Competence uncertainty and legal authority of the local entity as an unsuccessful measurement to the replacement of administrative sanctions by community services

Abstract

The enactment of the 1978 Spanish Constitution meant not only the culmination of the democratic transition process, but also the instauration of a new state model built in diverse entities, each one of them with legal personality and competence on its own, that got together under the power of a common territorial base. In the local field, it provided those entities of constitutional guarantee, but left in the hands of the state legislator in which fields they could act; in other words, the scope of their competences in front of the silence of the Constitution. This regulation, then, allows the state legislator to specify the scope, limits, and competences of intervention of the local entities, thus implying that local actions are delimited by both the state and the constitutional regulation. Therefore, even though from the social politics’ point of view it would sound as beneficial for the citizens to impose community services instead of administrative sanctions, saying so, from the current regulation, would meant a rupture of the constitutional principles and guarantees.