Técnica legislativa y distribución de competencias: algunas reflexiones al hilo de la actividad reciente del Tribunal Constitucional

Abstract

One of the most important tasks of the Spanish Constitutional Court is to settle conflicts of competence, regarding how power is distributed within Spain’s particular territorial organisation. Today, it continues to be so despite all the doctrinal acquis built up over more than forty years of the current Constitution. Among other things, and this is what this paper explores by considering some of its most recent rulings, for reasons that are somewhat global: implosion of the system of sources, new forms of
regulation and a strong socio-political polarisation that leads to question with suspicion any possible conflict. All of this in a framework already complex from the outset and susceptible to further obscurity through the loopholes of legislative technique.
These, although in principle are issues outside the control of constitutionality, cannot be separated from the real existence of a problem of competence.