The president of the Congress, Fernando Álvarez de Miranda, had declared the morning session finished and from the press box I went to the door of the chamber, where, with almost no time to greet, Simón, with that sarcastic gesture that already had made him famous, he snapped at me: “I’m still not sure but the UCD have hinted that they are going to accept our amendment. The mayors will be elected the way we propose!”.
Plenary session on March 9, 1978, at the center of that glorious three-year period that begins with the first general elections in June 1977, goes through the constitutional referendum in December 1978 and the second general elections in March 1979, and ends with the first local one month later, April of that year.
Overcoming the alleged Spanish cainism and the secular tendency to fight our differences with clubs, the country culminates the bulk of an exemplary transition from dictatorship to democracy, giving itself a lesson in historical sanity whose magnitude was also immediate and fair. international recognition.
The election of the mayor is one of the cornerstones of any democratic framework. A procedure that is an essential condition, although not enough, of the quality of a country’s local democracy. Well, certainly that was achieved almost forty-five years ago and since then it has been working to full satisfaction. For this reason, it is marvelous to contemplate the impudence of some who now want their modification, for pure reasons of opportunistic convenience, willing, in order to take advantage, to go with the toolbox to botch an alleged fault that for that purpose they have been invented.
Today, so much time later, everything sounds like déjà vu, like groundhog day, like that farce that ends up being, according to Marx, the perverse repetition of all stories. I have refreshed my memory with the help of some session diaries and, because I think it is illustrative to judge then and now the position of one and the other, here is the little history of the mayoral election system.
At Christmas 1977, the Government of Adolfo Suárez had submitted to the Cortes the obligatory Local Elections Bill, whose central goodness —which also opened the doors to the democratization of local life— was adorned with unnecessary partisan gestures, particularly the section of the election of the mayor. At this point, art. 26.3 of the bill stated that, on the established day, the president of the Electoral Board “shall immediately proclaim the corresponding candidates elected councilors and mayor the first candidate on the list who had obtained the most votes in the corresponding municipality.”
At that time it was called a hybrid system, between the direct election typical of majority systems and the election by councilors typical of proportional systems. Nothing to do with the direct election that is improperly spoken of now. The formula was admittedly unusual, except for something similar in Portugal. But the UCD, with the referent of the results of the previous general elections, assumed that, being the first party in a good number of cities, the norm would grant it the mayor in many without the need to resort to the support of Alianza Popular. In fact, this would have happened, for example, in Madrid. What shocked many of us was that the PSOE was not disgusting with the norm. We think that, on the one hand, he did the accounts in his own way with the results of the previous generals and, even if Madrid gave in, the rule favored him as the second party and a more than predictable candidate for first in many municipalities, according to the numerous polls that have already been carried out. they ran through the mentideros. In addition, no one escaped that, if that UCD was repugnant to agree with AP, the PSOE, eager for recognition as an alternative government by the Western powers, was not amused by any understanding, let alone a general one, with the communists. On the contrary, both the PCE and the nationalist parties and other minorities could do almost nothing in a system that recognized the election of mayors by councillors. Out of democratic convictions and electoral justice: apart from some feuds that one or the other could achieve, this other system generalized the culture of programmatic negotiation, of coalitions in which, despite modest results, they could find a certain role.
The discussion of the project occupied the entire first semester of the year and, during that time, overlapped with the constitutional debate itself. Aware of the matter, the groups had commissioned the best of their squads and the illustrious gallery did true justice to such an elevated moment. For the PSOE, the bill was immediately handled by Alfonso Guerra and, at his indications, by Guillermo Galeote and Luis Fajardo, among others. At the UCD, Manuel Núñez, a Leonese who later turned over to the AP and, finally, to the PP, served as squire. Also Kepa Sodupe and José Ángel Cuerda for the Basques of the PNV, and Macià Alavedra and, occasionally, Miquel Roca for the Catalans. The Government was represented by Jesús Sancho Rof, an excellent promise before being defeated by “a little bug that was so small, that if it fell off the table, it would kill itself”, as the Minister of Health would describe the cause of the toxic syndrome produced in 1981 for the consumption of adulterated rapeseed oil that left thousands dead and homeless in Spain. Other illustrious people occasionally passed by, that I remember, Enrique Múgica, Josep Solé Barberà, Ramón Tamames, Eduardo Martín Toval or the centrist F. Benzo, who chaired the Commission. And the two that matter to me. In the first place, the aforementioned Simón was Sánchez Montero: a farmer, baker, tailor, soon to be a communist and a combatant in the Civil War, a clandestine fighter, a political prisoner for almost fifteen years and, finally, a deputy for Madrid. And, of course, Jordi Solé Tura, already invested as a constitutional speaker —and, in the long run, just father of the country—, an optimal combination of doctrinal soundness and public service. Two of the men, in short, for whom I have had pure veneration, authentic references of committed politicians, literally virtuous, that we would long for today. And I, however, a young and modest political scientist, then a member of a well-known foundation dedicated above all to the study of electoral systems, whom Enrique Curiel had invited to participate as an advisor to the Communist Group in Congress.
