La "catarsis" del Senado español

In Spain, issues of identity are really explicit, but multiple regional identities competed with an overaching national one. If Spain’s Senate is to be redefined itself as more of a states house and less of a party house, in time the Senate might impress Spaniards with some of the arguments for a proactive upper house. The frequency with which European framers transplanted institutions and comprehensive systems suggests that not only abstract models can be borrowed, but the territorial identity perspective should be helpful too for studying the Senate Reform process that is taking place in Spain, in the aftermath of the victory of Socialist party at General Elections in 2004. In this article, I explore different identity claims currently being made in reform process of Catalonian Home Rule, given the new context in which Catalonian Parliament finds itself. The central importance of the new majority party-context in Catalonia and Basque Country, when attempting to understand the complex interplay of identity markers and proposals of Senate reform, has been further emphasised by this article. Decisions over which country’s second chamber models to emulate, are partially dependent on images of exemplars models outlined by publicists engaged outside sources and systems, buttressed their claims through metaphorical association to other federal countries, such as Germany, because Spanish scholar elite still holds German Bundesrat in high regard. This article focusing on «territorial» identity, points to the limits of conventional survey performance of national-basis parties in a reformed Senate, mostly because differences in party-line-votes just emerge when territorialnationalist parties are represented, both at the Senate and the Lower House. The attempts to include territorial identities to construct territorial representaLA «CATARSIS» DEL SENADO ESPAÑOL 391 39 En referencia a la representaciòn territorial, y como ya hemos dejado apuntado desde el incio de este artìculo Caamaño explica que «la vedadera dificultad [es la de dotar a la representaciòn territorial] de un contenido distinto y diferenciado de la general reprsentaciòn polìtica, de suerte que los representantes no lo fuesen de ciudadanos, sino de un sujeto colectivo de base territorial que, encontràndose integrado por ciudadanos, expresase intereses vinculados a aquellos pero de contenido diverso al que pretenden como sujetos cìvicos inidividualmente considerados»; FRANCISCO CAAMAÑO DOMINGUEZ, «La Reforma del Senado», in La Reforma Constitucional, Dirección del Servicio Jurídico del Estado, Ministerio de Justicia, Madrid, 2005, p. 92. 40 MARCO CIPOLLONI, «Il lessico di appartenenza nella Costituzione Spagnola (Un’analisi linguistica della problematica identitaria)», paper, cit. p. 7. tion in a reformed Second Chamber must explore some of the ways in which identities are being mobilised within nationalists-parties strategies, and the positive and negative effects of this process. Tension can arise in the constitutional reform process between the deliberate construction of national representation, which must be carried out by state-basis parties, and the various territorial identities representation that expect to nationalists parties. I argue that these are better conceptual tools for the purpose of unravelling the complexities of identity politics in this constitutional reform context than the contrast between regional parties and national party in office. 392 JUAN JOSÉ RUIZ RUIZ