice is not a specifically Spanish phenomenon. However, in Spain, this dynamic led to the quasi-paralysis of the Constitutional Court from 2008 to 2012. This institutional crisis had to do with the judgement handed down concerning the reform of the Catalan statute (2006–10). The verdict of the court was going to influence deeply the future development of the state of autonomies, and political parties did their best to break the tie between the conservative and progressive constitutional judges. During that period, the PP and the PSOE (along with Catalan parties) tried to delay the appointment procedure of justices in the Senate and the Congress. Additionally, political parties started to challenge the impartiality of constitutional justices through the so-called ‘war of recusations’. Therefore, how does one define the role played by the court in territorial politics? Since the 1990s, many scholars have sought to understand the evolution of constitutional justice within a single theoretical framework. One of the dominant schools of thought since the 1990s –the ‘principal-agent’approach of delegation –defined non-majoritarian institutions (such as international organizations or national regulatory agencies) as actors exercising a public authority without having been elected by the people (Epstein & O’Halloran, 1999). This means those ‘agents’realize their functions under the indirect orders of their ‘principals’. Nevertheless, in accordance with Stone Sweet (2002), we assume that the case of the Spanish Constitutional Court is slightly different, sincetheprincipleofseparationofpowerstheoreticallyguarantees theindependenceofthejudiciary vis-à-vis the executive and legislative branches. Drawing on the work of Majone (2001), Stone Sweet (2002, p. 77) prefers to describe this role as: ‘[a] model of trusteeship in which “relational contracting”and “imperfect commitment”lead political rulers to delegate broad “fiduciary”powers to a particular kind of agent –a trustee –and then to guarantee that trustee’s independence’. To conclude, the study of the role of the Tribunal Constitucional in territorial politics –now understood as a trustee –is of great interest for understanding the contemporary dynamics of the Spanish state of autonomies. As shown previously, the court’s decisions do not completely depend on party preferences and its politicization has more to do with external forces than with the aim of its members. As demonstrated by the running battles concerning the statute of Catalonia, the Tribunal Constitucional has been used by political forces as a way to transform political issues into judicial issues (and delaying or vetoing the decisions of the opposition) (De Miguel Barcena, 2012). The Constitutional Court aspires (or should aspire) to remain a judicial arbiter, but political actors constantly force it to take sides. This evolution demonstrates –once again –the need to reform the mechanisms of intergovernmental relations in Spain in order to provide alternative political arenas of negotiation to political forces. Between justice and politics: the role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the state of autonomies 15 TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Public Administration, Jesús Ramos Prieto, César Colino, Salvador Parrado, Sandra León, José Álvarez Junco, Lourdes Nieto, Robert Agranoff, Joan Subirats, Jaume López, Eliseo Aja, Luis Moreno, Xavier Arbós and Ferrán Martínez i Coma for their support and helpful comments. DISCLOSURE STATEMENT No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. FUNDING This work was supported by the BBVA Foundation (Ayudas 2014 a Investigadores, Innovadores y Creadores) and Pablo de Olavide University (Ayudas del Plan Propio a Líneas Emergentes 2014) as part of the project ‘ITT-Spain, indicador de tensiones territoriales (1978–2014)’. NOTES 1. A Tribunal de Garantías Constitucionales (Court for Constitutional Guarantees) was created in September 1933 under the Second Republic (Bassols Coma, 2010). 2. This type of action was re-established in 2015, although only with regard to Statutes of Autonomy or Territory Acts and no longer with regard to Organic Laws. 3. The political role of the Constitutional Court became particularly evident when the former president of the court, Francisco Tomás y Valiente, was murdered by the Basque terrorist group ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Country and Freedom) on 14 February 1996. 4. MAP-LEXTER is produced by the MINHAP, the Constitutional Court and the Boletín Oficial del Estado (the equivalent of the British Hansard). 5. There are two basic judicial proceedings for centre–periphery litigations in Spain: the recursos de inconstitucionalidad (complaints of unconstitutionality) and the conflictos de competencias (conflicts of competences). The former occurs when a regional or central administration challenges a law because it believes that the act is not consistent with the principles of the Constitution. The latter happens when regional and central administrations contest the sharing of power in a given policy area. Theoretically, regional and central executives can be involved in other types of litigation, such as the infrequent negative conflicts of competences (conflictos negativos de competencias) or the prior review of constitutionality (control previo de constitucionalidad) that ended in 1985 (Fernández Farreres, 2005). 6. A former Basque senator interviewed in Seville (February 2016) added that the Basque executive stopped challenging all the regulations adopted by central government in 1991: ‘we understood that the Constitutional Court was a simple third chamber controlled by the PP and the PSOE. This is why we decided to adopt a more selective judicial strategy’. 7. With the exceptions of the Basque and Catalan statutes, the wave of reform of regional statutes in 2000 did not provoke any crises in Aragon, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Balears, Murcia, Madrid, Estremadura and Navarre. Such statutory reforms were necessary to adapt the legal frameworks of these regions after 25 years of decentralization (Casanas Adam, 2017). 8. In 2004, Premier Aznar decided to wait until after the general elections to appoint new conservative judges. Nevertheless, the PSOE finally won the elections and reduced the gap between conservative and progressive justices by appointing two new progressive members. 9. Actually, certain previous events had marked the increasing politicization of the Constitutional Court. For instance, in 1998, the Senate took nine months to reach agreement on appointing its candidates to the court. As another example, in 2003, the president of the court, Manuel Jiménez de Parga, surprised the Spanish political 16 Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy et al. TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE milieu with a statement denying the existence of ‘historical nationalities’(namely, the Basque and Catalan communities). This discourse contrasted with the traditional discretion of the previous presidents of the court. To a certain extent, this evolution has been analyzed as a side effect of the progressive polarization of the Spanish political system (Gunther & Montero, 2012). 10. The case of López is a good illustration of the interaction between justice and politics. Between 2007 and 2013, this judge was repeatedly proposed by the PP as a candidate for the Constitutional Court. In 2013, the Conservative government finally appointed López, but the new court judge remained under fire from the other political parties, who criticized his participation in some 50 events organized by the PP’s Fundación para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales. 11. Interestingly, the Gabinet d’Estudis Socials i Opinió Pública (GESOP) demonstrated in 2010 that 63.8% of Spanish citizens considered the tribunal was not an independent institution vis-à-vis political parties. In Catalonia, this percentage arose to 70% (GESOP, 2010). ORCID Jean-Baptiste Harguindéguy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1151-3007 REFERENCES Agranoff, R., & Ramos Gallarin, J. A. (1997). Toward federal democracy in Spain: An examination of intergovernmental relations. Publius: Journal of Federalism,27(4), 1–38. Aguado Renedo, C. (2011). Referéndum autonómico y jurisprudencia constitucional. Teoría y Realidad Constitucional,28, 541–554. Aja, E. (1989). 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