“Horizontal Autonomism” as a source of law. The change of the Spanish State territorial organization by subconstitutional rules.

Antoni Abad i Ninet, SUNY Buffalo

Abstract

We are in the midst of a strong revival of interest of the Autonomous Communities within the Autonomous Spanish State. Recent reforms of the Statutes of Autonomy by some autonomous regions in Spain have revealed new mechanisms and ways of interaction and communication between policy-statutory Autonomous Communities, within the scope of the reforms of the Statute of Autonomy. This interaction is the assumption of a phenomenon called "horizontal autonomism". This concrete phenomenon has not only reopened, with still more force the theoretical and practical debate about the nature of the territorial organization of the Spanish state, but also demonstrates that the notion of Autonomy in Spain is permanently evolving, being "polyphasic" in the measure that it continues to unfold without any pause. To this particular feature may been added the fact that the recent statutory reforms have initiated another evolutive stage of the state model without reforming the Constitution and based in subconstitutional rules, such as the Statute of Autonomy.

As we will see this is possible because the Statutes of Autonomy are part of the "constitutional block". This fact of the Spanish’s state territorial organization evolution without amending the Constitution shows that the Spanish case is unique in the world, within the systems of high political decentralization. This article focuses primarily on two elements of study. First, we will analyze from a constitutional perspective the phenomenon of what we have called "horizontal autonomism" as the basis of the recent reforms of the Statute of Autonomy (subconstitutional rules), mentioning the examples of Catalonia and Andalucía. The second goal is to analyze one of the main consequences and effects of "horizontal autonomism" in relation to the development of the territorial nature of the Spanish state. We will analyze how the autonomous rules are sources of law for other autonomies, and potentially for the state.