Decentralisation and Covid-19

Abstract

This chapter analyses how the Spanish governance system and territorial model responded to the stress test generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The abrupt irruption of the health crisis took the Spanish political and institutional system into a crisis mode. The initial reactions were based on ‘institutionally automatic-pilot reactions’: a hierarchical response that centralised all powers in a single decision-making unit by declaring the state of alarm. Under the state of alarm, the central government assumed some powers of the autonomous communities (ACs). However, the growing political contestation and the logistical inefficiencies derived from recentralising brought about a change of perspective. From May 2020, the ACs gradually recovered their health powers and were given a voice within the pandemic’s decision-making processes. The Covid-19 crisis has unveiled that Spain’s decentralised political system, for years assumed to be fast and furiously running into a federal track, had actually a structural speed limit: an unfitted shared rule and a very-easy-to-dismantle self-rule. Although central government’s approach on the role of the ACs in state-wide decision-making processes changed during the crisis, whether this change, based on political attitudes and interests, can generate a stable institutional context is an issue to be dealt with in the future. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Nico Steytler.