The Spanish Constitution

Last Sunday (December 6) was Constitution Day in Spain, but I didn't read the newspaper until Monday. So I didn't know until later that a whopping 84% of Spaniards believe that their constitution needs reform.

And it's only 31 years old!

To be fair, not everyone thinks the constitution needs a total overhaul. According to the poll, 65% believe that some fine-tuning would be sufficient to improve the law, while 26% want a complete reformation. But even though 69% say that the Constitution represents the ideas of all (and not any given political party or ideology), only 12% think it is good as it stands.

So what needs fine-tuning?

70% would like to regulate the use of co-official languages in the autonomous regions.
61% would like to give legal immigrants the right to vote in all elections.
51% would like to eliminate references giving special attention to the Catholic Church.
51% would like to eliminate the distinction between nationalities and regions.

Some of this is difficult for a foreigner to understand, but it is related to the fact that a recent controversial statute has used the term "nation" in regards to the autonomous region of Cataluña. A related question in the survey asked, "Do you believe that Cataluña is really a nation?" and 79% of all Spanish respondents opined that it is not. Of Catalans, 54% believe that their region is a nation, while 42% do not. And regarding the question of whether public organizations and businesses in Cataluña should use Catalan and Spanish equally, the majority say yes. But there is a marked difference in the numbers: 82% of Catalans believe that Spanish and Catalan should be used equally in public affairs, while only 58% of those living in other parts of Spain believe so.

It seems to me that most Spaniards are more than willing to share their country and its governance with the mass of foreigners now living here legally, and that they want to legitimize linguistic diversity throughout the country, while retaining a common language.