Manuel Azaña warned that in Madrid it was very dangerous to spout nonsense because they took root more than the acacias of the Retiro. And if that was said in the twenties of the last century, when Spanish politics was brimming with culture and knowledge, we can imagine what it will be like today when the illiterate have taken over the public scene, fascinating a mass of falsely literate people who repeat at face value the atrocities that are constantly launched by opinion makers, media figures and wise men of any kind.
To verify this, an example is enough.. It is said with resounding self-confidence that we Spaniards directly elect our rulers at the polls. That the elections give the majority to govern and that, consequently, not respecting the list with the most votes means betraying the popular will and attacking democracy itself. Well no, big mistake, or at least that is not the idea of democracy that informs our Constitution, no matter how much it is the remedy indicated by the Loreg to guarantee the governability of the municipalities when there is no other remedy (art.. 196.3 C)1, that is, when there is no way to forge a majority consensus and it is not possible to resort to the automatic dissolution provided for in art.. And it is not because in our constitutional model democracy is based on consensus and not majority, not even relative. In the Spanish democratic regime, consensus is the rule and not the exception, because the relative majority government, which is used as the last extreme, is by default and only results from the impossibility of reaching a majority consensus (art.99.3 CE ). In a democracy, there is never abandonment of what is public, even if its management is entrusted to representatives, because political action is always something collective. Democracy and its government go far beyond elections, as confirmed by the magnificent book by Achen and Bartles Democracy for Realists (2016).. This also implies that there are different structural models of democracy depending on the different national political cultures, ours being a democracy of consensus, and I repeat it, because this is precisely what threatens to disintegrate in Spain.
In a consensus democracy, elections are a parliamentary photograph destined to reflect the political feeling of society and never —unless there is a majority as absolute as that of 1982 and not even then completely— they generate a direct mandate to govern regardless of the constitutional minority, which is the one that moves within the framework of the Constitution. Elections allow us to know what society thinks and entail a mandate to reach agreements. This is an unavoidable responsibility for the chosen ones, something that is often forgotten in Spain. But to agree does not mean to decide. In the consensus, a new will is agreed and built that integrates all the existing ones that temporarily renounce their belief to integrate into another in which they participate relatively.
On the contrary, to decide is to impose the criterion that arises from the arithmetic sum of votes. In our democracy, consensus is reached when organic laws are approved (art.. 81.2 CE), magistrates of the Constitutional Court are elected (art.. 159.1 CE) or members of the Council of the Judiciary (aart. 122.3 CE) and in general on all those occasions when something transcendental is discussed. In our democracy, you cannot govern without agreeing to a greater or lesser degree with the parties of the constitutional arc, which are those that maintain their loyalty to the Constitution. It is one of the structural characteristics of the Spanish Constitution that forge its democratic identity.
This rule of consensus governed our political life from the Transition to the beginning of the century, incurring —it is true— in an important vice: its formalization and substantial emptying, which determined that with the passage of time the simulation took over from the debate of the content, allowing the logic of power to prevail over the logic of politics. The progressive slide down the path of a simulation reinforced by virtual technique led to the near collapse of our democratic model when an earthquake blew everything up.. The 2008 financial crisis hit the traditional parties, punishing them in direct proportion to their exposure to consensus (starting with Convergence) and gave rise to new extra- or intra-system renewal forces, with which the surviving parties at the national level tried to reach a consensus.. It was not an easy task because characters like Rivera showed that they had not understood anything. But the most serious thing occurred when, following the precedent set by President Zapatero in the frustrated reform of the Catalan statute, the Socialist Party built its consensus outside the constitutional framework, while the popular ones proved incapable of breaking that dynamic by offering consensus in the communities autonomous that dominated.
The result was a democratic anomy: the governmental consensus was obtained outside the constitutional arch, that is, with the supporters of destroying the Constitution and replacing its definitions.. A supine exercise in democratic ignorance that also ideologically contaminated a PSOE that, more than a political project, was already a power structure.. This unconstitutional contamination and this tyranny of a minority that decides and imposes its (minority) political postulates is precisely what the Spaniards just rejected at the polls in July, mobilized, some, by the fear of independence and, others, by the threat What does Vox represent?. And the question we are facing consists of determining whether after July 23 the two parties with a relative majority are going to continue organizing their consensus outside the constitutional framework or, on the contrary, they will finally understand that they are chosen to reach consensus from the Constitution and with the Constitution, whatever measures are necessary. To do this, they have to do two things: rearm intellectually and determine which are the points that require consensual reforms.. Proceeding otherwise will place our democracy on the path to the abyss, at a time when stability does not come from Europe, but very uncertain mists.
*Eloy Garcia. Professor of Constitutional Law.
1It says 196.1.c. “If none of them obtains said majority, the councilor who heads the list that has obtained the greatest number of popular votes in the corresponding municipality is proclaimed mayor. In the event of a tie, it will be resolved by lottery. Illustrative for our purposes is the last random mention, it is about finding a remedy for ungovernability.