Ramon Jauregui in a file picture./Photo: La Razon.
Eva Cantón. Madrid
Socialist Ramón Jáuregui has been saying for a while that Spanish politics is going through such a serious time that it needs a push similar to the one of the Transition at the end of the seventies. He bets on a constitutional reform, a renewal of the democratic agreement granted for Spanish people 36 years ago, which should include the most significant nationalist powers.
In his book, “El país que seremos. Un nuevo pacto para la España posible” (Turpial, 2014), which is being launched today, Jáuregui suggests issuing a mandate so that the Constitutional Commission of the Congress begins working on the start of the reform to be passed before the legislative elections of 2015, and so that the new Courts –already Constituent– are the ones developing the constitutional reform that should later be subject to referendum.
In this process to update the Magna Carta, Jáuregui includes reconsidering the territorial model, going more deeply into fundamental freedoms and rights, and opening the way for the economic and social aspects derived from current phenomena such as globalization.
Naturally, he admits that a constitutional reform, no matter how limited it is, leaves room for political parties to make proposals about the shape of the State, but he makes clear that his personal position is favourable for the parliamentary monarchy to remain.
“It is a nuclear matter, keystone for our constitutional agreement that has no alternative social and political agreement”, states the socialist member of the European Parliament in his book, published before the abdication of the King Juan Carlos, which has reopened the republican debate among the public opinion.
“The democracy’s imperfections cry out for an agreement on the parameters of a new project for the country”
Jáuregui insists on the fact that the imperfections of the representative democracy cry out for a change towards more solid leaderships, leaving the politics of party trenches to reach an agreement on the parameters of a new project for the country.
However, facing the undermining speech of the anti-establishment groups, his argument is that reformulating the democratic framework will not be possible while the current system is being demolished to be replaced by an “impossible happy Arcady”. “The main walls of the constitutional building –he says– do not have to be altered and the PSOE is not going to alter them”.