The 155th order of the autonomous communities during the massive blackout
BarcelonaOne episode of the massive blackout indicates the extent to which the will for self-government in some autonomous regions is quickly diluted. The decision of up to eight autonomous communities—all but one governed by the People's Party (PP)—to hand over the keys to the Spanish government with the declaration of a national emergency demonstrates, on the one hand, that they lack confidence in their own civil protection system and that, for the Popular Party, autonomy is a mere instrument to wear down Pedro Sánchez's government.
None of them wanted to find themselves in a complicated situation to manage, and when problems arose, they tactically opted to directly involve the Moncloa government in the management of what was happening in their territories, even if it meant that, in some cases, crisis control was 600 kilometers away. Probably everyone had Carlos Mazón in mind. It is also no coincidence that the last autonomous community to resume control of powers after the massive blackout was the Community of Madrid –late Wednesday–, where Isabel Díaz Ayuso leads the opposition to the sanchismo.
Amidst the confusion over what was happening on Monday, the autonomous regions of Andalusia, Galicia, La Rioja, Murcia, Extremadura, the Community of Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha – the only one governed by the PSOE, although by the critic Emiliano García-Page – requested the Minister of the Interior, the Government of Civil Protection of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis of the crisis. At the last minute, the Valencian Community also did so, a decision that contrasts with which the DANA (Decree of the Catalan Autonomy) was taken. According to the legal experts consulted, this is an unprecedented mechanism that had never been used before. The State has only taken control of regional management due to the pandemic, in the declaration of the state of alarm, and in Article 155, the suspension of Catalan autonomy due to the 2017 DUI.
The 2010 Statute
The National Civil Protection System is an exceptional legal mechanism that the State was granted in 2015, after Catalonia attributed civil protection powers to itself in the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, as explained by Joan Ridao, now a lawyer in the Catalan Parliament, who was involved in drafting the statutory reform at the time. It is a competence of the second-generation statutes that has subsequently been extended to other autonomous regions. An "exclusive" competence that was not questioned by the Constitutional Court in 2010.
However, in 2015, the State did promote its own legislation to assume powers in this area. A move also endorsed by the Constitutional Court itself, despite the fact that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) challenged the legislation for encroachment on its powers. Ridao explains that the Constitutional Court grants coordination powers to the Spanish government and establishes the possibility that, when there is a crisis that transcends the borders of the autonomous communities, the Spanish government can take control of them, on its own initiative, at the request of the autonomous communities, or at the central government's delegation in the community.
It is exceptional that, in the face of a general blackout that affects the entire territory equally, and without the Spanish government requesting it, the autonomous communities activate this mechanism in a cascade. This is especially true for the autonomous communities, like Catalonia, which have established in their Statute that civil protection is an exclusive responsibility, such as the Valencian Community, Extremadura, and Andalusia. It is as if, in the midst of the crisis, some of the local councils had absolved themselves of responsibility for the situation in favor of higher administrations.
In the end, the transfer of powers to the State was fleeting, since the day after the blackout, everything returned to normal. Now, this is a precedent that demonstrates that there are autonomous regions that take the powers established by their statutes little seriously, and also that the autonomous state is just another instrument in the tough battle between the PP and Pedro Sánchez's PSOE.
