The Origin of the Autonomous Community of Castile and León (Part I)

Castile and León—not the great Castile and León once ruled by kings such as Ferdinand III the Saint or his son Alfonso X the Wise, or the one that told Catalans and Aragonese: “You keep some little islands in the Mediterranean, and I’ll share the world with Portugal,” but rather the sprightly Autonomous Community of Castile and León—is about to turn three decades old (this February will mark 29 years since its Statute of autonomy was signed). Now that so much time has passed, we accept with total naturalness the fact that there are seventeen Autonomous Communities; that Albacete is in Castilla-La Mancha and not in the Region of Murcia; or that the Basque Country consists of three provinces and not four or two. Without a doubt, most of us have forgotten how, in just a few years, with much disorder, tension, and enthusiasm, a handful of people driven by, let’s say… mmm… altruistic interests, closed a completely new map of Spain, where Castile and León ended up with nine provinces—just as easily as it could have ended up with six, eleven, or sixteen.
So let’s go over, in three installments, everything that happened in those years to remember the origin of our Autonomous Community and why it is the way it is.

León and Old Castile, 1975

This story cannot begin with a “It all started one morning in…”. In reality, the Castilian and Leonese regional sentiment had always been there, in the background, like every time village festivals came around and the ladies began to dance a jota, or when Real Ávila played against Palencia or Segoviana. Although, to be serious, one can say that the first public demonstrations of regionalism appeared in the mid-1970s, after having been dormant for almost forty years due, of course, to the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship. At that time, the “One, Great and Free” Spain had a hyper-centralized model, where the capital controlled 80% of the budget, leaving the remaining 20% to other local and provincial institutions. The inefficiency of this model led Catalans and Basques on one side, and the technocrats of the Regime on the other, to begin a debate on the model of the State—a debate which, if we are honest, still has not ended.

And how was this debate experienced in our land? Well, in Castile and León everyone agreed with the centralist model (86% in Castile and 90% in León); I think because they had never considered it or because they thought it suited them well. However, there were a few—mainly university people (students and professors) who had lived elsewhere in richer regions of Spain—who, upon returning, realized that something was wrong. Supposedly, centralism was terrible for Catalonia and the Basque Country, but there they had jobs and a much better quality of life than in Castile, where villages were emptying faster than in a war. It was clear that centralism had not only failed to correct the inequalities between Castile and the periphery but had actually increased them. The presentation in Madrid of the draft of the Fourth Development Plan (for the uninitiated: a set of Francoist political and economic rules and plans to lift the country “Soviet-style”) proved them right, so in December 1975 a group of Francoist procuradores in the Cortes and university professors met to form an association to defend the region’s interests in light of the Plan and the upcoming territorial debate (Franco was still warm in his grave).

The association was called Regional Alliance, and its most immediate goal was to mobilize people by promoting regional sentiment, which at that time was rather small. Why? Experts agree on three main reasons: the Franco regime’s use of Castilian identity symbols as an anti-separatist weapon; the absence of differential traits, such as a distinct language; and the fact that, since Castile had founded the “club” called Spain, its status as founder made it wary of anyone trying to leave or undermine it. For the territorial question, the association proposed a model similar to the French one, where the provinces (departments) held the power but would join forces to manage certain competences together in provincial associations. The idea was to create a union of Castilian-Leonese provinces that would have the same rights and powers—especially the power to collect taxes—as any chartered province, like Álava or Navarre.

Poster of the Castilian-Leonese Regional Institute

The positions of the Regional Alliance did not please all regionalists, especially those on the left. They were not convinced about the Alliance being founded by Francoists, and the idea of a provincial association felt insufficient to them. Therefore, a month later, in January 1976, a group of intellectuals, university professors, entrepreneurs, journalists, environmentalists, and members of progressive political parties met to create a progressive regionalist association, which they called Castilian-Leonese Regional Institute. Its objectives were the same as those of the Alliance, but it disagreed with it on certain matters, such as the color of the Castile flag (purple for the Institute members, red for the Alliance) or the provinces that would make up Castile and León (Old Castile plus León for the Alliance, or the current nine provinces for the Institute). And, contrary to what we are used to in Castile and Spain, the two new groups, despite competing with each other, got along more or less well (I repeat: they shared the same goal). Although, as expected, the Alliance—being made up of members of the ruling Regime—had more influence and better funding, and in the end usually got its way. A curiosity, just so you see that not everything was as politicized as one might think: the Workers’ Party of Spain, of Maoist ideology, supported the Alliance rather than the Institute.

Flags of Castile according to the Alliance (left) and the Institute (right)

There was also a fundamental difference between the Regional Alliance and the Institute. In late-Franco Spain there was no freedom of association. It wasn’t like today, when if you want to create an Association for the Independence of Solosancho (AIS), you just write some statutes, go to the registry, and create it without any problem. Back then, the applicable law was the 1964 Law of Associations, which allowed the creation of groups with political aims, as long as they did not seek to gain power—that is, to run in elections. However, every time the association met, it had to notify the provincial civil governor 72 hours in advance and allow representatives of the authorities to attend. The Regional Alliance had no problem with these requirements, and its foundation followed this law. The Regional Institute, however, in order to avoid Regime control and still be as legal as possible, constituted itself as a joint-stock commercial company.

