Antoni Bayona: ʻThe current constitutional framework has room for manoeuvre, it depends on a political willʼ

To describe the current situation, Bayona talked about “parallel universes”. “I work at the Parliament of Catalonia and I think there are representatives from political parties that live in their universe, and others that live in their own too”. About the possibility of a referendum on the independence of the country, he noted that the Constitutional Court established a “limiting and close” doctrine, meaning that there can only be a “referendum predicted by the constitutional reform”. He noted, with international examples, that an independence process is extremely difficult from the juridical perspective. Then, he referred to the options for a reform of the Constitutional and remembered that the Constitutional Court “made it clear that the Constitution can be modified”. However, he highlited that a constitutional reform has its risks as well. He also mentioned potential changes in a federal way on a reform, such as Catalonia having an own constitution (subject to the federal constitution), a competence system in which the central Government could have the competences the constitution states, or the reform in the Senate as a chamber for territorial representation, among others. “Personally, the big problem of the federal key reform is how to solve the game between equity and asymmetry” among the different states of the federation, he noted. In these lines, he mentioned the possibility of a constitutional reform that recognizes a solution for Catalonia.

Regarding the reform of the statute (Estatut), he said that “we have a paving here”, referring to the 31/2010 sentence of the Constitutional Court on the Autonomy Statute, which was qualified as “clear extralimitation” and intended to “remove the statute of the system as an important rule”. According to Bayona, the Constitutional Court was “destroying” the model with which the autonomy statutes would complete the Constitution. He also talked about the “mimetic effect” that would take place in other areas with a statute reform. The territorial organizational system, according to Bayona, should have “asymmetric components, accepted by the Spanish citizens”.

He ended his conference stating that what he sees as an option from the juridical perspective, even if itʼs provisional, is the “return to the past looking at the future”, and showed as instances recovering -with legislative decisions- the content that was cut by the  Constitutional Court 31/2010 sentence, reaching a fiscal agreement including differential traits for Catalonia, or applying the article 150 to transfer more competences to the autonomous communities. He defended that the current constitutional framework has “room for manoeuvre and it depends on a political will”. In this sense, he noted that it is possible to make a non-equalitarian reading of the Constitution. He finished saying we need “faith, trust, on the constitutional arbitrator, the Constitutional Court being flexible when admitting applicative margins for the Constitution”.

After the conference, the vice-rector for Equal Opportunities and Social Action, Maite Vilalta, who chaired the activity, gave way to the debate, which counted on the participation of the lecturers of the University of Barcelona Eliseo Aja, Joan Vintró, Xavier Arbós and Xavier Pons. Eliseo Aja noted “there has been a deterioration in the Constitution: forty years have gone by and everything is damaged”, and highlighted there have been no reforms.  He listed the causes that lead to this damage, such as economic and social ones, corruption, not enough participation from the population, and the own problems in the autonomous state. He also explained how some of the problems of the autonomy system are technical, since the system is technically poor designed in some aspects. Xavier Arbós highlighted that the conflict is political. In this sense, he noted that “law makes no miracles, it works if there is a solid base”. “We are in a new chapter, which is hard to build”, he said, and noted that everyone should say whether they are ready to play, “even if its provisionally, within the constitutional order”. He stated a White Paper would be useful so that autonomous communities could present the balance on how the system has worked.

Xavier Pons commented on international law. He said the concept of self-determination has been applied in colonial domination cases and reminded attendants that international law benefits the principle of territorial integrity of States. He said there are texts of international law which present the democratic principle and self-determination from an internal perspective, within the State. On unilateral secessions, he noted that “international law does not authorize nor prohibits them, they are pre-juridical phenomena” which would only be exceptionally admitted in case of human rights severe violation. “The only dead-end solution we are trying to find is a wide majority, and this can only happen through negotiation”, he concluded. Joan Vintró started his speech showing his support to the UB lecturers who “were arrested, or fined, or are under legal procedures due their participation in any kind of activity linked to the process”. He said that if the specific problems in Catalonia and the Basque Country are not considered “we will find neither the right solutions nor the right framework”. He was critical of the sentence of the Constitutional Court, he said the one from 2010 “broke the statuary agreement” and said that a constitutional reform should consider the possibility of a referendum on the political future of Catalonia”.

There will be three more debates on the Catalan conflict from different perspectives:

• “Llengua i identitat”,  by the lecturer of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics of the UB Carme Junyent. November 22, 2018, at 6.30 p.m. in the Historical Building.

• “El model dʼescola catalana”, conference by professor Joan Mateo, from the Department of Methods of Research and Diagnosis in Education of the UB. December 13, 2018, 6.30 p.m. in the Historical Building.

• “La política: lʼespai de resolució dels conflictes”, conference by the emeritus professor of Political and Administration Sciences of the UAB Josep Maria Vallès. January 17, 2019, Historical Building.  

Each session consists on a conference given by a prestigious academician followed by a roundtable on the presented topic. Debates and interventions will be published in different volumes in a new collection of Editions and Publications of the UB: Debats UB.