The formation of the territorial debate in Spain has been consolidating since 1978 on the strategy of bilateral negotiation between the Government and some peripheries with enormous political and institutional prominence in the construction of the model of territorial organization and in the governance itself State: the Basque Country and Catalonia. A discussion framework in which both the PSOE and the PP have participated, out of self-interest, in different periods and always with the desire to achieve power, achieve parliamentary majorities or, where appropriate, the formation of a government, assuming a price according to the margins allowed by the Constitution. With different gradations, according to each moment; sometimes peacefully and now with enormous tension. From there, the staging of the debate has confirmed a Spain of three speeds: that of the indicated nationalities, the regions with a strong regional/national identity such as Galicia, the Canary Islands or Andalusia, and behind them a group of peripheries whose capacity to influence In the territorial discussion it is, to say the least, marginal. Madrid is a separate case, because Madrid does not need to establish a negotiation; Madrid is a nuclear actor in any discussion scenario, Madrid is today the key piece of the State. What role can the Valencian Community play? I don't have a clear answer.
As Joan Romero points out to me, Catalan and Basque nationalism, and even more so the independence movement, have historically avoided the multilateral model of territorial governance, and that is true. Both the Lehendakari and the Catalan president, in the past and now, have shied away from being part of the choral forums, few, poorly promoted and now very delegitimized, to agree on strategic decisions, needs and adopt decisions on the distribution of resources; except during the pandemic, does anyone remember? A position that makes it difficult to establish co-governance mechanisms and jointly address the complex equation of resources and their distribution for the benefit of greater territorial cohesion. Bilaterality is not in itself negative if it is framed in an institutional model capable of observing the whole before concluding agreements driven from that same bilaterality. On the contrary, making this bilaterality a norm is establishing a confederal-inspired discussion framework that is far from the autonomous model designed decades ago and, even less so, opting for the possibility of taking steps towards a federal one.
The Spain of the three speeds implies a symbolic construction that is being internalized, generating many interterritorial conflicts, such as the one we are observing again now with the negotiation of the investiture. And bilaterality has even managed to weaken the complicities that regions such as Andalusia or Galicia had in the past as active actors in an institutionally imperfect State. Because this institutionality still does not respond to needs that, far from diminishing, are aggravated and will become even more aggravated with effects already indicated such as the emptying (material and human) of large Spanish geographies. Spain is increasingly, in this regard, an imperfect symphony, in which some beat the beat and others remain, literally, silent. With a dynamic that challenges the principle of cooperation and may, over time, end up aggravating the discomfort of certain peripheries.
The astonishing thing at this point, as Pedro Vallín specified in these pages, is that neither the PSOE nor the PP have been able to carry out an honest reflection on the territorial debate, beyond individual pronouncements. One of the factors is, precisely, bilaterality. There is, on the left, a serious crisis of intellectuality on this matter, of possible proposals; and a lot of faculty office work that does not see the light of disclosure. In the case of the right it is more serious, since a centralized reading of Spain is being reinforced (it also happens with former key actors of Spanish socialism, and I will spare names), from a radial vision (in infrastructure but also in the management of the political power) that blocks the possibility of rigorously addressing solutions for a reality that is also accelerating. Meanwhile, the Spain of the second and third gear observes, from the most absolute helplessness.
