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Content Front page...........................................................................................................1
Content................................................................................................................3
Introduction..........................................................................................................4
Project Dairy........................................................................................................5
Paragraph 1 1.1
Government of Spain.....................................................................6
Paragraph 2 2.1
Elections and Voting......................................................................7
2.2
Francisco Franco...........................................................................8
Paragraph 3 3.1
Politics of Asturias.........................................................................10
Paragraph 4 4.1
Spain and the EU.........................................................................11
Conclusion........................................................................................................12
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Introduction This is a bilateral project between the Bilingual Sections in IES Cristo del Socorro in Luanco (Asturias, Spain) and Marne College in Bolsward (Friesland, The Netherlands). We, Naomï Broersma, Bente van Braam, Joyce de Bruin, Ilse de Jong and Marijke Hoekstra form a group. We made a report about the government of Spain. We searched for differences between our government and the government of Spain. We didn’t really have expectations about how the government would work and look like. We did expect that it would a lot like our government, but that it also would have large differences. We thought the largest difference would be between the government of Asturias and the government of Friesland.
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Project Dairy The last weeks we searched for information about the government of Spain and the differences compared to the Netherlands.
6 January: We thought of some sub questions which we could use for our presentation. We also decided who was going to search for information about which part.
13 January: Before this day everybody of our group had looked for information and made a text about it, together we looked if everything was correct and if anything had to be changed.
16 January: This evening we had to do a presentation in front of all our parents. Further on our parents could ask questions about the exchange and a girl who already visited Spain in a personal exchange a few years ago told us about her experiences and places she had visited in Spain. We all thought that it was very interesting and we really liked the fact that she had a great time in Spain, because that will probably mean that we will have a great time too.
8 March: Today we finished our sub questions and we sent it to Bente, so she can finish the report in total.
9 March: Bente finished the total report and the PowerPoint.
Government of Spain 5
Spain is a Constitutional Monarchy. The government is defined by the Constitution of Spain. If the Constitution of Spain can’t make a decision, the Constitutional Court of Spain will make the decision. The Constitutional Court consists of three main institutions, or in Spanish the Cortes Generales: The Congress of Deputies, the Assembly of Senators and the Judicial Branches. The Congress of Deputies come up with an idea, a change in the law for example. The Assembly of Senators will then consider if this change has a positive impact on the people and the country and if it makes any sense. Finally, the Judicial Branches will make sure that this new law is not against another law in Spain or Europe. In Spain, the King is the head of the state. Spain’s King is Juan Carlos the first, he has held this position since November 22, 1975, so he is King for almost 39 years now, that’s quite a long time isn’t it? In Spain, the role of the King is appointing officials, make reports of activities and of course representing Spain. The King is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish army.
The Prime Minister of Spain is Mariano Rajoy, he was elected by the Congress of Deputies on the 11th of November in 2011. He was the first one to be elected by the Congress of Deputies. The Prime Minister has to appoint vie-presidents and is responsible for some major ministries such as finance, foreign affairs and so on. The Netherlands is described as a consociational state. The politics take place within a framework of a parliamentary representative democracy, a constitutional monarchy (just as Spain) and a decentralized unitary state. One of the differences with Spain is that Holland doesn’t have a Constitutional Court. If someone wants to change something, it has to be approved by both houses of the States-General twice. These are comparable with the three main institutions in the Constitutional Court in Spain. Just as in Spain, the King is the head of the State in the Netherlands. The current King is Willem-Alexander. In the Netherlands, the King has to co-sign every law to make it valid, plays a major role in the formation of the cabinet after general elections or a cabinet crisis. The King also appoints some people. The King’s role is limited in the formation of the government.
In the Netherlands, the ministers together form the Council of Ministers. They meet every Friday at the Binnenhof. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands is Mark Rutte, he was elected in 2010
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and is Prime Minister ever since. This year, there are elections again so he might not be Prime Minister after that. So, there are not that many differences between the governments of Spain and the Netherlands. Both are constitutional monarchies and are ruled by a king. One of the few differences is that the Netherlands don’t have a Constitutional Court.
Elections and Voting Spain is a democracy, so the population has freedom of speech and press.
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Every 4 year there are local elections, where everybody older than 18 is allowed to vote. At Election Day people of Spain vote for a certain party, not for the candidates. The parties decide which candidates eventually will become part of the government of Spain. (In the Netherlands you vote for the candidates). Before the election all parties have campaigns, campaigning is forbidden two days before the election until the election itself.
