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Dina Mitkees Lamees el Araby

Spain local government

Introduction

Institutions of local government have undergone marked transformations since the Franco era, when they functioned primarily as instruments of the central government. The overhauling of administration at the local level had to wait, however, until a degree of political reform had been achieved at the national level. The first fully democratic local elections following Franco's demise were held in 1979, and limited reforms were introduced at the local level in 1981, but it was not until 1985 that the fundamental reorganization and democratization of local administration was completed with the passage of the Basic Law on Local Government (Ley Reguladora de las Bases de Regimen Local--LRBRL).

the state of the autonomous communities was born, an intermediate model between the regionalist nations (as in Italy or France) and the federal ones (as in the US and Germany). Initially, this autonomous conception was not imposed, but the "provinces with common historic, cultural and economic characteristics, insular territories and provinces with a historic regional status" could decide if they wanted to adopt self-government or not. In fact, the entire nation was constituted according to this model.The result is that today we find a state divided into 17 autonomous communities (plus the two autonomous cities in North Africa: Ceuta and Melilla). These communities are subdivided, also, into provinces, and further subdivided into municipalities, all of them with legal personality, and established powers, in a system configured from a highest to the lowest level in order to attain more closeness to the citizen and their issues.

Tiers of local government in Spain

State

autonomous community

provinces

municipalities

This law outlines the basic institutions at the municipal and the provincial levels, establishes guidelines for the sharing of responsibilities among the different tiers of administration, and lists the services that local authorities are to provide. The responsibilities of municipalities vary in proportion to the size of their populations. Municipal governments share responsibility with the regional government in matters of health and education. Both the central and the regional governments may delegate additional powers to municipalities. Because of the degree of authority that has been devolved to the autonomous communities from the central government, local institutions are politically dependent on these communities; however, they remain to a large extent financially dependent on Madrid

The state Spain is, at its centre, a parliamentary monarchy .the King is the

head of state, and the country’s highest representative among the international community. However, this role is today almost symbolic, as the real centre of the executive power is occupied by the President of the Government (Prime Minister), democratically elected by the lower house of the parliament the General Courts (Cortes Generales), the Chamber of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputados).

The parliament is bicameral, and is composed of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate (Senado). However, the Senate plays a secondary role in the political and legislative process, since it is in the lower house where the more important decisions are adopted. The upper house is, actually, more deliberative chamber, mandated to meditate and to deliberate legislative measures to be adopted.

The Autonomous communityAutonomous Communities describes a set of territories that

do not all share the same characteristics. Some have a more developed level of political decision-making than others.

The Autonomous Communities (Comunidades Autónomas) are similar to the federated states in most federal nations. They have greater autonomy in matters that concern them. They all have their own executive and legislative powers, so they can enact their own laws and design policies reflecting the will of their inhabitants.

Autonomous Communities only can pass laws in those areas which the constitution recognizes as their competence. They have no jurisdiction over other policy matters, such as foreign policy, defence or monetary policy, unless the central government passes to the regions temporary and/or limited authority in such areas. Furthermore, as far as the judiciary is concerned, there exists no decentralization, since it is common to the whole country. The judicial centralisation is designed to ensure that every Spaniard is equal before the law. Today most cases finish in a superior court settled in each Autonomous Community (Comunidad Autónoma), while the most important cases are reviewed by the national Supreme Court.

The Autonomous Communities do not have their own constitutions. Instead, they have a basic law called Autonomous Statute (Estatuto de Autonomía). This law shows that every community has a process which enshrines unity and autonomy. The Autonomous Statutes are negotiated rules between the national parliament and the legislative assemblies of each community but, as important as they are, are subordinated to the constitution.

The political leaders of the Autonomous Community are elected through universal suffrage among all the inhabitants of each region, in a parliamentary system. This means that the voters choose the parties that will be part of the different parliamentary groups of each legislative assembly, and, for their part, these groups choose, according to their majority, the autonomous government..

It is important to note that some Autonomous Communities have higher historic weight than others, since they have their own idiosyncrasies and, in practice, a national identity. For example, this applies to Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country. These three regions have a particular self-governing system, based upon their linguistic and cultural identity.

In extreme cases, the fierce defence of regional nationalism has resulted in demands for independence and led groups to resort to terrorism, as in Basque. However, this is not wide-spread since most citizens feel they can pursue their national and regional identities with equal intensity

The Provinces

With the abolition of royal absolutism and the acceptance of liberal ideas in Spain a new concept of local administration was formed. It gave legal status to local entities in order to organize and administer territories.

Today, Spain is divided into fifty provinces. As a self-governing territory, a province (Provincia) is led by a Provincial Deputation. This is made up of a President and a number of Provincial Deputies proportionate to the number of residents. These deputies are elected by the members of the city councils. The deputation has no legislative authority, but exercises certain executive functions

There are Autonomous Communities, which consist of one single province. Here, for obvious reasons, there is no provincial deputation. This is the case at Navarre, La Rioja, Murcia, the Principality of Asturias, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria and, finally, Madrid, which has a special status since it contains the City of Madrid as the capital of the state. In these communities, the entire administration is entrusted to the autonomous organ.

