The City: A Political History of Democracy and Municipal Autonomy
1. The City: Its Political Dimension and the Need for Democratic Renewal
1.1. The City: Cradle of Civilization, Politics, and Democracy
With the rise of cities came the emergence and concentration of political and economic power. Governments gained the ability to enforce laws, impose prohibitions, and punish violations. This process culminated in Greek cities, particularly Athens, where enduring moral and political categories were established. These included the inseparable values of justice and freedom, respect for the law, and above all, the supreme law: the Constitution.
Aristotle’s political philosophy, with its ethic of conviction, argued that the state should be a relationship between morally equal, free citizens, governed by the rule of law and based on free will rather than force. This principle profoundly influenced the European spirit.
A key challenge was the size of the community. How could it integrate its members and make them aware of their shared life? The identification of “politics” with the city (“polis”) stemmed from the belief that the city-state was the ideal territorial scope for cultivating these values and fostering a harmonious and fulfilling life, as well as the expression of a higher form of culture and civility.
Crucially, public participation was equal; positions were neither inherited nor bought. They originated through democratic elections and/or random selection among citizens. The polis functioned through the voluntary cooperation of citizens, engaging in free political discussion and contributing to civic life based on freedom and respect for the law.
1.2. The City as a School of Citizenship
If the city symbolizes civilization, its etymology gives birth to the concept of politics, and within it, democracy as the highest form of political morality. The practice of citizenship transforms individuals into free agents, empowered to make decisions and hold courts accountable. The city becomes a school of citizenship.
Athens: A Living Paradigm
The Constitution of Cleisthenes (507 BC) stands as the fundamental law and democratic pinnacle of Athens. All male citizens over twenty years old participated in the Assembly, which convened ten times a year, with additional special sessions.
The Assembly’s primary function was to oversee and hold judges and officials accountable. These tribunals were composed of numerous citizens, serving short terms and generally not eligible for re-election. This extensive participatory rotation ensured that no citizen felt alienated from the responsibility of governance or lacked experience with the challenges of public office.
Among the magistrates, the most prominent were the Council of Five Hundred and the courts, with their large juries. The Council of Five Hundred headed the executive branch and presented matters to the Assembly for deliberation.
The courts resolved not only civil and criminal disputes but also exercised legislative and executive powers. Any citizen could challenge a law’s entry into force before the court, suspending it until a decision was reached. The court could determine whether a law violated the Constitution and repeal it.
While rotation and random selection had drawbacks, such as governmental instability and lack of continuity, they served a greater purpose: involving all citizens.
The decline of the Greek city-state’s democratic model occurred in two ways. Internally, alternative philosophical models emerged, emphasizing privacy, happiness, and personal pleasure (Epicurean school) or critiquing the city’s social structure and policies, advocating for the sage’s isolation and detachment (Cynical school).
Externally, the concentration of economic, political, and strategic power in Asia (Persia), Africa (Carthage), and Italy (Rome) led to interference in the economic, political, and military affairs of Greek cities, hindering the formation of solid and lasting alliances between them.
1.3. The City as a Component of the Modern State’s Territoriality
The era of empires did not eliminate cities but shifted the core of political decision-making to a distant and often arbitrary supreme authority.
The concentration of power in large states, removed from citizens and impersonal in its decisions, obscured the political role of cities and erased the dignity that citizenship held in Greek life.
It took nearly a millennium for Europe to experience the great revolution of the cities, culminating between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This revolution ended feudalism, laid the foundations for the modern nation-state, and secured peace on the roads.
The “bourgeoisie,” seeking to encourage attendance at their markets, established public domain rules to curb violence and crime within the city and resolve disputes between citizens.
The French Communes arose from this covenant and oath to establish peace. It was an oath between equals who defined the rules of coexistence and organized the city’s self-governance.
Other agglomerations, known as Consulates, enjoyed full municipal autonomy. Governed by consuls, they resembled small republics with a general assembly of citizens.
In Spain, Ferdinand granted charters to those who repopulated towns and villages reconquered from Islam, recognizing their rights and privileges. Later, cities formalized their privileged status, citizens’ rights and duties, and self-governing bodies.
The decisive battle for cities was for freedom from feudal bondage—the power of the dominus—and to achieve independence. The city became a moral person (not a mere association of individuals but a collective entity influencing all aspects of life), allied with princes against the feudal nobility. Cities were liberated from lords, while monarchical power was strengthened by weakening the nobility.
