Spain's Federalism Problem

After enduring almost half a decade of non-stop recession, Catalonian President Artur Mas and his incumbent Convergence and Union Party have had enough with Madrid. Failure to tackle debt and restore growth at the center has led Mr. Mas and his regional majority to pursue outright independence. But achieving independence won't be easy, and Mr. Mas will have to get permission from the national government just to hold a referendum on the issue. Even if he gets the okay, the fight for independence will still be far from over, and the regional leader will have to convince a large number of skeptics that his plans will prove to be a better alternative than anything Madrid has to offer.

Catalonians have taken to the streets in droves to show their support for independence

But regardless of what happens at the polls, will secession even serve Catalonia's interests? Sure, leaving Spain may rid the region of an economic deadweight that has slowed all growth, but secession could spell trouble when it comes to foreign trade as the new country would have to sign multitudes of bilateral and multilateral agreements just to maintain its current level of commerce. Furthermore, once free of Spanish clutches, the region will lose its Eurozone membership, which could spell trouble on a whole host of economic fronts. Public debt payments could be stalled and financial transactions could grind to a halt as well.

So what then is the solution to this grand dilemma? If staying part of Spain endangers Catalonia even further, what should the region's leaders do when it comes to the unknown waters of independence?

Well, while no solution is perfect, there are better, more sound alternatives to President Mas's heavy handed separatism. One of those alternatives would be to demand more authority from the central government. While Spain is certainly a federal country, its brand of federalism puts a premium on central authority. The post-Franco constitution explicitly states that all regional authority stems from the national government. Concentrating so much power at the center means that for any regional government to gain any level of authority, it must lobby the national government to devolve more power to the peripheries. Even this devolution isn't constitutionally guaranteed, however, and is only maintained by weak majority-passed statutes. 

Furthermore, the very fact that Spain has taken this statute-led approach to federalism has created an asymmetry of subnational power across the regions. While some regions like the Basque country, and more importantly, Catalonia have broader powers, others, like Andalusia have bypassed efforts at devolution. Asymmetry tends to be a good approach when it comes to multinational countries like Spain because it ensures that minority-majority areas have more local sway than would otherwise be allotted under an entirely equal, symmetric system like the United States. These multinational countries use asymmetry to "hold together" their highly diverse hinterlands from sectional conflict and ensure that a weak center maintains some level of unity.

The only problem with Spain is that it is not a "holding together" country. Rather, its various regions "came together" like the American colonies and ceded their regional authority to a stronger center in order to overcome an insurmountable challenge. In the American case, that insurmountable challenge was the British Empire. For Spain, it was the Muslim Moors. But unlike America, Spain never had the same fear for central authority that enveloped the British Atlantic world during the 18th Century. This meant that the centrifugal forces of regionalism had next to no steam and stood no match against nationalist unifiers like Isabel and Ferdinand. The Counter Reformation and subsequent Inquisition only fueled unification even further so that by the end of the 16th Century, Spanish absolutism had reached its pinnacle.

Four centuries of economic development and industrialization would eventually take their toll on absolute central authority, and regionalists would cloak their sectionalist agendas behind a mask of democratization. Still, the stage had already been set, and Spain and its regions were destined for a path dependent future set about by their dictatorial past. The rise of Francisco Franco would only confirm these fears and would stall any centrifugal forces from making any ground.

With a tumultuous, absolutist history like this, it comes to no surprise that Spain's 1978 constitution, even with its seemingly federalist concessions, continued to concentrate power in the center. Fast forward three and a half decades later and the consequences of a path dependent future are ever more clear: a discontented Catalonia wants to secede from its Spanish mother government because it believes that the central government will fail on all accounts to remedy the recession and remedy Spain's federalist flaws. In the eyes of President Mas, both problems are intrinsically connected and fundamentally unsolvable under the current state of affairs.

But when it comes to Spain's federalist flaws, Mr. Mas is simply wrong. Spain may be on a path dependent course that has stifled regionalism, but the country can become conscious of its own flaws and attempt to correct them. This approach is precisely what Mr. Mas and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy must take in order to preserve their fragile union.

Still, empowering the regions is no simple task and will require both leaders to work together to forge consensus. One area they could begin is with Spain's upper legislative chamber, the Senate, which badly needs reforms to revitalize its increasingly irrelevant role as a political body. Unlike its American equivalent, the Spanish Senate is largely a revisionary chamber that lacks many formal legislative powers of any kind. While most of its members are directly elected by the people, a large number are also appointed by each of the regional governments, who often times put in place legislators who share their very same regional sympathies. This makes the Senate the more "territorial" of the two legislative chambers in Spain; still, without any real authority of any kind, the Senate's territorial voices often fall on deaf ears and fail to accomplish much of anything.

Thus, it only makes sense to empower the upper chamber and give it new authority to do more than just review and rubberstamp decisions of the lower chamber, the Congress of Deputies. Giving the Senate power to initiate legislation related to the regions would be a good start, but other, farther reaching changes may also be necessary to bring an end to regional strife. Sure, reforms like these might stifle legislative progress and lead to national gridlock, but they will ensure that regionalism actually has a voice at the national level. 

Ensuring that the upper chamber is entirely appointed by regional governments will also be key as well. Losing electoral accountability may generate popular backlash in the short term, but it will give regional parties an even greater voice in Madrid and will make the entire chamber far more accountable to regional interests.

Still, success won't simply come by tampering with the Senate. More power must be devolved to the regions, even if nationwide policymaking is hurt in the process. While far reaching authority over health and education is already in the hands of virtually every regional government around the country, power over taxation still remains at the center in Madrid. Changing revenue sharing agreements might remedy some of these problems, but strict constitutional changes allotting broad regional authority to tax income and other revenue-generating areas of the economy are a must if Spain is to stay unified.

But as it is now, Spain has reached a political crossroads. More than half a millennia ago, the country came together to defeat the insurgent Moors who had occupied their territory for centuries. Now, the beleaguered nation must hold itself together by ceding power to its subnational units. Only time will tell if it's able to do so.