Book presentation in Madrid

On May 20th 2024, the book "Condiciones de la secesión en democracia. Reflexiones a partir de la experiencia canadiense" authored by our senior researcher Francisco Javier Romero Caro together with Stéphane Dion and Alberto López Basaguren and published by Tirant lo Blanch, was presented at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. At the book presentation, the authors explained the main lines of the publication and they answered questions from the press and the audience.

The work gathers reflections on secessionist demands in democratic contexts, attempting to reconcile these two aspects and offers a reflection based on the "Canadian doctrine" on secession, providing elements that allow addressing secession demands in democratic contexts in a way that, instead of posing a risk to the foundations of the democratic system, transforms them into an opportunity to reinforce them.

Francisco Javier Romero Caro, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Comparative Federalism of Eurac Research, and author of a study on the transformations of the Canadian federal system concerning Quebec's secessionist demands, co-authored the publication with Stéphane Dion, political scientist and former Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs of the federal government of Canada, who promoted the reference with the Supreme Court on the secession of Quebec and, subsequently, the Clarity Act; and Alberto López Basaguren, professor of Constitutional Law and author of various works on secessionist demands in Quebec, Scotland, the Basque Country, and Catalonia, as well as on Brexit.

The book aims to offer answers on what a constitutional democracy should do when confronted with secessionist claims, analyzing the Spanish context and other countries based on the Canadian experience.