Demotix/J-Montero. All rights reserved.In the forthcoming election on December 20, 2015 we may be heading for a fundamental test for Spain, unique in our history. The truth is that our country has never managed to engage in a democratic practice capable of interpreting the historicity inherent in our constitutions. In this sense, no one has ever managed to revive a constitutional consensus, much less re-edit a constituent power reflexive over its own work.
The Spanish right, since Cánovas, has understood constitutions operating as a katechon for the reification of institutions and to limit democracy’s capacity for self-correction. This attitude has produced a naturalisation of constitutions, as if they were definitive and final expressions of the state of Spanish society, generating a continued experience of fatigue, degeneration, mutation, paralysis, blocks, and, finally, institutional detachment, in turn answered by destabilizing and explosive outbreaks and incursions in times of widespread civic desperation.
Nevertheless, the Spanish right has always preferred to wait for these confrontations rather than confront the complexities of real life, be flexible, or evolve. The Spanish right has always preferred to wait for these confrontations rather than confront the complexities of real life, be flexible, or evolve. This in turn has generally been interpreted as weakness, and associated with a loss of opportunity relating to their historical mission and national identity. On December 20, a majoritarian political force may emerge, that may leave the Spanish institutions unable to survive without changing and updating. The ‘20 December’ will not be conventional elections; if the citizenry reaches the right level of consciousness for kairos, they may indeed be historic.
