Spanish and resident European Union citizens can participate in municipal elections as well as those countries that recognize such rights under treaty law. The election for Mayor is indirect, except in the open Council in which all inhabitants directly elect the Mayor. This system is only applied in small municipalities.
In Municipalities with less than inhabitants, the lists are open. In Municipalities with more than inhabitants, the lists are closed and blocked. Single candidate for mayors, multiple candidates for councilors. Each municipality constitutes a districted in which the number of councillors are elected that result in the application of the following scale Art. From , upwards, a councillor for more than , residents or fraction, adding one more when the result is an even number.
The scale shown in the previous paragraph does not apply to municipalities that, according to legislation governing the local regime, function according to an open council. In these municipalities, the electorate directly choose the Mayor through a majority system.
When the number of posts to cover a less than five, the proportion of women and men will be the closest possible to numerical equilibrium" art. The civil service also resisted transformation, remaining almost as inefficient and cumbersome as it was under Franco. Although Spanish citizens had minimal experience with political involvement prior to the advent of participatory democracy, they took to it enthusiastically, and, after a shaky beginning, a viable party system developed.
The stability of this party system was evidenced by the declining support for extremist parties and by the peaceful transfer of power from a conservative coalition to the Socialist Workers' Party in the elections. In the late s, the major challenge to the governing Spanish Socialist Workers' Party Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol-- PSOE came from within its own ranks, as labor leaders complained that Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez Marquez had forsaken his socialist roots in favor of market-oriented policies.
Spain continued to seek an independent role in the international arena, while maintaining a European focus through membership in the European Community EC and, through association, on its own terms, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO. Other major foreign policy goals continued to be the re-establishment of Spanish sovereignty in Gibraltar, the retention of the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and an influential role for Spain in Latin America.
In Spain expressed a latent anti-Americanism, prevalent in the country since the Spanish-American War, when the government delayed renewal of the long-standing agreement for United States use of military bases in Spain in exchange for military and economic assistance.
One difficult problem facing the government in the s was the ongoing menace of Basque terrorism, as militant separatists continued to perpetrate assassinations and bombings in spite of vigorous antiterrorist measures. A more far-reaching challenge lay in the economic realm. It is made up of the president of the Supreme Court and twenty members appointed by the King at the behest of the Cortes Generales, with a three fifths majority, for a period of five years.
Twelve of these members must be a judge or magistrate. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial body of the State, except as regards constitutional safeguards, which fall within the purview of the Constitutional Court. Its president, who also presides the General Council of the Judiciary, is appointed by the King at the behest of this body.
The mission of the Office of the Crown Prosecutor is to instigate legal proceedings to protect the rights of citizens and of public interest as provided for by law, whether on its own motion or at the behest of interested parties.
It is also responsible for safeguarding the independence of the courts and defending the public interest in court proceedings. The Crown Prosecutor may lodge an appeal for protection. The Autonomous Communities and towns and cities with a Statute of regional autonomy. The Constitution of recognised and guaranteed the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions forming part of the Spanish nation and the solidarity between all of them.
The development of the constitutional provisions has led to a sea change in the territorial organisation of the State. This has been brought about through the creation of the Autonomous Communities and the Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla, with the consequent redistribution of political and administrative power between central and autonomous authorities. The outcome of this redistribution has made Spain one of the most decentralised countries in Europe.
This is the basic institutional regulation of the Community, governing essential aspects such as the organisation and operation of its Parliament and Government, the powers the Community assumes, its Administration, the identifying marks and distinctive aspects such as language or civil law and relations with the State and other Autonomous Communities. The distribution of powers between the State and the Autonomous Communities is based on the distinction between the exclusive powers of the State and the Autonomous Communities, the powers shared between the State and the Autonomous Communities and concurrent powers, in which both the State and Autonomous Communities may intervene.
The exclusive powers include legislative power and implementing capacity, while shared powers may lead to a different distribution of legislative and regulatory power between the State and Autonomous Communities, which usually hold the implementing capacity in these cases. If a conflict of powers occurs, the Constitutional Court settles the matter, as in other politically decentralised states.
The system of government of the Autonomous Communities is parliamentary in nature. Its basic institutions being Parliament, the president of the Autonomous Community and the regional government. Autonomous Communities have considerable freedom in terms of economic and financial management. They are able to approve their own annual budgets and determine their own resources through taxes, rates and surcharges.
The general funding system of Autonomous Communities, which also includes taxes assigned by the State and participation in national taxes, is set multilaterally by the State and Autonomous Communities, ensuring inter-regional solidarity and an equal threshold in the provision of basic public services throughout Spain thanks to a range of financial mechanisms.
With these financial systems, these Communities agree with the State their contribution to its support and to the harmonisation of their own tax system with that which prevails in the rest of national territory.
The experience of the implementation of the autonomous state for almost thirty years, the overall balance of which is wholly positive, has helped pinpoint aspects that could be improved as regards its functioning, without detriment to its constitution.
The need to reform the system of funding to increase joint tax responsibility of Autonomous Communities, ensuring solidarity and regional cohesion, was also made clear.
