2023-08-14 22:22:04
In reality, anyone can be Prime Minister. As much as it seems a “democratic anomaly” to leaders of the PP, like the vice-secretary of Organization, Miguel Tellado, for example. However, more needs to be achieved if it is what noes in the Congress of Deputies. Moreover, it is not even necessary to be a deputy, as demonstrated by the motion of no confidence in June 2018, which brought Pedro Sánchez to La Moncloa when his party had 85 seats.
At that time, Mariano Rajoy and the PP had 137 seats, exactly the same, 137, that Alberto Núñez Feijóo now has – compared to the 121 of the PSOE. And if one, Rajoy, was ousted by a motion of no confidence, the other, Núñez Feijóo, is today unable to govern due to lack of support in the Chamber and is dedicated to sowing doubts about the legitimacy of an investiture achieved by a less voted list than yours even though it has more support in Congress: that is, the same thing that the PP has done after 28M in autonomous communities such as Extremadura or the Canary Islands, or what Isabel Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez Almeida did in their day, for example .
On July 13, 1978, the Congress of Deputies was debating an amendment of Heribert Barrera (ERC) to the constitutional paper that was widely rejected, As the journalist José Luis Sastre recently recalled in the Chain BE. “The opinion says that it is up to the king to propose the candidate for president of the Government,” explained the Republican deputy in the Congress rostrum: “My amendment proposes that this be the responsibility of the president of Congress, after consulting not only with the representatives of the groups politicians, but also with the president of the Senate”.
Those debates in July involved the final vote on the 169 articles of the Constitution in plenary, of a text prepared by the 38 deputies and a deputy from the constitutional commission of Congress. Later, on December 6 of that 1978, the Spanish approved the Magna Carta in a referendum.
Barrera wanted to grant the power to propose a candidate for the presidency of the Lower House, a formula that was later applied to the autonomous governments and that sought to separate it from the monarchy: “Yesterday morning [12 de julio de 1978] Mr. Fraga, when defending the creation of a Crown Council, recognized that leaving the king alone, without any assistance, this power to propose candidates for the presidency of the Government, was giving him a tremendous responsibility. Giving this power to the king is almost forcing him to intervene in political struggles, or at least to involve him in these struggles, and surely forcing him to choose people, with all the very serious drawbacks that this can have in a country like ours.
The Catalan deputy continued: “My amendment will indisputably be rejected, but all those who vote against it out of conviction or discipline should not later claim that we have a Swedish-style Monarchy. We will have a Spanish Monarchy, for better or for worse for the Spaniards”.
What Barrera was pursuing was to escape the borboneo so usual in Spain in the 19th century and part of the 20th century… But in the debate it was not questioned in any way that the democratic body to appoint the president of the Government was Congress: it was limited to questioning who had to propose it to Congress.
On behalf of the government group, the UCD, Miguel Herrero y Rodríguez de Miñón intervened, who used the argument that the word rests ultimately with the 350 deputies of Congress: “In the text of the paper [constitucional] The formula is no less democratic than the one proposed by Mr. Barrera, since it simply consists of the King, after consulting with democratic leaders, proposing to the Chamber a candidate who is to receive the investiture of the same, and Without said investiture there can be no definitive appointment as President of the Government”.
“On the other hand,” said the UCD deputy, “this proposal is made under the endorsement of the president of Congress, and although it is true that this endorsement is legal and not expedient, since the competence of presenting the candidate corresponds to the King, even if he does it through the President of the Chamber, that is, I don’t know whether or not to use the filter category that Professor Solé Tura added at the time [PSUC-PCE]but in one way or another, it implies the possibility of institutionalizing a consultation system similar to that of the a royal man in Belgium or the Netherlands [el informateur o el formateur que ayudan a informar y formar gobiernos]”.
“I say a possibility”, continued Herrero de MIñón, “because of the literalness of the Constitution, only practice can give a firm criterion of interpretation. What is simply being said is that the king is subject to the endorsement, which in this case is necessarily an endorsement of legality”.
And he added: “In any case, the fact of the existence of an investiture of the Chamber before the appointment [del presidente de Gobierno] gives full democratic endorsement to this usual competition in parliamentary monarchs and for that very reason justify their existence. Because we believe that the royal magistracy, the Crown, is not only a legacy of history, but that it is an institution of high functional utility that, therefore, cannot be deprived of what is essence and core, of its attributions and its raison d’être”.
