"Whenit comes to reforming the Constitution, its spirit of consensus cannot be forgotten", said former Constitutional Court Judge Manuel Aragón Reyes at the University of Navarra. The Full Professor of Constitutional Law has participated in the XIX workshop classroom of Parliamentary Law, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Spanish Constitution with a balance of its history.

The meeting, jointly organized by the Parliament of Navarra and the School of Law of the University of Navarra, has brought together professionals and academics to address issues such as the model territorial, the challenges of democracy and the European Union as framework.

"The Constitution was drawn up for everyone and its reform must be well thought out politically and legally, so that it does not cause legal insecurity", explained Manuel Aragón, who underlined that there is a "prerequisite" for it: "The reform of the Constitution is to maintain and improve it, not to destroy it". Likewise, he affirmed that this reform must be a consensualproposal and be developed at a time when "there is relative social calm".

Consensus and gradualism

The former magistrate said that the Spanish Constitution "is not the longest-lived, but it is the one with the longest life, because it has special qualities, which derive from the way it was drawn up: consensus and gradualism". Thus, he recalled that in 1977 "the various political forces renounced what divided them in order to agree on agreement on what united them", which meant an act of "Withdrawal" in order to establish a pact that allows "freedom rights tempered by a social state".

Manuel Aragón affirmed that "the balance is very positive" in terms of the guarantee of "transparent and clean" elections, the social state, fundamental rights or the activity developed by the Constitutional Court. Although he assured that a reform is necessary, although respecting "the spirit of consensus and loyalty of the Constitution".

Also participating in the XIX workshop of the classroom of Parliamentary Law were the lawyer of the Cortes Generales Piedad García-Escudero; the professors of Constitutional Law Juan José Solozábal(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Ángel J. Gómez Montoro (University of Navarra), Paloma Biglino(University of Valladolid), Francisco Balaguer(University of Granada) and Asunción de la Iglesia (University of Navarra), director of classroom of Parliamentary Law; and the professor of Constitutional Law of the University of Navarra Fernando Simón.