The Origin of the Autonomous Community of Castile and León (Part III)

Back in 1979—October to be precise—the envy and ambitions of a few were on the verge of wrecking the hopes of intellectuals, business leaders and other regionalists who wanted to see a robust Castile and León within Spain. A Castile and León strong enough to secure, in future negotiations, the same level of investment for its land as the peripheral nationalisms managed to win for their regions. A Castile and León ready to shake off its old demons: depopulation, underdevelopment, and so on.

Provinces joining Castile and León, April 1980

The Constitution required that most of the town councils in each province of the future autonomous community vote in favour of joining it. What’s more, there was a six-month deadline from the moment the first council voted “yes” for the others to follow suit. For Castile and León, that deadline fell on 25 April, and with that date looming, UCD began negotiations to bring the PSOE back into the Council.

These talks revolved around the role of the provincial councils, equal provincial representation, and the route to autonomy—whether through Article 143 or Article 151. Hard to believe, but these debates, held over the course of a dozen meetings, were crucial in shaping the autonomous community we know today. By dropping the idea of a federation of provinces (as was done with Castilla–La Mancha) and by reaching agreement on the rest (one of the most significant points being the use of Article 143 to gain autonomy—much to the dismay of regionalists who believed a referendum would help forge a Castilian-Leonese identity), the PSOE gave the green light to continue.

But the fragile autonomy process took another hit before the year was out—this time from a different direction. In December, the President of the General Council, Reol Tejada, accepted a political post in Madrid as Secretary-General for Territorial Policy in the UCD. The job was incompatible with leading the autonomy process, given the workload both required. Political gossip suggested that Reol’s decision was influenced by months of frustration—the PSOE’s earlier withdrawal, tensions with various provinces, and the obstinate stance of the Segovian UCD. He formally resigned in March, though with local votes still ongoing (most councils in Ávila and Palencia had already spoken, but the rest of the provinces still hadn’t), he stayed on until July so as not to leave the job half-done.

Time inexorably marched on, and just days before the deadline, only seven provinces had agreed to join the new community: Ávila, Burgos, Palencia, Salamanca, Soria, Valladolid and Zamora. Most councils in León still hadn’t made up their minds. This is where Rodolfo Martín Villa comes in—have a look at his Wikipedia entry, because he’s been in the thick of Spanish politics since the 1960s, under Franco and in democracy alike. Even today, he’s still around—just a few weeks ago he was appointed to the board of Spain’s infamous “bad bank”, SAREB.

In April 1980 Martín Villa was president of the UCD Autonomies Commission, leader of the party in the province of León, and his name was being touted as future Minister of Territorial Administration (four months later the rumours came true). Both within the party and in the Madrid Cortes, Martín Villa had been the main defender of a rational policy to create new autonomies, being completely opposed to single-province autonomous communities; consequently, from his position as provincial party president, he pressured all centrist councillors (especially in the capital and Ponferrada) to vote in favour of the incorporation. From a national point of view, the UCD was interested in León being united with Castile because, given the way things were going, with nationalist victories in the Basque Country and Catalonia, it was necessary to create a strong, centre-right, and Spanish-character community. And, from a regional perspective, the UCD saw an opportunity to please the PSOE (and other parties, like the Communist Party), who defended the union of the province with Castile. Thus, after several negotiations, the PSOE and the León UCD reached an agreement for their councillors to vote in favour of integration, and in the last nine days allowed (between 16 and 25 April) the province of León met the constitutional requirements to join Castile and León.

Once the crossroads was overcome, with the region’s politicians a bit more relaxed, the General Council was renewed again in July, re-admitting representatives from León and with no Segovians present. For those who haven’t read the first two parts of this text (very bad!), recall that the province of Segovia had begun the process to become a single-province autonomous community. A new president was also elected to replace Reol Tejada: José Manuel García-Verdugo, from the party with the most representatives on the Council, the UCD. Among the new Council’s duties was drafting the first (and long-awaited) Statute of Autonomy for the region. However, what happened in Spain in the following months profoundly influenced the drafting of the new statute.

We find ourselves at the end of 1980 and the beginning of 1981, with Spain immersed in the second oil crisis, high inflation, unemployment and capital flight, politically unsettled by the autonomy process, ETA and GRAPO violence, military and union discontent. In this atmosphere, and under pressure from his own party—which was also in crisis—our countryman Adolfo Suárez resigned on 29 January 1981. Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo was tasked with forming a new government, but in his first vote he failed to gain the Congress’s confidence. On the second attempt, something stopped him:

Although we now remember 23F as an isolated event, an anecdote of the “Where were you on...?” type, the influence of the coup d’état on territorial politics was enormous. Behind Lieutenant Colonel Tejero’s “initiative” lay the military’s fear of Spain breaking apart amid so many Basque leaders, regional referendums and other nonsense. Try explaining to a lifelong, Franco-era military man that Spain is no longer “One.” Politicians, while hiding under their seats, sensed the army’s discontent with the autonomy process and set out to end it and its abuses, causing the more reactionary military, in a way, to succeed with their failed coup. Just a week after his appointment, the new president Calvo-Sotelo commissioned Eduardo García de Enterría to lead a commission of experts to analyse the status of the autonomy processes and find the simplest way to conclude them. The conclusions of this commission were collected in the so-called Enterría Report, which recommended eliminating most single-province autonomy initiatives through Article 144 of the Constitution, which gave power to the Cortes Generales to substitute the initiative of local corporations when requesting integration into an autonomous community.

