Communities of chartered regime

The constitution of Spain of 1978 allowed for the nationalities and regions that integrate the Spanish nation to accede to self-government and be constituted as autonomous communities, which became the first-order political and territorial division of the Spanish territory. Both the process whereby the nationalities and regions were to accede to self-government and the scope of competences that were to be devolved or transferred from the central government, were intended to be asymmetrical in nature.

One of the main differences was established in the first additional provision of the constitution, after much debate in the Cortes Generales acting as a Constituent Assembly. This provision established a protection and respect for the historical rights of the territories that had fueros, "charters", "privileges" or "jurisdictions", which were to be "updated" within the framework of the constitution. These territories were Álava, Gipuzkoa, Biscay and Navarre. The first three joined to form the autonomous community of the Basque Country, whereas Navarre was constituted itself as the Chartered Community of Navarre. The charters that were recognized and updated grant them specific competences not recognized in other autonomous communities, most notably, fiscal autonomy. As such, these two autonomous communities are known as communities of chartered regime (Spanish: comunidades de régimen foral) as opposed to the rest of the autonomous communities without fiscal autonomy, which are known as communities of common regime.

From the 12th to the 16th century, as the Kingdom of Castile expanded to the south or incorporated other kingdoms and territories into the Crown of Castile, which then became the Kingdom of Spain, the monarchy granted them certain privileges and jurisdictions, which were known as fueros, or "charters". The competences of the fueros at one point in time included the right to establish custom controls, have their own militias as well as some governing institutions, and to manage their civic and fiscal affairs, but these were progressively reduced or completely eliminated — as was the case for the former constituent kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon. The case of the Basque territories was unique, in that their fueros were the only to survive well into the 19th century, even if their scope was much reduced, whereas the fueros of other kingdoms and regions had already been abolished by then.

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