Cultural Pluralism and the Spanish Constitution of 1978

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 contains a wide range of guarantees of cultural diversity for groups and formations in which the personality of members of the Spanish population unfolds. There is a significant development of ensuring pluralism of the major cultural communities, inserted into a system of territorial autonomy with a wide capacity to govern for the development of their cultural interests. Moreover, the Constitution guarantees the protection of the common culture of Spain. However, the guarantee of non-territorial cultural groups (ethnic diversity) is confined to the generic non-discrimination principle. The Constitution also guarantees, specifically, cultural pluralism with regard to certain institutions, as in the case of education or the media.

Articulation of Cultural Pluralism

1. The Question of the Unitary State and Culture

Unity is a quality inherent in any government organization, either a centralized or composite model. Unlike the emphasis on the unity of the Spanish nation, the Constitution only refers to the unity adjacent to the state, but it is clear that it permeates the entire text of your system. Cultural unity is not usually mentioned among the operational areas in which the principle of unity of the state is stated. "Culture" is at once the full responsibility of the State, autonomous communities, and local authorities, i.e., it does not have an exclusive allocation or distribution; it is a matter entrusted in parallel and simultaneously.

Culture is an indivisible whole phenomenon, and this is what underlies the strength of the constitutional legislator to the fragmentation of powers among different local authorities. The indivisible nature of culture has also been justified from consideration as a value throughout the State to protect.

Culture is the ultimate self-governing dominion, even in the absence of ethnic diversity. With regard to the promotional activity of culture, there is a natural tendency of all local authorities (and therefore of the central government) to establish their presence in cultural life. This would be justified as a title of more capacity than competition, i.e., as a global field of action with other local authorities. The Constitutional Court (CC) attaches global competition "Promoting Culture" in the regions, but no longer mandates the state of global competition on "service culture." Making available to the competition for autonomous culture is inescapable due to the desire to protect and guarantee the free development of their ethnic and cultural diversity, in particular, the cultures of the peoples of Spain. Similarly, having assigned simultaneously to the State competition on "service culture" is a decision consistent with the existence of a common culture within the cultural diversity of Spain. The CC has brilliantly exposed this concurrence of jurisdiction in matters of culture whose aim is that the state set a "minimum" of equal legal-institutional means and instruments of creation, preservation, and transmission of culture, which are channels through which, in a very important way, citizens have access to culture and realize their right to it.

In the Constitution, "cultural unity" offers a deeply democratic approach to the question of "drive-cultural diversity." In any case, the unit ceases to be a starting point and is an open project to which all cultural communities in Spain are called to participate voluntarily and democratically. The bases of the open project are presented in the Constitution on two levels:

• Conceptual (semantic function of integration of cultural pluralism)
• Procedural (action by public authorities for the development of cultural plurality as a harmonic convergence, noting the need for dialogue and cultural exchange).