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In recent years, mechanisms have been activated in order to carry out political reforms in the Autonomous Communities, due to the greater fragmentation that exists in regional parliaments and the presence of political parties that support institutional reforms, aimed at deepening democratic regeneration. The aim of this paper is to join the main reflections and knowledge about the different types of open-lists and free-lists systems, and to examine the legal framework of the regional legislators for their adoption. To that end, this paper examines the different kinds of electoral lists, their advantages, disadvantages, effects and consequences of their use; the constitutional and legal framework that could limit its inclusion in the reforms of the autonomic electoral systems; as well as the main proposals that have already been formulated to introduce the preferential vote in the Autonomous Communities. The conclusions of the study suggest the viability of the introduction of the open-lists and free-lists systems in the autonomic electoral systems, given the current legal framework.

This paper examines (Spain’s) constitutional court rulings 80/2012 and110/2012. After twelve years of deliberation, the court has pronounced on the jurisdiction of Spain’s autonomous communties in the field of international sport. Although the statutes of Euskadi and Catalunya incorporate powers to compete internationally in sport, the constitutional court has constituted new powers in this area, based on three criteria: its supraregional nature, public interest and the territoriality principle. The creation of this new competence effectively sidesteps the two contested statutes by a new interpretetive ruling. The court has ruled in a way which interferes with the ability of Spain’s autonomous communties to manage their own sports’ administrations. Admittedly, it is not the constitutional courts’s job to to create this system, however, the way in which the court has ruled in favour of the state makes it practically impossibe to structure sport in a way which considers Spain’s autonomous communities.