## Facts

- Spain enacted Organic Law 6/2006 reforming Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, expanding self-government, regulating language policy, creating “statutory rights,” and detailing institutional and competence arrangements.
- Ninety-nine members of the Spanish Congress filed an abstract constitutional challenge to a large number of provisions of the 2006 Statute.
- The case required the constitutional court to assess, on a broad scale, the permissible content and legal force of a Statute of Autonomy within Spain’s constitutional system.
- After extended deliberations, the full bench issued Judgment 31/2010, with different majorities supporting different parts of the dispositive ruling and multiple separate opinions.

## Issues

1. Whether a Statute of Autonomy may attribute nation-like status to an autonomous community or otherwise imply a source of sovereignty distinct from the Spanish people.
2. What legal rank and function a Statute of Autonomy has within the system of legal sources, including its relationship to the Constitution and constitutional review.
3. Whether a Statute may recognize extensive “statutory rights,” and if so, whether those provisions create enforceable subjective rights comparable to constitutional fundamental rights.
4. Whether institutional and judicial provisions (including a Catalan Council of Justice) are compatible with the constitutional principle of a single judiciary and the role of the national judicial governing body.
5. Whether competence provisions may define or constrain the scope of state “basic legislation,” shared powers, and future state regulatory discretion.
6. Whether the language regime (Catalan as the normal or preferred language in administration and education) is compatible with equality and the right to use Castilian Spanish.
7. Whether provisions on finance, bilateral relations, and external/EU action unlawfully restrict state fiscal autonomy or exclusive state powers in foreign affairs.

## Decision

- The court upheld most challenged provisions of the 2006 Statute.
- The court declared 14 provisions (or parts of provisions) unconstitutional and void.
- The court sustained approximately 27 additional provisions only under restrictive constructions specified in the judgment.
- The court held that the Statute’s preambular reference to Catalonia as a “nation” had no legal effect and could not alter constitutional principles of unity and national sovereignty.
- The court limited statutory-rights provisions to intra-autonomous effects and invalidated mechanisms that purported to give them quasi-constitutional guarantees.
- The court rejected or narrowed provisions suggesting a separate Catalan judicial governance structure, allowing only arrangements consistent with a unified judiciary and national judicial governance.
- The court construed competence, language, finance, and external-action provisions to avoid constraining constitutionally assigned state powers.

## Legal Principles

- A Statute of Autonomy is subordinate to the Constitution and cannot modify the constitutional framework for the distribution of public powers or displace the constitutional court’s authority to interpret competences.
- Preambular language lacks independent normative force and cannot be used to produce legal effects contrary to constitutional unity or the constitutional allocation of sovereignty.
- A Statute may include “statutory rights,” but they are not equivalent to constitutional fundamental rights; they function primarily as mandates to autonomous authorities and cannot restructure the constitutional rights system or bind the state outside the Statute’s sphere.
- The unity of the judicial power requires that any territorial judicial governance body operate, at most, as a decentralized component consistent with the national judicial governing framework; a Statute cannot create an autonomous judiciary.
- Competence clauses in a Statute cannot rigidly define “basic legislation” or otherwise precommit the state’s legislative space beyond what the Constitution permits; competence boundaries remain subject to constitutional interpretation.
- Language policy may designate a regional language as normally used in administration and education, but interpretations must fully preserve the right to use Castilian and cannot impose a general duty to know the regional language comparable to the constitutional duty to know Castilian.
- Financial and intergovernmental provisions may organize autonomy within constitutional limits, but cannot bind state budgetary discretion, undermine equality among autonomous communities, or intrude on exclusive state powers over foreign affairs and international representation.

## Conclusion

Judgment 31/2010 sustained Catalonia’s 2006 autonomy statute in large part while invalidating select provisions and imposing restrictive constructions to confirm constitutional supremacy, preserve the unity of sovereignty and the judiciary, protect linguistic rights, and prevent the Statute from entrenching competence and financial constraints on the state.


Judgment 31/2010, Tribunal Constitucional (Spain) (2010)