Crisis y competencia por la competencia: El ejemplo de la inmigración

One important feature of the Spanish constitutional system of division of competence between the State and the Autonomous Communities is its open character. In certain areas, the State is competent to set the fundamental grounds of legislation, which will be later developed by the Autonomous Communities. In this way, the State is indirectly allowed to define the scope of intervention of the Autonomous Communities, although the Constitutional Court can later correct this definition. This article intends to explore the impact that this framework has on the content of the legislation. More specifically, it intends to analyse how the fight over the competence thus produced between State and Autonomous Communities has influenced the degree of social protection granted to aliens, being both the State and the Autonomous Communities competent to intervene in the field of immigration, and being this interterritorial tension particularly strong during the years of economic crisis. This article departs from the idea that the political tension between territorial powers generates a growing disparity of normative responses between Autonomous Communities, according to the bigger or smaller incentives these may have to distance themselves from the position defended by the State. And it then moves to the more specific legal question of whether the constitutional framework, as defined by the Constitutional Court, actually admits the resulting degree of variety of normative responses; or if, instead, the State can impose a stricter definition of the legislative grounds from which the Autonomous Communities depart in their normative intervention.