Spain claims the validity of its Constitution on her 43rd anniversary

USPA NEWS - Spain celebrated its Constitution Day this Monday, December 6. The Magna Carta, approved in a referendum in 1978, is at the center of a debate on the need to reform it promoted by the nationalist and independence parties of Catalonia and the Basque Country. Absent from the institutional acts that were held in the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, the Basque nationalist and independence parties issued a statement in which they affirmed that the Constitution "violates" their rights as a people to self-determination.

Traditionally, the Spanish Parliament holds open days from days before the December 6 holiday. On Constitution Day, in the Congress of Deputies, in Madrid, an institutional act is held with the assistance of the President of the Spanish Government, members of the Cabinet, presidents of regional governments - except those of Catalonia and the Basque Country, traditionally absent -, members of the Judiciary and other authorities. This year, for the second time, due to the pandemic, the event was held outdoors on the steps of Congress. Previously, a large Spanish flag was raised in the nearby Plaza de Colón.

During the institutional act of the Congress, the president of the Spanish Parliament, Meritxel Batet, spoke, who stressed that "celebrating the Constitution is celebrating community awareness and the commitment of all to mutual aid and joint progress in solidarity with our fellow citizens." The president of the Congress recalled that, in recent years, the celebration of Constitution Day "has made it possible to highlight its success and that of those who made it possible, as a basis for coexistence, cohesion and progress in our society; that we are building every day what its first article wanted for our country: a social and democratic state of law. All these aspects are still alive and are manifested in this new anniversary of the referendum on the approval of the constitutional text by the citizens forty-three years ago."

Batet also wanted to remember those who have died from the pandemic and her relatives, and show her gratitude to health workers, social workers and public servants. In this sense, he recognized that "celebrating the Constitution is, ultimately, celebrating community awareness and the commitment of all to mutual aid and joint progress in solidarity with our fellow citizens, so that today, Constitution day, it is first of all a day of recognition of their work and their contribution to the common good."

Likewise, she had a special impact on what the supreme norm means for Spanish politics and, above all, for politicians, democratic representatives: "The Constitution is an expression of a fundamental consensus, it is a reference of values and principles in which to feel recognized, it is a norm that demands respect and compliance in our actions and decisions, and it is a program for the future whose effectiveness we must pursue in the development of the policies that we promote."

For his part, in statements to the media, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, recalled, at the beginning of the act, all "that which the Constitution brought us after an infamous time, of a very prolonged dictatorship for years in our country." Sánchez affirmed that the Constitution brought “rights, freedoms, harmony and also coexistence, where before there was hatred and there was tyranny. Furthermore, the Magna Carta brought us our membership of the European Union,” he pointed out.

Sánchez called for vindication of the doing of "the thousands and thousands of compatriots, fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers who made the Constitution possible. And because it cost us a lot and it cost those generations a lot, I believe that the generations that now take their witness what we have to do is take care of our Constitution. And take care of our Constitution, in my opinion, means fulfilling all the articles of the Constitution, from first to last. Each and every one of the articles of the Constitution," the president pointed out.

Constitution Day was also celebrated in the bases where the Spanish Army serves under the NATO umbrella, in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In some of them, sharing the party with US troops and other countries deployed abroad.