The crisis is widening and there is talk of the need to slimmer administration in order to reduce the public deficit. Rubalcaba has already proposed the abolition of Members of Parliament, which has revived the problem of historic territories in our environment. On the other hand, the ETA declaration has opened the door to the creation of new parliamentary majorities. We have ingredients to start preparing the cocktail.

Sovereign Deputies. In the highest Spanish legislation – the Constitution – the Basque Deputies are holders of historical rights and hence, for example, their own competence to collect taxes. The Basque Government has a more vulnerable legal status than that of Murcia. That is why, when it has been sought to find a legal basis in the right to decide, historical rights have been used. On the other hand, we must not forget that a confederation of the four Members can be the most feasible formula for merging the four territories of the South.

It's not a fuerist face, it's a practical thing. Let Spain do whatever it wants, but we should not touch sovereign parliamentarians until the ownership of historic Basque rights is recognised to another institution.

Functional areas. The organisation of public services has developed a great deal in recent decades, but the organisational areas are still old. The City Hall is not a functional unit in itself, as most are too small and some are too large. And in the foreign elections, we still use judicial parties, although no one knows who they are.

The functional framework, with common characteristics, is more appropriate than that of a geographical area of between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. In Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia it is possible to connect easily with the regional communities and in Álava and Navarre it would not be difficult either.

Fewer elected officials. This is not a matter of administrative thinning, but of rationalising the existing ones. In order to do this, I believe it is essential that there should be fewer elects. How? Well, eliminating the inconsistencies between the different positions. As a member of the General Boards simultaneously a member of Parliament, expenditure is halved. And I shouldn't do a double job. The job of the electorate is not that of management, that is what the administrative technicians are for. Elected officials should be guided and monitored.

By the way, being the same elected at different levels, it would integrate the different perspectives, smoothing the interinstitutional conflicts.

A sketch. Let's suppose that across the South we do a single electoral process every four years. The electoral area would be a region or urban district by functional areas. Here we would choose between 6 and 8 elected officials who would form the Commonwealth Governing Council. Only technicians would be in the town councils to implement the policies established by the community.

These elects, along with those from other counties, would form the General Assembly of the territory and from there would be the Deputation. Its main tasks would be tax collection, coordination of the communities and the management of their respective competences in the distribution agreed with the Government.

Finally, the General Assembly of each territory would designate, from among its members, representatives that might correspond to it in Parliament. And not everyone alike, the time has come to break that figure. Each territory has a weight in the population and in the domestic product, so according to these or similar parameters, it should have a percentage of representatives in the Upper House.
Are we going to start talking seriously?