When There Was A Different Constitution

Mallorca, along with the rest of Spain, has a curious double public holiday interspersed by a day which isn't a public holiday, as in today. To make things even in secular and religious circles, one part of this holiday dualism is devoted to the Immaculate Conception (tomorrow) and the Constitution, which was yesterday. Some might suggest that it might have been an idea to put them together, rather than have a day in the middle, but the referendum of 1978 put paid to that idea. It was 6 December and there was no subsequent moving it or Immaculate Conception.

The 1978 Constitution is the most recent of several constitutional incarnations, the original having been the famed Constitution of 1812 through which the world was to become familiar with the notion of liberalism; it was a Spanish political invention. Strictly speaking, and so taking out two royal charters, two constitutions that were never enacted and Franco's "Fundamental Laws of the Realm", there have been seven constitutions in all.

The 1978 referendum didn't necessarily herald scenes of great joy or celebration. Voters were content enough with the result (yes), but it had been pretty much a foregone conclusion, while, as the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" pointed out in its front-page report of the referendum result (headline: "Democracy for Spain"), a lower than had been expected turnout may well have been the result of the people having got bored with what had been a "big and expensive publicity campaign" on behalf of the government. The greatest difficulty with securing the yes vote was in the Basque Country where 55% of voters abstained and 24% were against (nationally the yes vote outnumbered the no votes by eleven to one).

Notably absent from the report was any mention of today's greatest troublemakers, the Catalonians. This wasn't perhaps surprising, as the new constitution went a long way in acceding to Catalonian demands for autonomous government. It was this acceptance of Catalonia's wishes that left the drafters of the constitution in something of a pickle. Other regions had started to voice their desire for autonomous government. In the end, they decided to give every region autonomy, which is what exists today.

But had it not been for the intervention of the Civil War and then Franco, autonomy might have occurred earlier. The previous constitution of 1931 had paved the way for there to be regional autonomy. A draft statute for Balearics' autonomy was in fact approved in July of that year, but it was never put into effect. The reasons why were several. One was a disagreement as to whether the Balearics, lacking it was said a political tradition, should in fact form part of an autonomous Catalonia. Another was that, despite its approval, there were a great number of local authorities which hadn't been represented at an assembly held at Palma's Teatre Principal. The Menorcans were against the draft and so didn't show up and nor did representatives from various towns in Mallorca - Valldemossa, Muro, Ses Salines, to name but three.

The driving-force behind the draft statute was something known as the Association for Mallorcan Culture, and there was no one more important in this association than Joan Pons Marquès. Born in Soller in 1894, Pons was a writer, philosopher, historian and one of the leading intellectuals that Mallorca produced in the twentieth century. The Association, formed in 1923, had as its principal objective the promotion of Catalan culture in Mallorca. Between 1928 and 1936 it published a monthly magazine called "La nostra terra" which while eclectic in political views - both those of the left and of the Christian right - held firm to the notion of the Catalan language and to autonomy for the Balearics.

Pons had no truck with the notion of a pact of autonomy with Catalonia (the constitution didn't allow it anyway), which was something the heavily Republican Menorcans wanted. They, the Menorcans, also considered the whole Balearics' autonomy movement to have been a front for control by the man who would become Franco's banker, Joan March. Pons himself, while liberal, was of a centre-right political persuasion. His promotion of the Catalan language was not to prove to be an issue once Franco took charge. Indeed, he was president of the Societat Arqueològica Lulliana (an association which honoured the Mallorcan Ramon Llull) right through the period of the Franco regime until his death in 1971. It was an association which, despite its obvious Catalan connection, was never proscribed.

The 1931 constitution, drawn up by the Second Republic, was of course scrapped by Franco. Pons, an advocate of autonomy, bowed to the inevitable and a quiet, obedient life. It was to be 47 years from the drafting of the Balearics statute of autonomy before autonomy was once again to appear on the agenda.