Abstract

In Spain the different Statutes of Autonomy are undergoing substantial revision. That revision is being made with repeated invocations of the federal model, without noticing that it would never permit a process in which the federated pieces did not form a whole with the federal pieces. There must first exist an overall agreement on such fundamental questions as competencies, financing, institutional relations, etc. Lacking such an agreement at the political level, the situation must be corrected at the legal level. In Germany, which has been the great model for Spanish constitutional design, the notion of constitutional loyalty has been a key element, developed, among others, by the Federal Constitutional Court. The Spanish Constitutional Court, however, until now has not gone into the sacramental foundation of the principle, there where it hides its ultimate authority and, therefore, it finds itself detained for the moment at the starting point of a road it has yet to cover. Because loyalty is the hinge of the state, the lubrication that “serves to facilitate movement”, it reconciles the pieces of the decentralised federal system (federal, regional, or whatever you want to call it). Loyalty acts as the backdrop, which is what in the theatre strictly speaking closes the scene, giving sense to the whole set