Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In recent years, the provision of social and health services has been affected by the appearance of a new management instrument through non-profit organizations called concerted action. Although its regulation is compatible with the Directives on public procurement, the Law on Public Sector Contracts has not contemplated a common regulation for this instrument. In this context, even before the approval of the LCSP, the autonomous communities regulated social agreements to respond to the needs of specific health and social services. Given the possibilities that were open, Andalusia has regulated social agreements as special administrative contracts. This article analyzes a modality of this indirect public service management type, the one regulated in Decree 57/2020, of April 22, which regulates the social agreement for the provision of Early Childcare.

This paper analyzes the legal effects that the penetration of the principle of free competition has on local public economic services. Although there have been services that have been liberalized (funeral services or municipal slaughterhouses), there are still activities such as water supply and wastewater collection, urban transport and garbage collection that remain in the orbit of public services. The principle of free competition reaches them in order to force that the restrictions on the operation of the market must be adjusted to the specific missions assigned to it as a public service. Free competition plays as well a decisive role when it comes to local public services that are provided concurrently with private initiative and also in relation to private participation in the indirect management of public services through public procurement.

It is essential to relocate public administrations in the scene of change, and economic decline that characterize contemporary society and redefine the local public action through the strengthening of institutional and self-government capacity. This capacity is necessary to adapt this action to the new urban public management models promoted by the European Union around the increasingly consolidated model of integrated and sustainable development. This paper highlights the political component of local autonomy to claim a new model of local action, adapted to the substantive and methodological dimensions of sustainability.

The presumption of validity of administrative acts is expressly included in our legal order and is usually used in the practical and theoretical reasoning of jurists. But it is a questioned legal concept, since not only is its nature of legal presumption discussed, but also the foundation on which it rests and its own usefulness or function. In the present paper, after making a series of conceptual analysis and studying its legal nature, I emphasize that the foundation of the legal presumption of validity resides in institutional reasons linked to the stabilization of expectations and legal situations, which is why it plays an important role in service of legal certainty and the effective operation of the system. I also defend that it has a greater explanatory, analytical and even directive capacity than other legal concepts that have been proposed in its place, for which it has a clear utility framing a general administrative legal act theory.

Review of Juli Ponce Solé, Wellington Migliari, Oscar Capdeferro Villagrasa (coords.), El derecho, la ciudad y la vivienda en la nueva concepción del desarrollo urbano: desafíos transnacionales y transdisciplinarios de la gobernanza en la Nueva Agenda Urbana. Atelier, Barcelona, 307 págs.

The passing of Spanish Law 39/2015, of 1 October, on Common Administrative Procedures for Government Administrations introduced a new public consultation procedure that must take place prior to the drafting of legal rules with legal and regulatory status, as established under its section 133. That mandatory procedure enhances public participation because it occurs during a very early phase when all options are still open, prior to the initiation of the actual legislative process and before any draft versions of laws or regulations have been produced. However, the Law does not address the legal effects resulting from the omission –or improper exercise– of that initial public consultation, despite the significance of the matter as a factor that fundamentally determines the actual effectiveness of the procedure. This article addresses this issue in view of its absence from the legislation and in an effort to provide those working in the field of law with tools to help determine the legal effects of the omission of that procedure during development of laws and regulations. To this end, the various interpretations offered in the literature and in existing case law are analysed.

The irruption of digital economy has implied great transformations for the different economic sectors. Technological changes and the promptness of information exchange has allowed for new business models to appear, characterised by a more direct interaction between users and sellers. The ‘Airbnb phenomenon’ is a growing concern among regions within Spain, which has had a significative impact in the increasing development of specific regulation in this field. In this paper, we analyse the regulatory similarities and divergences among the regional and local approaches, trying to sum up the thrust of the legislation in this area.

The Tax on Capital Transfers and Documented Legal Acts (TCTDLA) is a Spanish type of wealth tax. Its tax income is transferred to the Autonomous Communities, which have the regulatory capacity to modify the basic determinants of the taxpayer's tax debt. In this work, a comparison is made of the TCTDLA regulations (specifically its tax credits and tax rates) in each Autonomous Community with the aim of analysing their evolution during the pre-electoral and post-electoral periods, taking into account the political configuration of each Autonomous Parliament. Likewise, its economic impact is analyzed from the taxable person perspective and also from the active subject one. That is to say, its budgetary impact in each Autonomous Community is analyzed, as well as its incidence on taxpayers' tax debt, according to their tax domicile, in order to demonstrate the territorial inequalities that can generate said tax and the possible tax competition between Communities, depending on the political cycle.

Review of Javier SIERRA RODRÍGUEZ, Participation in the elaboration of norms of the General State Administration. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2019, 271 pp. This book focuses on the evaluation of citizen participation through the process of prior consultation and the audience and public information in the development of regulations and bills in the field of the General State Administration. The mechanisms and the exercise of participation are analyzed, confronting the perceptions of administration technicians and participants.

Book review by Eloísa CARBONELL & Giuseppe PIPERATA (dir.), La reforma del Gobierno Local en España e Italia. Napoli, Editoriale Scientifica, 2019, 556 pp.