The islandSpain consists of its continental territory and also two archipelagos: in

the Mediterranean Sea, the Balearic Islands, and in Atlantic Ocean, near the African coastline, the Canary Islands. Both archipelagos are Autonomous Communities, but because of their insular peculiarities the state gave them a power status intermediate between Province and Municipality: the Island (Isla).The Canaries consist of seven principal islands, which are shared between two Provinces. The two main islands, Tenerife and Gran Canaria, share the capital status of the Autonomous Community. This dualism is due to the historic ‘insular fight’, the traditional rivalry between these sister isles. Each one of the seven islands is led by an Inter-Island Council (Cabildo Insular), made up of a varied number of Councillors, elected by the islanders through universal suffrage. The councillors are led by a President.

The Balearic Islands, as mentioned, is a single Province Community. But each one of its isles is also governed by an Insular Council (Consejo Insular), made up of some of the deputies elected to the Balearic parliament. This way, the deputies are, at the same time, councillors.

Both island councils have the executive and administrative functions, which in the rest of Spain belong to the Provincial Deputation

local government

Local government are considered the tier closest to citizens. It is most directly concerned with the daily life of people. Spain is divided into Municipalities (Municipios), with the exception of the Royal Bardenas, in Navarre, a territory declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO

The governance of the municipalities belongs to the City Council. It is a collegiate organ that leads the municipal administration.  The City Council is made up of Councillors, elected by popular vote. The number of councillors may vary according to the number of residents, from five to 25. In the municipal elections, all European Union citizens, regardless of nationality, may vote and stand for office, though of course they must reside in the Municipality (Municipio) concerned.

The City Council in plenary meeting takes the decisions regarding the most important questions that affect the citizenry. It passes the general plans of urban development, and many other regulations, in areas such as taxes, urban policy, etc. 

The president of the City Council is the Mayor, which is elected by and from the councillors. Mayors organize, suspend and lead the sessions and debates of the plenary and of other municipal organs.

They are also the highest representative authority of the municipality and responsible for its government and administration. Nevertheless, if the City Council in plenary is of the view that they are not addressing their functions properly, they can be removed through a "constructive vote of censure": this means that with the vote the meeting must also propose a new candidate, to avoid a power vacuum.

The functions that belong to the City Council are those that the state and the Autonomous Community give to it, generally those that most directly affect the citizen.

Expenditure assigment

In Spain, the distribution of functions was made by the constitution and the statutes of autonomy. They uses a system of double list with a residual clause. Article 148 lists those matters on which power may be adopted by the regional governments in their statutes, but it did not say which functions, legislative and/or executive, they could assume. Article 149 contains the functions which, on the listed matters, are the exclusive competence of the central government. The residual clause allowed the regions to assume functions on those matters not included in any list, but if they were not assumed by them, they were retained by the central government

Both the constitution and the statutes were voluntarily drafted in an ambiguous way because of the need to achieve a consensus. The abuse of the expression "exclusive competence

The division of powers that finally has emerged from the constitution and the statutes assigns the central government policy-making and implementation on a few areas, such as defense, international relations, foreign trade, social security and general economic policy.

In most of the remaining policy subjects powers are shared. The sharing may be of different types.

First, because the central government keeps all the legislation and leaves the regional governments only the execution; for example, penitentiary legislation ,intellectual and industrial property, or weights and measures.

Second, and the most common, because the central government dictates the basic legislation, minimum standards that should be common for the whole country, and the regional governments develop the basic legislation to adapt it to their specific circumstances; examples are education, health care, environment protection, and press, radio and television.

Third, because both levels of government retain legislative and executive functions only on part of the same subject; the public works of regional interest are a competence of the region and those affecting more than one jurisdiction are left to the central government.

Finally, there are a few subjects with concurrent competences, for example, tourism or culture. Redistribution policies remained in the central government

Financing regional governmentIn the Spanish case, solidarity has two aspects. The first is

to equalize the fiscal capacities of the regions to provide a given level of public services with a similar fiscal effort. This aspect is related to the design of the regional financing system. The second is to reduce the differences in regional economic development

The Spanish constitution gives high relevance to this issue and creates an specific tool -the Inter-territorial Compensation Fund (ICF)- with the goal of reducing the differences in income and wealth across regions. The relevant place that the ICF occupies in the constitutional provisions concerning the new territorial organization of the state, along with the confusing regulation that the Organic Law on the Financing of the Autonomous Communities (LOFCA) makes of equalization has led to misunderstandings on these two aspects of solidarity .

Main source of financing 1st taxesIt includes own taxes, which are necessarily to be of minor

importance, since the regional governments cannot levy taxable sources that are already used by the central government, and user fees and charges on public services transferred to the regions. The so-called "ceded" taxes, mainly on property, refer to a set of central government taxes collected by the regions whose revenues were ceded to them to finance partly their spending functions. Until 1996, the power to regulated these taxes remained with the central government. The regional individual income tax was created in 1996 by splitting the tax rates schedule of the income tax in two tranches. One, corresponding to85 per cent of the tax liabilities within each jurisdiction was retained by the central government. The remaining 15 per cent, known as the autonomic tranche, was ceded to the regions with a parallel reduction of the resources they received through the general revenue sharing system.

2nd Grants grants to finance health care, .or grants in

the form of investment agreements to promote certain activities and grants included in the central government budget which are manage by the regions according national legislation. Within the unconditional financing are included the development funds: the ICF and theresources received from the different EU structural funds

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