Disentailment in reverse

The official separation between Church and state, which was established in the Spanish Constitution of 1978, and was assumed to constitute an obligatory framework for any legislative developments of a more particular character, does not seem to count in connection with the law governing mortgages and registration of real estate.

Article 304 of the regulatory specifications of this law authorizes the bishops to unilaterally issue certifications of ownership over the properties that the Church considers belong to it, and from 1998 onward this faculty was extended to functioning church buildings, chapels, cathedrals and other possessions and land holdings which form part of the public cultural heritage of Spain.

This legislation not only attributes to the "respective diocesans" the character of public functionaries, as in the classic times of the ancien regime or the "National Catholic" regime of Franco; it also gives the Church legal coverage to proceed to a "disentailment" in reverse. That is, the reverse of the massive disentailment and sale of Church properties carried out by the Liberal Prime Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal in 1837. These properties then amounted to at least a third of the land in Spain, and their disentailment was a crucial step in the direction of the eventual separation of Church and state.

For some years now, the Church has been immersed in a frantic operation to recover patrimony which it says belongs to it, to the despair of mayors and residents of many towns who question this claim to property, in many cases paid for with public money.

Failing possible action by the courts that might put a brake at least on the most scandalous cases, the defense of the public interest against the unilateral action of the Church remains in the hands of town halls with very limited resources, or of local citizens' platforms that are organized ad hoc to stop what they consider a usurpation of their community's heritage.

In any case, it would be preferable if a government were to make a decisive move in this area, and put an end to the anachronistic privilege of acting as public registrars still possessed by the bishops, instead of amplifying it, as the rightist Aznar government did in 1998.

The Church alleges that it is merely registering what belongs to it, without need of adducing any proof before any public authority. Is it also, then, the owner of vineyards, olive groves, vacant lots, apartments, storehouses, garages, village ball courts and an almost endless list of properties that have never been registered?