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Democratic backsliding : the case of Spain
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The Spanish transition of 1975 has been considered a paradigmatic case of the third wave of democratization. The most used quantitative democracy indexes, independently from variables that each index includes in their measurements, categorized Spain among the top most consolidated democracies in the world. However, in the last decade, an increasing level of concern on the Spanish quality of democracy has risen. In 2006, experts started using the term democratic backsliding to describe the state-led erosion, debilitation, or elimination of democratic political institutions, a gradual process that may be hard to detect. This dissertation reveals that the Spanish democratic system is suffering a democratic backsliding process. A review of Freedom House, EIU and V-DEM indexes showed that Spain is suffering a decline in its democratic quality. The in-depth qualitative analysis of the Spanish political system has revealed how the current coalition government has been using democratic tools and procedures to expand its political power, which has been causing the erosion of Spanish democratic institutions. Specifically, Spain is going through a polarization process exacerbated by pro-independentist and leftist antiestablishment political parties who captured the government into short-term political pacts; executive aggrandizement has been exposed in the way the government has appointed new judges and shows the politicization of the judicial system; the weakening of the rule of law has been exposed in the Catalan Amnesty for politicians sentenced to crimes of embezzlement, terrorism and misuse of public funds; high levels of corruption in which the current president is using its executive power to intimidate judges who are investigating possible corruption crimes from individuals of his inner circle; and the attempt to control the media and press or the prioritization of governmental subsidies towards those media outlets that hold similar ideological position to the governments. The genesis of the current Spanish Backsliding process has been explained by applying Rustow´s dynamic model. The historical evolution of the political and institutional dynamics of Spain, especially the critical events of the relationship between the Spanish central government and Catalonia, reveals that the roots of this democratic backsliding process can be traced back two centuries ago to a lack of national unity due to major identity issues found in Catalonia. It has been shown that Rustow´s sequential phases have not been accomplished during the transition toward democracy. Even though there was a consensus that the prolonged and inconclusive struggle was the Catalan identity and its territorial disputes, the Spanish constitution of 1978 did not solve this dispute.
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