Spanish court upholds most of charter granting more self-rule to Catalonia region

Court lets most of Catalan self-rule charter stand

MADRID — Spain’s highest court upheld most of a charter granting sweeping new powers of self rule to the wealthy Catalonia region, handing a defeat Monday to conservatives who complained the blueprint undermined the idea of Spain as a unified state.

Significantly, the Constitutional Court let stand a hotly contested article in the 2006 charter that referred to the region centering around Barcelona as a nation. The court said this was acceptable because the reference was not legally binding.

The verdict ended nearly four years of debate in which conservative and liberal judges locked horns over whether the charter went beyond the limits of Spain’s system of granting varying degrees of self-rule to its 17 regions.

While acknowledging the essence of the charter survived, the Catalan regional president, Jose Montilla, still protested that any articles were struck down at all, and said the document should have been approved in its entirety. He said Catalan political parties will call protest rallies, and he urged the people of Catalonia to take part.

“To respect does not mean to share,” Montilla said of the court’s decision.

Many of the articles struck down had to do with the Catalan justice system.

The charter updated a self-rule blueprint approved in 1979 and was passed in a June 2006 referendum in Catalonia, after receiving the green light from the regional parliament and the Spanish parliament in Madrid.

It gave the Mediterranean region a much bigger slice of tax revenues collected in Catalonia and a say in the appointment of judges and prosecutors to courts run from Madrid.

It also gave Catalonia control over a variety of areas such as infrastructure and work permits for immigrants in the region, and say over appointment of judges and prosecutors to courts run from Madrid.

The charter noted that Catalonia’s regional parliament considers the territory a “nation,” a word that led conservatives to fear it would lead to the breakup of the Spanish state by encouraging other semiautonomous regions to seek the same status, although ultimately this did not happen.

Spain’s conservative Popular Party filed suit against the charter in Aug. 2006, challenging about half of its 222 articles.

In the end, the court upheld all but 15 of those disputed articles.