The latest pronouncement by the mayor of León, José Antonio Diez, who is, furthermore, a Socialist, demanding the independence of his province from what is today the autonomous community of Castilla y León after the provincial council of León passed a motion in favour of constituting an autonomous community of its own, including the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca, may end up leading to a political debate with much more substance than it seems. For us, this story is far away, and consequently, we are mere observers. However, there is one issue on which we can agree: Spain's state of autonomous communities, as agreed in its post-Franco transition, is in crisis. It has sprung leaks all over. Catalans, by a very large proportion, assert the right to agree with the Spanish state on an independence referendum. There is very widespread consensus on this, naturally including support from independentists who have been demanding it for a decade, but also among many who say they are against it, but recognize that Catalonia has earned the right for an agreement to be made to decide its future.
Thus, the fact that now, in lesser administrative spaces, those of a provincial council and a city hall, a debate has been raised that questions the current state of the autonomous communities is a political debate that is not superfluous. It is not only Catalonia that is discussing it. Behind all this movement is the Leonese People's Union (UPL), a party founded in 1986 with people from Leonese movements and different state-level political parties such as the defunct Popular Alliance (now the People's Party), UCD , the PSOE or the Popular Socialist Party of professor Enrique Tierno Galván who protested that the integration into the autonomous community of Castilla y León of the provinces that had been part of the Región de León in the provincial division carried out in 1833 meant the end of the space which was political successor of the former Kingdom of León.
This spirit has been growing electorally in León province and the evolution has been uneven, with a boom in support until 2011 and then a setback that lasted until 2022, when the party recovered its buoyancy to reach 22% of votes in the autonomous election of 2022 and obtain 3 of this province's 13 representatives in the Castilla y León parliament. Three proposals are now on the table. One, that León should have its own life as a uniprovincial autonomous community like Madrid, Cantabria or La Rioja. A second, the alliance with Zamora and Salamanca, which, as we have said, formed the Region (or Kingdom) of León, according to the 1833 territorial division of Spain promoted by Javier de Burgos. And a third, to join Asturias.
Spain's state of autonomous communities, agreed in the post-Franco transition, is in crisis: it has sprung leaks all over
The most important thing is not that UPL is promoting this debate, because even though the party has been growing, it is still a long way from having sufficient political muscle for its proposals to move forward on their own. But the new development is that the PSOE has jumped on the bandwagon, instead of turning up its nose at the question. On the other hand, the fact that the proposal for separation comes alongside the mayor of León's argument that the autonomous community project of Castilla and León has not functioned in terms of "belonging" confirms that there have been many territorial inventions of Spain's Democratic Transition - this thing that almost the entire establishment praises to the heavens whenever it can - to try to reduce identity and political power to communities like Catalonia and the Basque Country.