The coalition registers a non-legal proposal to ask the Cortes Generales to promote a constitutional reform
VITORIA, 5 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Elkarrekin Podemos-IU has registered an initiative in the Basque Parliament in order to urge the Cortes Generales to initiate a constitutional reform process that leads to “a referendum on the continuation of the Monarchy in Spain or the establishment of a Republic”.
In justifying this non-legal proposal, the progressive coalition recalls that on July 23, 1969, “the dictator Francisco Franco named Juan Carlos de Borbón his successor as head of state.”
E-Podemos-IU points out that this appointment was made “according to Franco’s legality”, specifically in accordance with the provisions of the first article of Law 62/1969).
Said article establishes that “when a vacancy occurs in the Head of State, the Crown will be established in the person of Prince Don Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, who will transmit it according to the regular order of succession established in article eleven of the Fundamental Law of July 26, 1947, modified by the Organic Law of the State of January 10, 1967”.
The coalition recalls that two days after Franco’s death, on November 22, 1975, Juan Carlos de Borbón “was named King of Spain by the Francoist Cortes.” This group adds that the oath of the previous monarch in said act was the following: “I swear by God and on the Holy Gospels to comply and enforce the fundamental laws of the kingdom and to maintain loyalty to the principles that inform the National Movement.”
E-Podemos-IU also points out that the Spanish Constitution was voted on December 6, 1978, and was promulgated on December 27 of the same year. As he recalls, in the Constitution “it is stated that the political form of the Spanish State is the parliamentary monarchy, which implies that the king is the head of State.”
In justifying its initiative, the coalition indicates that the constitutional referendum “was the culmination of the Spanish transition, a process in which the Franco regime became a democracy comparable to the rest of the European liberal democracies.”
However, he recalled that the Constitution “was voted en bloc and citizens could not decide on a fundamental aspect of their political system, such as the form of government.”
“Adolfo Suárez himself, in a 1995 interview, recounts how the rest of the European presidents of that time pressured him to hold a referendum on the monarchy, in order to legitimize it through the votes; but the former president acknowledges that the polls predicted a rejection of the monarchical form of government”, emphasizes E-Podemos.
This group highlights that “for this reason, the monarchy was included in the Political Reform Law, which laid the foundations for the transition.” “The choice that was made to the citizens then was in terms of democracy or dictatorship; they were never asked about the form of government that the new democratic state should have,” he added.
For all these reasons, he has warned that “we cannot speak of full democracy as long as the head of state is the result of blood inheritance.”
In this way, E-Podemos-IU proposes that the Basque Parliament urge the Cortes Generales to “begin the process of constitutional reform that leads to a referendum on the continuation of the Monarchy in Spain or the establishment of a Republic”.