That rather “peculiar” legal form was used as an excuse by the Minister of the Interior, Manuel Fraga (may he rest in peace), to ban—using the Public Order Law of July 22, 1939—the meeting/demonstration that the Regional Institute was to hold in Villalar on April 25: “A joint-stock company cannot organize demonstrations.” This idea conveniently escaped the Minister’s mind when the rallies were organized by GODSA (at the time, since no one spoke English, few caught the joke), a joint-stock company that was the embryo of Alianza Popular. Despite the ban, on the appointed day around 400 Castilians and Leonese made their way to Villalar by back roads and secondary routes (the main accesses had been blocked) and, although they were welcomed by the town’s mayor, the gathering was dispersed by the Civil Guard.

Castilian-Leonese-Asturian Commonwealth, May 1976

Meanwhile, the idea of forming a commonwealth moved forward. On February 16, 1976, under the auspices of the Regional Alliance, thirty Francoist Cortes procuradores from the eleven provinces of Old Castile and León met in Tordesillas to request decentralizing measures from the Government (for the first time since the Second Republic), with economic agreements for the provincial councils similar to those of the chartered provinces (procuradores were usually mayors of the provincial capitals and presidents of the provincial councils). On February 23, the meeting was repeated—without the representatives from Logroño and Soria—and they began to study how certain services could be jointly managed. Already in these very first meetings, a problem emerged that would recur throughout the entire autonomy process: what about León? The province’s delegates made it known that they were not sure who they were a better fit with: Asturias, Galicia, or Castile. The entry of Asturias into the meetings postponed the discussion. On May 17, in a new meeting, the twelve provincial councils finalized their requests for agreements for the Castilian-Leonese-Asturian region and agreed to study the constitution of the Commonwealth of Castile and León.

Central Region, July 1976

Nevertheless, most Castilians and Leonese remained oblivious to the wheeling and dealing of their provincial councils and were focused on the course of the Transition. On July 3, the King, who was utterly fed up with Arias Navarro’s inaction, tasked the Ávila-born Adolfo Suárez with forming a new government. Three days later, the new president appeared on television in prime time announcing a Political Reform Law and democratic elections. It was clear that the coming months were going to be decisive for the State model. However, in August, the first government action regarding Castile was a cold shower for the regionalist groups. Adolfo Suárez decided to create a commission to study the possibility of creating a Central Region tailored to Madrid, to relieve it of its demographic overgrowth. This region would include the provinces of Madrid, Ávila, Segovia, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, and Guadalajara. The Official State Gazette (BOE) justified this decision as follows:

The idea was met with little enthusiasm from the presidents of the provincial councils involved, but if it was really discarded it was because COPLACO (acronym for Comisión de Planeamiento y Coordinación del Área Metropolitana de Madrid — Planning and Coordination Commission for the Madrid Metropolitan Area), a pre-existing, somewhat bossy and murky central body, opposed it outright, as it saw that the new region would strip it of many powers, especially in urban planning.

Commonwealth of Castilian-Leonese Provincial Councils, March 1977

The meetings to form the Commonwealth continued throughout 1976. During that year, two new regionalist associations were created: Friends of La Rioja and Association of the Cantabrian People, both organized to separate their provinces from the Castilian-Leonese regional process. Their presence was yet another sign of the growing detachment of these regions from the Duero basin. However, that internal debate only managed to delay—but not prevent—the inclusion of Logroño and Santander in the Commonwealth, which was established on February 22, 1977, in Burgos. For the first time in contemporary history, the provinces of Castile and León had united to jointly defend their rights and speak as equals to the rest of Spain’s regions. In the euphoric atmosphere following this achievement, the Regional Institute and the Regional Alliance agreed to jointly organize the first legal Castile and León Day in Villalar, on April 24. The final video, a fragment from a documentary about the Transition, shows the course of the celebration and the opinions of some of the attendees—more or less informed—about the comuneros, regionalism, and autonomy.

The attendance of more than 20,000 people at the field confirmed to the regionalist associations that their work to foster regional awareness was paying off, and gave them hope to face the complicated future ahead with the definition of the new State model and the reappearance, in the regional fauna, of a species not seen in the wild for a very long time: politicians.

Sources:
Los Comuneros, Luis López Álvarez, Edilesa, León, 2007, 7th edition.
Official State Gazette, Number 203, p. 16488, August 24, 1976
La Comunidad Autonómica de La Rioja en el Proceso Autonómico Español (1975–1996), Ignacio Granado Higelmo
Fuerzas políticas en el proceso autonómico de Castilla y León. Mariano González Clavero. Doctoral thesis. University of Valladolid, 2002
XXV años de autonomía en Castilla y León. Pablo Pérez López, José-Vidal Pelaz López, Mariano González Clavero. Cortes of Castile and León, 2008.
El regionalismo en Castilla y León. Julio Valdeón Baruque. University of Valladolid

Images:
Villalar
Regional Institute
Flags

Note:
I originally published this text in Los 4 Palos, a blog from Ávila that has since disappeared.