Rajoy refuses once again to start working on a Constitutional Reform

Barcelona (ACN).- The governing People’s Party (PP) has once again rejected the creation of a subcommittee within the Spanish Parliament to start debating a Constitutional Reform, in order to handle the deep political crisis and Catalonia-Spain relationship. The Spanish Government and the PP – which holds an absolute majority at the Chamber – have been refusing to initiate a Constitutional Reform on manifold occasions during the last few months. Furthermore, last weekend, Prime Minister Rajoy strongly objected to making “any concession” regarding Catalonia’s demands and, instead, the PP is working on an involution of the political model that would recentralise many powers and increase the Spanish Government’s presence in Catalonia. This Thursday, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) filed the motion to create a parliamentary subcommittee to start working on the Constitutional Reform because the best way to save this text is “by updating it”. The PP’s new parliamentary Spokesperson, José Bermúdez de Castro, replied “this debate is neither timely nor necessary”. Furthermore, he added that, after the PSOE has been talking about such a reform for a year, they still “do not know” what the Socialists are exactly proposing. Finally, the PP was sorry that, “in such a serious issue”, the PSOE had decided to act “unilaterally”, while the PP has been unilaterally blocking any debate about the Constitutional reform and has refused to sit and talk about it.

The PP shuts another door to a negotiated way out of the current political conflict between Catalonia and Spain. In fact, it is the same door it has been closing for the last few months: a reform of the Spanish Constitution. Once again, the Spanish nationalist and conservative PP has rejected it. Taking into account it holds an absolute majority at the Spanish Parliament at least until the next elections – scheduled for November 2015 – such a way does not seem realistic to solve the current situation. Besides, it does not look likely that the PP and even the PSOE would agree to recognise Catalonia’s nationhood status and its right to self-determination in the new text, which is likely to be ‘sine qua non’ conditions for a decisive majority of Catalan citizens to back the reform.

In any case, the PSOE is insisting on this way and this Thursday it has filed a formal petition to launch a parliamentary committee to start debating about the reform and its scope. The PSOE’s Secretary General, Pedro Sánchez, stated that the best way to defend the Constitution is through updating it”. According to the PSOE’s leader, the reform should be carried out to solve “the 3 main crises that Spain has”: “corruption, economic crisis and social crisis”. Sánchez did not even directly mention the Catalan issue as one of the main issues to be reformed. However, later he said that the new Constitution should allow “the recognition of new rights of citizens” and “improving the democratic quality”, as well as “solving the conflict that is related to the territorial conviviality, which particularly affects Catalonia but also the whole of Spain”. The PSOE’s leader, in its main project to solve the current conflict does not seem able to even talk about it in a clear and direct way.