Next Sunday, although it is hardly talked about, the 208 senators who will occupy their seats in the Upper House will be elected by direct suffrage. A haze hangs over the image of the Senate, where from time to time the debate on its reform to make it a “true” chamber of territorial representation reappears. But the reality is that it is, above all, a little-exploited institution, where things also happen outside the media focus, and where more could happen if it were not gripped by the partisan politics of the big formations.
To illustrate this, it should be noted that it would be possible to hold general elections only for the Senate. It would change the panorama, the vision of the Chamber, many pending debates would be opened… But for the moment, 23-J are elections for both chambers. There are 208 seats in dispute – the rest of the total, 265 this legislature, are by regional designation – with a system in which each province has four representatives, three in Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife, two in Ceuta and Melilla, and one in the rest of the islands. Catalonia, therefore, will have 16 senators since the population is not weighted.
Although they are open lists, the parties place their bets with “number ones”. In Barcelona, ??Manuel Cruz (PSC), Joan Queralt (ERC, who competes with EH Bildu), Antoni Castellà (JxCAT), Laura Campos (Sumar-ECP), Josep Tutusaus (PP), Lorena Iglesias (PDeCAT) and Daniel Carmona ( Vox) occupy the top positions.
The vote in Congress drags that of the Senate, but once there the dynamics change. Putting aside the debate on its territorial function for a moment, its role is minimized by saying that it is a Chamber of second reading. As the PSC candidate, Manuel Cruz, and former president of the institution, explains, his function is to perfect the laws that come from Congress, to generate a legislative cooling to improve it. Therefore, strengthening the democratic system.
What has happened this legislature, especially in its final stages, exemplifies how partisanship makes the work of the Chamber difficult. Excessive use has been made of the urgent route by the parties of the ruling coalition in the processing of the laws in the Senate. Josep Lluís Cleries, spokesman for JxCAT, points out that some important initiatives, such as the Housing law or the reform of the law of the only yes is yes, have had to be reviewed in a few days. “The legislative quality has been worse,” he says. Therefore, a function of the Spanish bicameral system is stolen.
The main powers of the Senate reside in its role as a territorial chamber, from authorizing agreements between communities, distributing the Inter-territorial Compensation Fund, it can dissolve local bodies if they violate the Constitution. And, as it happened during the process, it has the power to apply article 155 of the Constitution.
The elections to the Senate force a reflection on the territorial model in its own sense that is not being done in this campaign, indicates the philosopher and candidate Manuel Cruz. One of the effects of the process, he explains, is fatigue over the territorial debate, but it must be remembered that this debate does not only mean talking about independence, but that there are many things pending. From the financing model, the transparency in the distribution of powers, the interconnections, what are the proposals on the State of Autonomies… We must also reflect, indicates Cruz, on how this model, which has been above all centrifugal, can have a federalizing twist.
Questions, therefore, that are the responsibility of the Senate. In this sense, Cleries indicates that it is not a matter of pointing out whether the Senate is “useless” but of asking why it is not used. The reforms so that they are a single reading chamber on all territorial issues are on the table. “In this legislature the PSOE has not made any gesture to carry them out,” and he points out that the full decentralization of the State is still pending. The weight of the process undoubtedly conditions strategies.
But even, Cleries indicates, the reform to expand the use of the Catalan language in this Chamber has not been implemented either, a decision taken at the Dialogue Table. The shadow of the political confrontation, of the polarization in Congress also reaches the Upper House, with the underutilization of its potential.
Another issue to reflect on, according to Manuel Cruz’s analysis, is the electoral system that encourages bipartisanship to be much greater in this House. In this legislature, the PSOE had 95 senators, the PP with 85, and the next group was ERC-EH Bildu with 13. On the one hand, this would make it easier to carry out reforms with an agreement between the two majority parties. But it also reveals the sweeping impact that the general elections have on the Senate, a chamber that is above all territorial.
The debate is still open in a Senate with more capacity to exploit. Where the debates are slower, the control questions to the president have more time. Apart from the debates between Sánchez and Feijóo, in the final stretch of the legislature, the Senate, as Manuel Cruz indicates, should have an important role in a complex political moment and tension at the seams of the State.