The consolidation of absolute monarchies in Europe was built, once again, upon the ruins of cities’ liberty and self-governance. The defeat of the Communard movement in Castile and, later, the failure of the “agermanades” town alliance in Valencia marked the beginning of a historical process of stripping away charters, letters, and self-governing institutions, subjecting cities to the authority of governors appointed by the central state power.
Simultaneously, social, economic, and technological growth led to urban concentration. Industrialization became a distinctly urban phenomenon.
1.4. Municipal Autonomy: Conflicts and Tensions with Other Local Authorities. The State as a Community of Municipalities
The nineteenth century witnessed a surge in urban population and productivity. During this period, new levels of territorial public administration were legalized: the province and the department. Later, regions were institutionalized in some countries. This led to numerous conflicts and tensions between local, provincial, and regional authorities. The logical approach would have been to grant regions a coordinating role, applying the principle of subsidiarity.
The constitutional mandate to consider the municipality as part of the state’s territorial organization, while also recognizing its autonomy to manage its own interests, could lead to viewing the state as a community of local communities.
2. Municipalities, Decentralization, and Popular Participation
As our old cities expanded, their management became increasingly complex. This necessitated devolved management and local administrative bodies. While ownership and overall management remained centralized, these delegations functioned as administrative units within neighborhoods.
Simultaneously, new urban social movements and civil society initiatives (associations) emerged.
City administrations and local public authorities recognized their limitations: bureaucratic slowness, administrative overload, and inefficient operations that hindered social satisfaction with community services.
While acknowledging the need for decentralization and citizen participation, some local authorities expressed distrust of excessive intervention by self-organized civil society in public administration.
Conversely, neighborhood social movements feared that excessive collaboration with institutions might compromise their “social purity.”
This mutual distrust hindered fruitful collaborations. The popular association movement in our cities must recognize that it cannot supplant decisions based on majority democratic legitimacy. Conversely, local authorities cannot afford to ignore the vital role of associations, mechanically imposing the will of a minority on the entire population. They must genuinely promote mechanisms for direct communication with the population. The underlying problem is fundamentally political. Colomer’s paradigm of the community of the free, the free city of free individuals, is relevant here.
Furthermore, there is a certain mystification surrounding decentralization. It can also lead to chaos and inefficiency.
Examples of decentralization include District Boards, which directly monitor neighborhood issues, assume certain responsibilities, and make specific decisions. Barcelona’s participation rules provide for district elections, distinct from general elections. The presence of associations in these meetings as permanent bodies for debate, dialogue, and consultation is also regulated. (See Law 22/1998 of December 29, Barcelona Municipal Charter, Title II on Districts).
However, we can go further. Initiatives such as temporarily relocating City Hall to neighborhoods and implementing free choice of candidates and single-member districts in elections can help revive the communal spirit of neighborhoods.
An advanced model was Venezuela’s Municipal System Act of 1978, Title IX, titled “Community Participation.” It provided for direct intervention by residents in matters affecting them through the following means:
- Town meetings: At least every three months, the Council would hold a meeting to publicly address matters raised by residents.
- Institutionalization of neighborhood associations with legal personality.
- Municipal people’s initiative: Recognized Neighborhood Associations, trade unions, guilds, and other groups representing community sectors.
- Authority to request the Council to review local ordinances, excluding tax matters, within six months of their publication.
Perhaps we should reconsider the abdication of sovereignty to delegates and an oligarchic caste. The oligarchic temptations of representative democracy are reinforced by the vast power apparatus at its disposal and the technical means of controlling information and alienating propaganda. Perhaps this democratic reconquest should begin in the city and its suburbs. Only by truly attaining the status of citizens, as the Greeks taught us, can we assume the dignity and responsibility of shared governance of the public sphere.
3. Municipal Autonomy and Inter-municipal Cooperation
3.1. Counties
a) Concept and Nature
The Constitution allows for the establishment of associative local entities but does not make it mandatory.
Article 141
3. Different groupings of municipalities within a province may be created.
Article 152
3. By grouping bordering municipalities, the statutes may establish their own territorial constituencies, which shall enjoy full legal personality.
· Decisions by the Constitutional Court
“Seizing the opportunity provided by Article 152.3 of the Constitution, the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (art. 5.2) and the Basque Country (art. 37.3, c) attribute to the respective Communities (…), the power to create supra-municipal demarcations. This does not exclude the autonomous administration, surely the state’s competence to dictate the basic rules on the matter, but the possibility that the State establish or continue in existence, by choice, a second-grade local entity, which, as such, only the relevant bodies in autonomous Catalonia and the Basque Country are empowered to create or delete” (STC 179/1985).
Basic regulations: Law on Bases of the Local System (Law 7/1985 of April 2, BOE of April 3).
