Elías Díaz and the spirit of the Constitution | Culture | EUROtoday

In the Athenaeum of Madrid, within the opening ceremony of the celebrations of Spain in Libertad. 50 years, one of many attendees, very younger in comparison with the typical age, stunned all the auditorium by launching his query: “What is democracy?” Probably, the absolute best response could be discovered within the first article of the 1978 Constitution, which determines that “Spain is a social and democratic state of law.”

Thus, within the first place, our nation is outlined as a democratic state, as a result of political dynamics relies on the existence of a celebration system, assure of the ideological pluralism of society. For their correct functioning, it’s needed that these events should not thought-about as enemies, however as adversaries, in order that they usually distinction their packages and proposals in free elections – recessed by common suffrage -, all acknowledge the legitimacy of the remaining to manipulate and settle for , due to this fact, the peaceable alternation in energy.

As a social state, secondly, because the proper of all residents is acknowledged, with out discrimination of any form, to take pleasure in situations worthy of existence. In this regard, the Constitution emphasizes the precise to housing (article 47), healthcare (article 43) and free and common public schooling (article 27). All sustained by an articulated tax system across the “principles of equality and progressivity” (article 31).

And, in third and final place, though no much less vital, a rule of legislation, that’s, the one through which each exercise is underneath the empire of the legislation. But not any form of legislation, however solely these arising from A democratically chosen parliament, in response to the situations set forth above. And it’s that “not every state is the rule of law; The existence of a legal order, of a system of legality, does not authorize to speak without more of the rule of law. Designate as such a state, by the simple fact that it uses a legal normative system, it constitutes a conceptual and real imprecision that only leads – sometimes intentionally – to confusion. ”

This constitutional definition of Spain is, to a big extent, the principle legacy of one in every of our nice jurists of the 20 th century, and in addition of the XXI, Professor Elías Díaz García, who died in Madrid final Monday, February 3, 2025, to the 90 years.

Born in Santiago de la Puebla (Salamanca), Elías Díaz owes a elementary ebook, from which the earlier citation proceeds, to grasp the political transition and studying of the language of coexistence by an entire technology: Rule of Law and Democratic Society. Published by Notebooks for dialogue in October 1966, there have been a number of editions exhausted after overcoming the makes an attempt of the Ministry of Information and Tourism to dam its look, given the proximity to the referendum pretend that the Francoist dictatorship was organizing to ratify the natural legislation of the State. Beyond this coincidence, nothing informal, it’s a work that maintains intact all its validity, equivalent to its notion that these three pillars, democratic, social and legislation, are inseparable, in order that if one is in danger, They are all.

Far from limiting himself to the authorized subject, Elías Díaz shortly expanded his mental spectrum in direction of different disciplines, as highlighted in his research on The social philosophy of Spanish Krausism (1973), in addition to one other work of deep affect amongst historians of tradition: Spanish thought within the period of Franco (1939-1975)written between 1969 and 1974 on the event of a well timed keep on the University of Pittsburgh after a confinement interval derived from his socialist militancy, a circumstance that he by no means thought-about incompatible with rigor because of tutorial evaluation, as he himself mirrored in Socialism in Spain: the celebration and the State (1982).

Always devoted to the title of one in every of his books, From the establishment to the Constitution (Trotta, 2009), Elías Díaz was as well as an individual of a rare modesty and kindness. Refractory to all self -complacency, I by no means let the chance to hearken to what they needed to inform the brand new generations – ”the aged we be taught from these hateful younger folks”, as I stated enjoyable in an interview within the journal Dock-, whose interpretations promoted and with whose doubts and difficulties was capable of empathize. Until the view, previous trainer, and continues to rebuild the explanation wherever you’re.