The Regional Referendum within its Labyrinth

Abstract

Based on the provisions of Article 149.1.32.ª of the Spanish Constitution, the Statutes of Autonomy of several Autonomous Communities assumed powers regarding of popular consultations; however, the attempts of the Basque Country and Catalonia to hold secession referendums limited their scope. As a consequence of the independence challenge, the Spanish Constitutional Court made a very restrictive interpretation of these titles that extended the State’s power over the entire institution of referendums. This paper analyses the assumptions and arguments of this first interpretation, the subsequent deactivation of the attempts to regulate non-referendum popular consultations as copies of real referendums and the interpretative self-correction made in ruling 137/2015 and, specially, rulings 51/2017 and 90/2017 of the Spanish Constitutional Court: These rulings infer that, within the framework of the state’s regulations for the development of the fundamental right to political participation, the Autonomous Communities can establish and regulate new types of referendum if it is so cumulatively stated by their Statutes of Autonomy and by the Spanish Organic Act on Types of Referendum.