The PSOE and the challenge of the construction of the autonomies.: The difficult balance betweenidentity rights and unity (1979-1981)

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how the Spanish Socialist Party contributed to the definition of the model of Nation and State that succeeded in Spain during the construction of the State of Autonomies. Successively the Constitution of 1978 this had been open, at the mercy of the political future, and it was at that stage that certain changes were made in the PSOE’s approaches to the national question, culminating in the Autonomous Agreements signed with the Union of Democratic Center in July 1981.Since a perspective that understands that period from an evolution and an adaptation to the challenges of the new conjuncture and not as a rupture with regard to the assumptions on which it was based, we shall try to explain how the PSOE was in front of the same ones and which tensions occurred in the development of a policy that headed clearly towards the harmonization of the autonomic system.