· Territorial or Institutional Nature
Depend on the legislative and statutory provisions on the matter (Art. 5.1 of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy states, “the Catalan government is responsible for the territorial organization of municipalities and counties”).
b) Difference with Municipal Associations
Counties, unlike municipal associations, are formed to pursue a plurality of common services for the affected municipalities, services that are demanded at the county level.
c) Creation
The initiative for creating a county may come from the municipalities involved.
Section 42 LBRL
1. The Autonomous Communities, in accordance with their Statutes, may create counties or other territorial entities comprising several municipalities, whose characteristics determine specific common interests or demand management services in this field.
2. The initiative for the creation of a county may come from the interested municipalities themselves. In any case, the county cannot be created if two-fifths of the municipalities that should be grouped in it expressly oppose it, provided that, in this case, these municipalities represent at least half of the electorate of the territory concerned. When the county should bring together municipalities from more than one province, a favorable report from the provincial councils whose territory includes such municipalities will be required.
4th Supplementary Provision
In the event that, pursuant to the provisions of item 2 of article 42 of this Law, the county organization is partially prevented and a minority of the entire territory of the Autonomous Community is affected, the Government of Catalonia, having adopted in the past a county organization for its entire territory and its statute also providing for a general county organization, may, by law passed by an absolute majority of its legislature, agree to the constitution of the county or counties that discourage extending the organization throughout its territory.
d) Organization
Section 42 LBRL
3. The Laws of the Autonomous Communities shall determine the territorial scope of the counties, the composition and functioning of its governing bodies, which are representative of the municipalities that merged, and the skills and economic resources that are assigned to them in any case.
e) Competition
The laws of the Autonomous Communities shall also determine the jurisdiction of the counties.
· Limitation:
Section 42 LBRL
4. The creation of counties does not entail the loss by the Municipalities of competition for the services listed in Article 26, nor deprive them of any involvement in each of the matters listed in paragraph 2 of Article 25.
· Pathways to Integration of County Competition:
- The transfer of functions not reserved for the provincial councils in the LBRL.
- The assignment of municipal responsibilities not included in Article 26.
- Functions “improperly” delegated or allocated by the province, the Autonomous Community, or the State.
3.2 Metropolitan Areas
a) Concept and Nature
Metropolitan areas are formed by local municipalities in large urban centers where economic and social links necessitate joint planning and coordination of specific services and works. They are mandatory groupings of municipalities.
Article 43 LBRL
2. Metropolitan areas are local entities comprising the municipalities of large urban centers where economic and social links exist, necessitating joint planning and coordination of specific services and works.
· Nature
Non-territorial (activity will be focused on certain services and works). See Item 4.1 of Political Structures and Public Administration (II).
b) Creation
Article 43 LBRL
1. The Autonomous Communities, after hearing the State Administration, Provincial Councils, and concerned parties, may create, modify, and delete metropolitan areas by statute, in accordance with their respective statutes.
c) Organization
3. The legislation of the Autonomous Region shall determine the organs of government and administration, which will represent all the municipalities within the area, the economic and operating system, which will ensure the participation of all municipalities in decision-making and a fair burden-sharing between them, and the services and carrying out works or provide metropolitan and procedure for execution.
d) Competition
There is no specific model for Metropolitan Areas. The goal is to achieve a municipal character. The possibilities for planning are numerous.
3.3 Associations of Municipalities
a) Concept and Nature
Associations are institutional entities constituted by the voluntary association of two or more municipalities for the joint execution of works or services within their competence.
Art 44
1. Municipalities are recognized as having the right to associate with others in a coalition to implement certain works and services within their competence in common.
· Nature
Institutional. Therefore, it is not necessary for the municipalities to belong to the same province or have territorial continuity.
Art 44
2. Associations have legal personality and the capacity to fulfill their specific purposes and are governed by their own statutes. The Statute shall regulate the territorial scope of the Entity, its purpose and jurisdiction, governing bodies and resources in time, and few other things are necessary for its operation. In any case, the governing bodies are representative of the joint councils.
b) Creation
3. The approval of the Regulations of the Associations shall be determined by the laws of the Autonomous Communities and adjusted in any case, the following rules:
a) The development is for the Aldermen of all municipalities promoters of the Commonwealth, constituted Assembly.
b) The Provincial or Provincial Councils concerned will issue a report on the draft Statute.
c) Full of all local authorities will approve the Statute.
4. A similar procedure is required for the modification or deletion of Associations.
c) Organization
As provided in the Bylaws. Limitation: that governing bodies are representative of the joint councils.
d) Competition
Specialty.