The day before, July 12, 1978, the deputies debated about the existence or not of a Crown Council to which Barrera alluded to reinforce his position that the king should not have the power to propose a candidate for president of the Government. Each one from his position, Barrera from Catalan republicanism, and Manuel Fraga, from post-Franco conservatism, expressed doubts.
The doubts of the Popular Alliance leader took the form of an amendment for the constitutionalization of a royal clique, which was also rejected. “Let’s not forget that the Constitution attributes important powers to the king,” said the later founder of the PP, “such as the proposal for a candidate for the presidency of the Government, the dissolution of the Cortes, in which, in addition to that advice that the Constitution foreseen (in the case of the proposal for a candidate for the presidency of the Government, there is an audience with the president of Congress and the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups), it would also be good if he could listen to the corporate opinion of a Crown Council”.
UCD spokesman José Pedro Pérez-Llorca was in charge of responding to Fraga: “Honestly, we believe that trying to bring to this Constitution an institution that, whatever is said, in Spanish constitutional law has only two precedents, the Council of the Kingdom projected in the Constitution of Primo de Rivera, and the Council of the Kingdom of the previous regime, this is not the way in which the interests of the Crown are best served at this time, nor, of course, citing a phrase taken out of context that what it reveals is precisely the will of the monarch that his action be constitutionally framed by the institutions that the country gives itself freely at all times and these institutions will act effectively through the technique of endorsement”.
It happened on July 4, 1978. And it happened almost without pain or glory. The ERC deputy, Heribert Barrera, was the only one who defended republicanism in the Spanish Constitution, without the historical left that so much claimed the Second Republic, the PSOE and the PCE, saying anything or seconding the amendment to the constitutional paper during the parliamentary debates that had to prepare the Constitution for its vote in a referendum, on December 6, 1978.
“Writing [al artículo 1 de la Constitución] What I propose is the following,” Barrera said on July 4: “The Spanish State, made up of a community of peoples, is constituted in a democratic and parliamentary Republic that advocates freedom, justice, equality and respect for political pluralism. The powers of all the organs of the State emanate from the people, in whom sovereignty resides.
Barrera explained: “I just want to remember that my original proposal on this point was a prior referendum. And it was only because I anticipated that it would not be picked up and that, therefore, these Cortes should decide, that I formulated the amendment in question proposing the Republic as an alternative to the proposal that the paper made for a monarchical regime. I knew in advance that my proposal would collect very few votes, but it seemed essential to me to be faithful to my constituents.
Neither socialists nor communists spoke. Only one representative of the government party, UCD, Miguel Herrero and Rodríguez de Miñón, did so: “Mr. Barrera’s proposal consists of opposing Monarchy to Republic, as if both extremes implied opposing democracy to dictatorship.” And he continued: “Mr. Barrera has considered that doctrinal purity required a prior pronouncement by means of a referendum on the issue of the form of State, before these Constituent Courts, in exercise of their sovereignty, decided on that same form of State. Actually, if one looks at the process of change, which has led us from autocracy to nascent democracy, it is difficult to think about the possibility of this option before the change, because the Monarchy has been the engine of change; It has been the Monarchy that, responding to the determined will of the peoples of Spain, has returned national sovereignty to the Spanish people. Therefore, before making the change for the Monarchy –a change with the least possible social and political cost–, before making this change, a pronouncement by means of a referendum would not have had the democratic context that, without a doubt, Mr. Barrera prefers as a framework for political life”.
“Certainly, one cannot choose in the abstract between Monarchy and Republic either”, argued Herrero de Miñón, “because an authoritarian Monarchy is not the same thing, a governing Monarchy that usurps plots of sovereignty from the will of the people, and a democratizing and democratic Monarchy like the one that it has made possible these Constituents and the one that arises configured in the Constitution that we are trying to elaborate; a Monarchy that is not a governing Monarchy, because the King does not govern, that is a parliamentary Monarchy, because the responsible Government governs and the King reigns”.
After the vote, it gave the following result: votes cast, 317; in favor, nine; against, 185; abstentions, 123. Of the nine yeses that the ERC proposal achieved, reported El País, three corresponded to UCD deputies who voted wrongly, and the other six were: Heribert Barrera (ERC), Enrique Tierno Galván (Popular Socialist Party), Emilio Gastón Sanz (Socialist Party of Aragon), Francisco Letamendia (Euzkadiko Ezkerra), Ramon Trias Fargas (CiU) and Joaquín Arana Pelegrí (PDC).
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