Ethnicity and Violence by Diego Muro

Author:Diego Muro [Muro, Diego]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, General, Political Science
ISBN: 9780415890311
Google: wK_EcQAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-01-15T01:17:52+00:00

Figure 5.1 General elections, 15 June 1977. Others: PSP-US (6), UDC/IDCC (2), EC/FED (1), EE (1), CAIC (1), and INDEP (1).

Source: Ministerio del Interior (www.mir.es)

With a democratic system in place, the Spanish political elite faced two main challenges ahead of them: to stabilise the economic and social situation and approve a Constitution. The serious economic situation was tackled by an all-party agreement known as the Moncloa Pacts (1977) whereby the opposition parties and the trade unions agreed to cooperate with the government by keeping wage increases below the level of inflation in return for tax reform and an extension of the welfare state. Following the 1973 international oil crisis, unemployment had risen considerably, economic growth had declined, and the state had become highly indebted. Knowing that the economic crisis would only be solved by an austerity programme, Suárez asked all the political parties with parliamentary representation to support his measures. They all agreed and the Moncloa Pacts, designed by the economist Enrique Fuentes Quintana, were put in place to solve some of the short-term problems of the Spanish economy.6 The task of drafting a new constitution was undertaken by a working committee of seven MPs representing the main political parties.7 After eighteen months of debate the Constitution was finally approved in the Congress of Deputies on 31 October 1978. The Magna Carta officially returned parliamentary democracy to Spain after a forty-year dictatorship, proclaimed Spain as a constitutional monarchy, and established freedom of education, press, and expression and some social rights. The state had no official religion, though the ‘role of the Catholic Church’ was recognised. In addition, the Constitution established a ‘state of autonomies’ (estado de las autonomías) that combined the conception of Spain as a single political nation with the existence of limited self-government for all regions and nationalities. By 1983, seventeen statutes of autonomy had been drafted and approved in Parliament (Moreno 2001: 109–149).

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