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Direct Democracy in Spain

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According to the Spanish Constitution, Spain it's a country where the sovereignty of the nation lies in its citizens (art. 1.2). It is also written that the citizens have the right to participate directly in the state decisions or in the election of their representatives (art. 23.1). The referendum is a tool to know the will of the people, but in Spain it's forbidden the referendum binding, thereby that the citizens cannot participate directly in the decisions, they just can be heard by the consultative referendum. Only three national referendums and one local referendum have taken place in Spain in its history. Moreover there is the petition legislative collective that consists in the popular initiative of getting signatures in order to propose some topic of discussion to the parliament. However, as it has been written, after 500,000 signatures, the promoters of the popular initiative only can propose their decision (it means, anybody guarantee that their decision it's going to be discussed in the parliament). This process is going to finish without any type of referendum to ask the citizens. There are several parties that are promoting the direct democracy right now in Spain. However, the bipartisanship model of the country makes impossible to give them some kind of participation in the parliament. The last elections gave majority absolute to the government. In such way any party is not able to have enough power to participate directly in the decision-making. Some attempts to change the constitution in order to switch the model of democracy in Spain have been proposed by communities governments without any results. Due to the citizens' difficulties to participate in the decision-making of the main issues of the country, the 15th of May of 2011 emerged a social movement never seen before. It started as a random movement without clear goals; it only had the feeling that something was wrong in the country. Step by step, and thanks

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