The fact is that, when the Government presented the bill, the Commission was constituted and its sessions were about to begin, the amendments of the different groups on the subject of the mayoral election were a reflection of their first official positions. Of course, none from UCD, which defended the text; the already mentioned surprise that the PSOE did not present any amendment either, which meant its adherence to the hybrid mayor; finally, that of the remaining groups that, in one way or another, postulated the system of election by and among the councilors.
The discussions in the paper and commission had produced minor changes in the original text and none in the mayoral election system. The afternoon before the last session of the Commission, Curiel summoned Simón, Jordi and myself to see what we could do. Assuming our initial proposal was lost, it was agreed to consider an alternative that would help mitigate the damage that the text defended by the two major parties would cause to all minorities and, above all, to the PCE.
And the task was specially entrusted to me. I regret this impudence of the self-citation, but the pride of having collaborated in something that has served and well during these years is much superior to me. A middle way had to be found that would guarantee the election of the mayor by the majorities but that these would never be an unstable mix of parties, the central argument of the hybrid system of the majority parties. So the next day –February 24– I presented myself with a text that you already know because it ended up in the law itself.
We continued to be very skeptical: the initiative should take the form of an in voce amendment, that is, that for its simple study it would have to be accepted for processing without exception by all the members of the Commission itself. But that is what finally happened and now I owe myself to modesty and I admit that not so much because of the packaging of the proposal but because of the masterful defense that Solé Tura made of it. So all the groups accepted it for processing, but the UCD and PSOE with the warning that it was not to their liking and they would vote against it (and reject it), as it happened. But something had been gained: accepted for processing, the Communist Group could keep it for debate in plenary.
The plenary session was held between March 8 and 9, but the substance was processed in the afternoon session of the first day. The morning had ruled right up to Article 26, and the Commission’s positions had been projected almost mimetically, yes, with a doctrinal and argumentative level that it would be easy to miss today. Then it was the end of the session and the meeting with Simón that I refer to at the beginning of this article. Soon Solé Tura joined us, who, having been made aware of the rumor, showed a strangeness no less than ours. But the surprises did not wait. After the session restarted, upon reaching the article in question, the Canarian deputy and socialist spokesman Fajardo Spínola unexpectedly asked for the floor. The president warns him that he proceeds only to defend the opinion. “Of course, Mr. President.” Pure trickery, because his interest lay in showing that they were the first to accept the good reasons for the communist amendment and that they were willing to lead its approval. After circumlocutions and paraphrases, he solemnly announced that his group would vote in favor of the amendment, reversing months of defense of the hybrid mayor. The UCD (I still have the hazy impression today that they were the first to change their criteria) immediately demanded another turn to defend the project. Manuel Núñez drew our amendment as the epitome of balance, a masterpiece of eclecticism, an unparalleled example of the best consensus among diverse systems. Or little less. Everything, without a doubt, to announce, of course, his enthusiastic adherence to the communist amendment. The president of Congress found himself in the process of acknowledging that it had been the most paradoxical turn of defense of an opinion that he had had to preside over. From that point on nothing changed.
Happily the new mayor, the one we know so far, was approved in plenary session by 303 votes in favor, 3 against, 5 abstentions and 1 null. Then it passed without changes through the Senate and from there to the BOE of July 21 and, almost without realizing it, the formula has elected mayors in eight thousand municipalities in each of the eleven local elections held since then.
(I encourage those who still have an aftertaste for another way of doing politics to access the audio of that plenary session, which they can find by clicking on session 1 and session 2).
“What are we trying to do?” Solé Tura wondered in her explanation of vote. “Make a democracy work at the municipal level in this country or satisfy the interests of certain political groups?”. The central question was none other and Politics, with a capital letter, resolved it. The representation of local corporations still calls for many priority improvements, including measures against turncoats and corruption. But the mayoral election system does not seem to be among them, except for occasional shamans. Many of the usual new democrats, who today are moved only by an opportunistic interest in the meanest of senses, would blush when reading what their elders defended and agreed to. But today the times of that Policy have not only changed: some are determined to make it disappear.
