Understanding Democracy in the Constitutional Debates of 1931 and 1977–1978

This chapter appraises the two models of state that each constitutional debate in Spain’s twentieth century put into practice. The integral state of 1931 and the autonomist state of 1978 were designed in connection to scholarly disagreements about the advantages and flaws of centralism and federalism. Each of these designs was formulated as an alternative to the full decentralization of state competences. Concepts such as ‘competences’, ‘faculties’, and ‘self-rule’ were used during the constitutional sessions of both constitutional debates. The Constitution of 1931 delimited the competences that were transferred to regions, whereas the Constitution of 1978 left broad margins for state decentralization, unleashing a process of growing asymmetry between Spanish regions over time.