La sentenza sull’Estatut de Catalunya e la crisi di legittimazione del Tribunal constitucional

On June 28th 2010 the Spanish Constitutional Court finally delivered the judgment regarding the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. After a brief summary of the long and complex path that brought to the enactment of the Statute, the paper analyses that part of the Spanish legal scholarship that put under discussion the Court’s legitimacy as a decision maker in the controversy over the constitutionality of the Statute. Moreover, the paper stresses the reasons why the Court’s task of granting the correct enforcement of constitutional rules allocating competences between the State and the Autonomous Communities (“bloque de constitucionalidad”) proved to be particularly difficult. In conclusion, on the basis of the analysis of the most relevant parts of the judgment, the paper argues that the latter has considerably modified the overall impact of the 2006 Statute.