More than 96% of the population is happy with the democratic system of Spain. This is probably because Spain was under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco until 1975.
Francisco Franco Francisco Franco was a military leader and dictator of Spain from 1939 until 1975. It was 1936 when Franco tried to overthrow the Popular-Front-led Republican government, he did this together with a group of military leaders. The rebellion wasn’t successful, but it eventually led to a civil war. During the civil war, Francisco Franco was GeneralĂsimo of the Nationalist faction. After winning the war he became Head of State and Head of Government and Prime Minister.
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He ruled over Spain as a dictator, this with a lot violence: imprisoning enemies in concentration camps and heavy sentences for opponents of his regime. During his regime women had their traditional role in society: they had to take care of the children and clean the house. One of the extremes was that if a woman fled her house from an abusive husband, she could be punished and send to prison for ‘abandoning the home’. After Francisco’s death this changed and women had more rights.
Politics of Asturias Spain is subdivided into 17 autonomous regions and Asturias is one of them. This means that Asturias has its own government and parliament and it can decide a lot of things by itself, for example things about education. Most of these autonomous regions are further subdivided into provinces but Asturias is a province on its own. Asturias is further subdivided into 87 municipalities and 857 parishes.
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The General Council of Asturias contains 45 seats so 23 seats are needed for a majority. In Asturias are 5 parties who gained seats in the last elections in 2012.
PSOE: 17 seats (left) FAC: 12 seats (right) PP: 10 seats (right) IU: 5 seats (left) UPyD: 1 seat (centrist)
After the elections, the parties were tasked to form a coalition which was quite difficult because the left and right both had 22 seats. The UPyD became the kingmaker of the negotiation. It took almost two months before the UPyD decided to join the PSOE and the IU and so Javier Férnandez Férnandez (leader of the PSOE) became the president of Asturias. Prince of Asturias is the historical title given to the Spanish hire to the throne. The current prince of Asturias is Felipe, son of king Juan Carlos and queen Sophía of Spain. In comparison with Friesland, Asturias can decide a lot more things by itself. They have their own parliament and government and Friesland has not. This means also that Asturias has a general council with elections and Friesland only has local elections. That’s of course a big difference.
Spain and the EU Spain had tried to join the European Economic Community, which today is the European Union, in 1962, but had only achieved the signing of a trade agreement. In 1978, after democracy was restored, the Council of Ministers of the EEC formally opened negotiations on Spain’s accession, which culminated on 12 June 1985, with 10
the signing of the Treaty of Accession in Madrid and the country’s integration into the Economic Community on 1 January 1986. In June 1989, three-and-a-half years after Spain joined the EEC, the country’s national currency, the peseta, was included into the European Monetary System’s Exchange Rate Mechanism, set up by France, Italy, Denmark, Holland and Luxembourg, in March 1979. In June 1991, Spain signed the Schengen Agreement that, initially, saw eight countries eliminate internal border controls to create a "Europe without Borders". This came into force in March 1995 and was progressively joined by almost all the other member states. The economic, social and political transformation in Spain since this time has been enormous. Due to a banking crisis, Spain needed to loan money from the European Union. The European Commission has approved the support for these banks in September 2011. Till now on, this was 41.4 billion euros. The loan will be used for capital support for these banks. If they will need it, they can still loan 58.6 billion euros. In November 2013, the EU noted that Spain has put successful steps to reform its financial sector. On 31 December 2013, the support program ended.
Conclusion We learnt that there are many differences between Friesland and Asturias. One thing which we noticed which is connected to our subject is that Asturias has its own parliament and is allowed to make its own decision about many things, for example about education. In Friesland we cannot make that many decisions of our own. 11
The government of the Netherlands is much more centralised, so the provinces don’t have that much to tell about the rules that are made. Spain and the Netherlands are both constitutional monarchies and are ruled by a king, but in Spain they also have a Constitutional Court. There are also differences in the election, in Spain people vote for certain parties and in the Netherlands we vote for candidates. Spain and the Netherlands are both EU-members. There are many differences between the government of Asturias and Friesland, there are also differences between the government of Spain and the Netherlands, but these are smaller. So far, we really liked doing this project and we are really looking forward to visiting Spain!
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