Parliament and Lobbies: regional regulation of lobbying in Spain

Abstract

The financial crisis at the end of the first decade of this century caused a general crisis in our country. This led to a distancing between voters and their representatives, resulting in the latest crisis or apparent crisis of representation. In this context, the Autonomous Communities implemented mechanisms to mitigate this distancing caused by corruption cases and the resulting political disaffection in Spanish society. These mechanisms were driven by recent reforms of their Statutes of Autonomy. For these reasons, some Autonomous Communities have begun to regulate lobbies, subjecting their participation in political power to guidelines of transparency and ethical behaviour. This paper analyses this regulation, specifically in relation to parliamentary lobbying regulated by the Catalan legislator, the only one to have done so thus far.