Dra. Teresa Freixes
Teresa Freixes, Jean Monnet professor ad personam, president of the international organisation Citizens pro Europe, vice-president of the civic platform Catalan Civil Society, and full member and vice-president of the Governing Board of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (RAED), reflects on current Spanish and international politics in the articles “Catalans à la Carte”, “Revisiting the Motion of No Confidence”, “Taking Stock”, “Budgets Are No Trivial Matter”, “The Lion’s Roars in Catalonia” and “Florentine Politics”, published on the specialist portal Artículo 14 and in the digital newspaper The Objective between 22 May and 14 June.
In “Catalans à la Carte”, the distinguished jurist enters the debate over Catalan identity that has emerged within pro-independence politics. “In this land, so prone to fantasies which, although fortunately they have not yet acquired formal recognition, nevertheless penetrate the collective imagination of those who dream of their own state and await the opportune moment to achieve it after the fiasco of the ‘procés’, the idea is once again taking root that it is necessary to determine who is truly Catalan, so that only the ‘pure-blooded’ may have the power to decide when called upon to do so,” she begins.
In “Revisiting the Motion of No Confidence”, the vice-president of the Royal Academy examines the institution of the motion of no confidence in Spain and how it has been used in the country’s democracy. “The Constitution adopted the German model of a constructive vote of no confidence. It is called constructive because it is not enough merely to table and vote on it, as happens, for example, in Italy or the United Kingdom; rather, when it is submitted, the application must include the name of an alternative candidate for the presidency of the Government. If the chamber approves it by an absolute majority, the proposed candidate is directly appointed prime minister by the King. As can easily be imagined, it is more difficult to table a constructive vote of no confidence—that is, one that includes a candidate to lead the new Government—than an ordinary vote of no confidence without an alternative candidate. In France and Italy, motions of no confidence are numerous. In Germany they are extremely rare, and in Spain, of the six motions tabled, only one succeeded, against Mariano Rajoy, leading to the formation of the coalition Government with Unidas Podemos, headed by Pedro Sánchez and supported in Parliament by the motley group that some called Frankenstein,” she summarises.
In “Taking Stock”, Freixes discusses the recent regional elections in Andalusia and the majorities required to form a government at a time of acute political polarisation. “Since it seems that here in Spain we are incapable of returning to the path of constitutional consensus that should never have been abandoned, particularly in times as polarised and turbulent as the present, both domestically and internationally, it would at least be possible to begin a path of political cooperation that could gradually unblock the situation created by populism and radicalisation into opposing blocs. We will neither regenerate our institutions nor recover our international standing if we continue along the present course. A good opportunity to begin building a future with stronger democratic indicators would be to reflect carefully on the results in Andalusia, allowing that reflection to help us recover Politics—with a capital P—as envisaged by our constitutional model,” she states.
The academic devotes “Budgets Are No Trivial Matter” to analysing the deadlock facing the Government, arguing that the failure to submit a budget is “manifestly unconstitutional”, as is treating the previous budget as automatically extended without satisfying the relevant constitutional requirements. “The regulation clearly establishes two important constitutional mandates. The first is that the Government is required to submit the draft budget to Congress no later than three months before the previous budget expires. The second is that, for the previous financial year’s budget to be deemed extended, the bill submitted by the Government must first have been rejected. An extension therefore requires the constitutionally established procedures of submission, scrutiny, amendment and approval to have failed; in other words, that the draft budget, after completing its parliamentary passage, has not been approved. Failing to submit it is manifestly unconstitutional, as is treating it as extended without fulfilling the corresponding constitutional requirements,” she argues.
In “The Lion’s Roars in Catalonia”, the president of Citizens pro Europe celebrates the success of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Catalonia. “The truth is that, without theatrics but with unquestionable leadership, the Lion has roared in Catalonia above localisms, languages, social classes, political tendencies and even ideologies. Quite naturally, as most Catalans do, he used Spanish and Catalan interchangeably in his public addresses. Without hesitation, he blessed children, shook hands and shared experiences with representatives of social support organisations, religious communities, prisoners and victims of various kinds. Those who thought Catalonia would boycott the visit were entirely mistaken,” she states.
Finally, in “Florentine Politics”, Freixes warns against the scorched-earth policies and anything-goes attitude that, in her view, are taking hold in Spanish politics, marked by partisan interests and contempt for institutions. “If we continue along this path, setting aside the bodies institutionally regulated as instruments of coordination and cooperation within the decentralised State—bilateral conferences, sectoral conferences, conferences of regional presidents, the Council for Fiscal and Financial Policy and so on—which are the basic instruments of a federal-type structure, and replace them, in the Florentine manner, with gatherings of cronies in Waterloo, Switzerland or heaven knows where, we will have no choice but to place Spain among what Karl Loewenstein called countries with a semantic constitution: those whose constitutional framework does not correspond to institutional reality,” she warns.