Both the governing party UCD and the main opposition party PSOE agreed with the report and, in a meeting at La Moncloa between Calvo-Sotelo and Felipe González on 31 July 1981, put it into practice, closing Spain’s autonomy map. The so-called Autonomy Agreements emerging from the meeting established a map of seventeen autonomous communities and two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla, where Castile and León would be composed of nine provinces, including León and Segovia, while Logroño and Santander would form La Rioja and Cantabria, respectively. From an executive viewpoint, the Autonomy Agreements required autonomous communities that had not completed their founding process to follow Article 143. That is, except for Catalonia and the Basque Country, which had approved their statutes in 1979, and Galicia, which had ratified theirs in 1981 (using the trick we saw earlier to bypass Article 151’s requirements), the other regions should be content with a lower level of competences. Despite the UCD’s reluctance, Andalucía was allowed to follow Article 151’s route, since it had already held its referendum (with some tallying trickery) in 1980. Of course, the regions with the most tenacious politicians (Navarra, Canary Islands and Valencia) obtained specific processes and achieved full autonomy from the outset.

Returning to the regional sphere, the UCD and PSOE’s pact in Madrid did not mean they were united in Castile and León. In fact, on 22 June 1981 the draft Statute of Autonomy was approved without PSOE support. This project, now, thirty years later, seems like political fiction to us. It chose Tordesillas as the capital of Castile and León, the provincial councils had more power than the regional Cortes and, in the electoral system, the less populated (and less left-wing) provinces would have more representation.

But the UCD crisis prevented the processing of this Statute project, which would have created a very different Castile and León. Nationally, the UCD’s problems involved ministerial resignations, tensions in regional branches, economic difficulties and the colza oil crisis, which had spread widespread corruption within the party; meanwhile, in the Castile and León UCD, the Segovian autonomy process was another source of tension. While the Council continued negotiating the transfer of competences, the UCD broke up. On 29 July 1982, Adolfo Suárez formed a new party: the Democratic and Social Centre. Given this panorama, Calvo-Sotelo decided to call elections for 28 October 1982.

Some say that with the PSOE’s victory in those elections, the Transition could be considered over. However, in our region we still had a way to go. The UCD’s defeat was spectacular: it lost 155 seats and Popular Alliance, Manuel Fraga’s party, picked up the centre-right vote, becoming the main opposition party. In Castile and León, the election results — PSOE: 18 deputies, AP: 13 deputies, UCD: 3 deputies, CDS: 1 deputy (from Ávila, of course) — forced a change in the General Council, since even the president García-Verdugo had not won a seat (though he repeated as president thanks to a negotiated trick with AP). In the renewal, the UCD kept the majority, since representatives on the Council from the provincial councils did not change and were all centrists. However, it lost the absolute majority, forcing negotiation on a consensus Statute.

Last tensions, January 1983

The rise of Popular Alliance, a party that had not signed the Autonomy Pacts and whose statements to date opposed autonomy, triggered the last territorial tensions, perhaps motivated by the proximity of local elections. On one hand, the province of Burgos, led by the Villadiego City Council, requested secession, aggrieved by the loss of the capital to Valladolid (one could say they wanted to take Villadiego’s place :P); on the other, León, where despite the UCD not losing many votes in that province, several mayors (including those of León city and Ponferrada) and the Provincial Government backed down and began asking for secession and the start of a single-province autonomy process.

The Burgos issue was easier to solve, since the president of the Provincial Government, Francisco Montoya, did not support the secessionist theses of some of his municipalities. On 21 January 1983, the Council president, García-Verdugo, wrote a letter to the Burgos municipalities defending the need for a strong Castile and León to defend Spain and the region within Spain. After his letter, many municipalities backtracked and put all their energies into simply demanding capital status. Here lies the reason why Castile and León has no official capital. The negotiations of the Statute’s drafters with the Burgos representatives (and with representatives of other candidate cities) led to the founding text stating that the capital would be chosen later in another law. I need not tell you that, thirty years later, that law still does not exist, although we all know what the de facto capital of the region is. From those negotiations, Burgos did not leave empty-handed and was named seat of the Castile and León High Court of Justice.