In order to perfect the state of the Autonomous Communities in this sense, most of the Autonomous Communities have implemented reforms of the Statutes of Regional Autonomy in recent years. Other regional parliaments have submitted their proposed statutory reforms to the Cortes Generales or are currently working on them.
Furthermore, the State and Autonomous Communities agreed on a new general system of funding, effective from 1 January , which represents an important step towards the consolidation of the autonomous state, by ensuring the benefits of the welfare state, among others. It can be concluded, therefore, that the autonomous state is currently in a final stage of maturity and improvement, requiring several years for its culmination. In Spain today there are 50 provinces and 8, municipalities that, due to the number of inhabitants, are very unevenly distributed in terms of size.
Thus, in accordance with the official figures from the review of the municipal register at 1 January , 4, municipalities Only municipalities 1.
In terms of organisation, the institutions of government and administration of the municipalities are councils ayuntamientos , those of the provinces are provincial councils diputaciones provincials and those of the islands the island councils or Cabildos and Consejos Insulares in the Canary Islands and the Balearics, respectively.
The governing bodies of the councils are the mayor, who presides the city council, the deputy mayors, who stand in for the mayor, the local government board Junta de Gobierno Local , which is only required in municipalities with a population of over 5, inhabitants, and the plenary session Pleno , comprising all councillors, who are elected directly by the residents of the municipality with open lists for municipalities whose population does not exceed inhabitants and with closed lists for municipalities of over inhabitants, using the proportional voting system.
The mayor is elected by absolute majority of the councillors, from the candidates at the top of the corresponding electoral lists. If a majority is not obtained, the councillor at the top of the list with the most popular votes is proclaimed mayor.
In municipalities using open lists, the candidate who wins an absolute majority of the votes of the councillors is proclaimed mayor; and if neither wins the majority, the councillor who has won the most popular votes in the election is proclaimed mayor. In addition, there is a special system of open council concejo abierto , reformed in January , in which municipalities with fewer than inhabitants, together with those that traditionally and voluntarily use this special system, and those which, owing to their geographical location, this is the best way to manage municipal interests, have a municipal government and administration made up of a mayor and a local assembly that all voters are part of.
In municipal elections it is not just Spanish voters who enjoy active and passive voting rights, but also European Union citizens living in Spain under the same conditions as Spanish people and also foreign residents in Spain whose respective countries allow Spanish people to vote in these elections, under the terms of a treaty article The provincial council is indirectly elected.
Its members belong to different political parties, coalitions, federations and groups of voters who have obtained a councillor within each circuit after the local elections.
Its main task is to assist and cooperate with municipalities, particularly those with lower economic and management capacities, as well as to assure the provision of the minimum mandatory services the law imposes on the municipalities. The Spanish Constitution establishes in Article 3 that Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State and that all Spaniards have a duty to know it and the right to use it.
The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities in accordance with their statutes.
Furthermore, it sets down that the wealth of the different linguistic forms of Spain is a cultural heritage which shall be especially respected and protected.
The Constitution, together with legislation of the bilingual Communities of Spain, is an advanced legal corpus regarding the acknowledgement of linguistic rights, without prejudice to the Spanish or Castilian language.
The official language of the State, Castilian, is the language of the former kingdom of Castile. When it spread across the world in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, it became increasingly referred to as «Spanish». Since then both names have coexisted. Internationally, the most widely accepted name is «Spanish», while «Castilian» tends to be used in the north of Spain and in its bilingual areas, as well as across vast regions of South America. Like the other Romance languages, Spanish was formed over the long period ranging from the 4 th to the 10 th centuries as a result of the fragmentation of Latin.
In the 13 th century it was already a language of culture. The popular epic gave rise to Cantar de Mio Cid , an anonymous 12 th century poem that suggests the existence of an old literary tradition prior to it. In the early 16 th century, Castilian had spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and was becoming an international language.
In the dissemination of the Spanish language, its arrival in America in was to be crucial. Castilian was to be the language that travelled to the new overseas territories and, once there, it was to borrow many words from the indigenous languages. Instituto Cervantes Ministry of the Presidency Spanish is a language that has been growing virtually since the 16 th century, and time has not held it back.
In the late 19 th century there were around 60 million speakers. Over a century later, Spanish, with million native speakers, is the second most spoken language in the world as a native language after Chinese and ahead of English and Hindi. It is one of the three languages which are habitually considered an official working language in multiple international organisations and one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Today it is the official language around twenty countries across the world. The USA, with its 50 million Hispanics, is the second country in the world in terms of the number of Spanish speakers, after Mexico, and ahead of Spain, Colombia and Argentina.
Another significant fact is that Spanish is spoken by In the Instituto Cervantes was founded to universally promote Spanish and disseminate culture in Spanish language.
It is a non-profit body with the main governing body being the board of trustees, whose honorary president is the King of Spain. The Executive Presidency corresponds to the president of the Government. Together with Castilian, Catalan is the official language of the Autonomous Communities of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands Catalan first appears in written documents in the second half of the 12 th century.
Legal, economic, religious and historical texts written in Catalan have been preserved since that time.
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