It is obvious to everyone that we live in a moment of political change with broad horizons in which new spaces for citizens and institutions are beginning to be disputed.The process is irreversible and some are already trying, successfully, to talk about a second transition.
In this context, it seems clear that one of the most intense fractures is the one that has to do with the territorial model. Clear examples of this are the aspirations of Catalonia to be able to freely construct a normative document that governs its life as a community, and ultimately, the ability to discern without restrictions its future as a people. And also another that is closer to us, is the imperative need of the Canary Islands to assume sufficient powers to decide its energy, social model, and thus exercise sovereignty, against a Government entrenched in a Constitution that, far from being a guarantor of rights and freedoms, serves the interests of a minority opposed to social progress.
Thus, political parties are beginning, for the most part, to take the territorial model as an essential point of political debate, and as an example we have an open electoral process within the PSOE, in which the three candidates repeat ad nauseam and converge on the need to move towards federalism. Concluding therefore, that one of the most solid legs that support the table of the Constitution, such as the PSOE, begins to limp, and the Parliament (with the majority exception of the PP) and social movements are in line with transforming and modifying the fit of the different territories in the State (if this fit could occur).
In this sense, faced with a similar process, the Canary Islands have already been relegated to a secondary level that I would almost describe as ridiculous, and fears that the same situation will be repeated seem to have a more than justified presence.
It was the early years of the eighties, with the Spanish Constitution fresh out of the oven, when the so-called historical nationalities of the Basque Country and Catalonia first, and Galicia later, formed their Autonomy, doing so through the so-called fast track, concerning art. 151 of the Constitution and whose mechanism allowed to acquire the greatest number of powers in the shortest possible time, as well as the authorization to promote a hypothetical reform process. This route was reserved exclusively for those communities that in the past had voted for some draft Statute of Autonomy and at the time of the promulgation of the Constitution had pre-autonomous regimes.
In relation to this, and remembering, we must say that in our Archipelago on July 6, 1936, an Assembly was held at the Employers' Federation of Merchants, which was attended by the presidents of the Provincial Commonwealths of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. At this assembly it was agreed that the two Commonwealths would present the Statute in mid-August and that, after a final meeting, it would be sent to the municipalities of the Islands for study and approval. However, the coup d'état of that same month truncated its final approval.
Despite this, and against all odds, and while territories such as Andalusia accessed through the route of art. 151 without self-government, nor any statute prior to the coup, the Canary Islands were taken off the map of nationalities, ignoring the historical reality of our land and an incipient need for political and social change, in which autonomy and independence vertebrated the ideals of large population sectors.
Therefore, our archipelago, with the connivance and complicity of interlocutors and spokespersons created ad hoc without popular roots, had to resort to the dishonorable slow track of article 143, together with Autonomous Communities, so far from our political-social situation, such as Murcia, La Rioja or Castilla-La Mancha, in what was a fundamental piece, and at the same time the most shameful of the already so renowned colonial pact.
Now, in the 21st century, the new transition that is coming seems to obey different voices, ranging from symmetrical, asymmetrical federalism, to deepening autonomies or ratifying the right to decide. In any case, I hope that we do not stumble again with the stone that is thinking of ourselves as less than we are or demanding less than what belongs to us. There is no other option than to be vigilant, citizens and institutions, to place our territorial ambitions on a level appropriate to our sovereign interests, and that are so depleted, precisely as a result of the current territorial model. Knowing that many of those who govern us today are precisely those who sold us in the past, the involvement in the struggle of Canarian society to improve the living conditions in this land must be the main engine that guides this company.
* Borja Rubio is a jurist and political scientist
