Main guidelines of the 27/2013 Spanish Act of Rationalization and Sustainability of Local Government about Local Autonomy, Recentralization and Provision of Local Public Services

Abstract

This paper tries to identify some of the main guidelines underlying the Local Law reform made in Spain by law 27/2013 and to analyze how, in particular, this legislative change is expected to affect both the way our local governments had been acting since 1985 as well as the basic foundations of our constitutional framework in relation with local government. Specifically, the paper focuses on investigating whether the notion of local autonomy allows us to preach at least some legal resistance to the changes the 2013 reform is intending to make. It also analyzes the reform as a product of the trend, traceable in recent years, aimed to limit the possibilities of regional legislatures regulating local government, i.e. as a product and evidence of a legal recentralization process. Finally, the paper studies how local public services will be provided as a result of these legal changes, explaining how the new local law, in fact, is intended to introduce measures favoring increased privatization in the provision of local services.