The León matter was much tougher. Polls showed that a slight majority of Leonese preferred the single-province option, and Rodolfo Martín-Villa, who had been responsible for integrating León into the autonomy process, had resigned as deputy following his failure to contain the secessionist members of his party. On 29 January 1983 a demonstration titled “León without Castile” was organised and was quite successful (those present chanted slogans such as “one jump, two jumps, Castilian who does not jump” and “León without Castile, a marvel”). Immediately after the gathering, Popular Alliance presented a total amendment to the Statute project in the Constitutional Commission, which sparked an intense debate in the Chamber. On one side, the political, demographic and legal reasons for proposing a Leonese autonomous community were discussed; on the other, there was deliberation over whether legislation allowed a province to back out once it had entered an autonomy process. The conclusions of this debate left Popular Alliance alone in defending Leonism and, after votes in Congress and the Senate, it was decided to reject AP’s total amendment, and the province of León remained definitively integrated into Castile and León.

All this happened a couple of weeks before the Statute was approved in the Cortes. But one loose end remained: the integration of Segovia. Since Modesto Fraile and the Segovian deputies withdrew from the Castile and León General Council, a movement had begun in Segovia to form its own autonomy. Spanish public opinion thought it was a flagrant case of caciquism exacerbated by Modesto Fraile and the Segovian UCD leadership. Calls to order by the national and regional UCD had not worked, and the Segovian Provincial Government, based on three reports—one historical, another legal, and a third socio-economic (the historical one was an anonymous report)—decided on 31 July 1981 to start its single-province autonomy process.

All small UCD municipalities supported Segovian autonomy; thirteen PSOE municipalities and one independent voted against. Segovia city, in a historic plenary session, positioned itself against the autonomy process, tying the score. Thus, everything was in the hands of Cuéllar, the second largest town in the province, which in overtime had to decide the match between an independent Segovia or a Segovia without an autonomous community, to be integrated into Castile and León by the Cortes. To make things more exciting, as if it were a World Cup final, Cuéllar was the hometown of Modesto Fraile, the place where the president of the Provincial Government, the secessionist Rafael de las Heras, served as councillor, and, to top it off, the Town Hall had an absolute majority of the UCD.

All these circumstances made the victory of single-province autonomy likely. However, there was a factor not taken into account until then: the inhabitants of the town were totally in favour of integration into Castile and León. They formed the Pro-Castile and León Cuéllar Collective and organised demonstrations in favour of Segovia’s integration into the autonomous community.

Demonstration in Cuéllar for the inclusion of Segovia

In a first vote, on 7 October 1981, Cuéllar decided to support the single-province route by 7 votes to 6. The scandal in the hall, packed with neighbours, was immense, and the councillors could not leave the Town Hall until three in the morning. The Socialist Party challenged the agreement, and the Town Hall, pressured by its citizens, decided to reconsider its decision and hold a new vote on 3 December 1981, in which the no to an independent Segovia won by 7 votes to 6. The Segovian Provincial Government again challenged Cuéllar’s vote, but the UCD crisis first, the PSOE victory later and the little enthusiasm of the Cortes Generales to grant autonomy to the Segovians—after the Autonomy Agreements and the Enterría Report—prevented Cuéllar’s decision from changing. Days later, Modesto Fraile left the UCD and joined the mixed group. Segovia’s failure made it the only province (along with Ceuta and Melilla) dependent on the central State.

At the end of 1982, movements began to apply Article 144.c to the province and include it in Castile and León. Knowing that this law was going to be approved, the Statute of Castile and León passed the final procedures and was sanctioned on 25 February by the King. Four days later, the Cortes approved the law by which Segovia was incorporated into Castile and León, thus concluding the autonomy process and giving birth to the Castile and León we know today. The Castile and León we all know and that, after thirty years, seems to have always been there.

Castile and León, March 1983

Postscript: In June 1983, fifty-four senators from the Popular Parliamentary Group submitted two appeals before the Constitutional Court. The first challenged the Statute of Autonomy of Castile and León with the aim of excluding the province of León from the new autonomous community. The second challenged the Organic Law authorising the incorporation of the province of Segovia. At the same time, the Government and the Basque Parliament filed two other appeals against the seventh transitional provision of the Statute, specifically against Article Three, which established the conditions under which an “enclave of the Community”—ahem, ahem... Treviño—could join another autonomous community. Both considered that this provision constituted a disguised reform of the Basque Statute. The Constitutional Court dismissed all four appeals.

Sources:
Fuerzas políticas en el proceso autonómico de Castilla y León. Mariano González Clavero. Tesis doctoral. UVa, 2002
XXV años de autonomía en Castilla y León. Pablo Pérez López, José-Vidal Pelaz López, Mariano González Clavero. Cortes de Castilla y León, 2008.
El regionalismo en Castilla y León. Julio Valdeón Baruque. Universidad de Valladolid
Cuando Segovia pudo ser una comunidad autónoma (1978-1983) link