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

Opinion essay on the Spanish Crown

In the wake of the recent STS (Civil Chamber) no. 277/2022, of 31 March, the discussion about the possibility of regulating surrogacy in our country has re-emerged with force in the public debate. In order to provide a new approach to the legal response which, within the framework established by the Spanish Constitution, should be given to the legal problems involved in this practice, this article attempts to verify the existence and scope of the impact on the rights and interests of those involved in what we could call the «GS triangle» — the clients, the gestational carrier and the minor. In such a way that, after the corresponding balancing exercise, an assessment can be made of the incompatibility of a possible regulation of the growing figure of surrogacy with the Spanish constitutional framework.

For decades, the Spanish doctrine took for granted that the discretionary dissolution strengthens the position of the president and that the automatic dissolution stimulates government formation, which is why little attention was paid to these mechanisms. However, in recent years these expectations were proven to be misplaced. This paper studies the role of the dissolution of Chambers in parliamentary government, starting from a critical examination of the classical theory and the three main functions attributed to this institution, namely: arbitrate conflicts between the executive and legislative, preserve government stability and consult the electorate on relevant issues. Next, it analyzes the reasons why the performance of the dissolution in Spain under a multiparty system has not been as expected, emphasizing the observable differences between the State and the Autonomous Communities. It also questions the meaning and implications of the so-called “re-do elections” and the risks that they entail. Finally, it invites us to reflect on the convenience of adapting the constitutional discipline of dissolution to the current sociopolitical context.

The property crisis that Spain experienced around the years 2008 to 2013 was reflected in the increase in litigation against the City Councils regarding municipal added value tax, since it turned the non-existence of increases or the generation of decreases into a generalized effect. Many of these issues came to the Constitutional Court through issues of unconstitutionality. Constitutional jurisprudence since 2017 has shown that situations in open contradiction with the ability to pay principle and that it is up to the legislator to implement the appropriate modifications to the legal regime of the taxation. In his latest statement, the Court has come to clarify the ability to pay principle as a measure of taxation in a calculation system dissociated from reality, but at the same time has generated much controversy due to the limitation of the effects of the declaration of unconstitutionality. In this paper we analyze in view of the constitutional jurisprudence the constitutional principles that should inspire the regulation of municipal added value tax as well as the inaction of the state legislator to undertaking this regulation.

The 2008 Constitution, which defines Ecuador as a unitary State, establishes a new decentralized territorial organization under the regime of distribution of exclusive powers between the central State and the territorial governments, which it recognizes political, administrative and financial autonomy and legislative powers; while maintaining a vertical structure of the legal system, sustained in the the principle of hierarchy as the backbone of the relationships between the rules that comprise it. This has caused theoretical and practical contradictions in determining the legal nature of the rules emanating from the territorial governments and their relations with the other of the legal system (fundamentally with state laws). This paper intends to insert itself in the discussion about the legal nature of the territorial governments regulations giving in the exercise of their exclusive competences and their relations with the state legal system; pointing out, in any case, the divergence of the theoretical model designed in the Constitution with its practical realization, which continues to be explained invariably based on the unity of the law and the relations of normative hierarchy.

This article analyzes the relationship between illiberal-populist regimes and constitutional courts, based on the cases of Hungary and Poland. These case studies show that constitutional courts operating in an illiberal-populist regime can quickly turn from targets of the Government into important allies of the majority in power. At that point, the reasoning of these bodies can very often resemble the rhetoric of populist forces. Another important lesson offered by the analysis of the Hungarian and Polish cases is that the possible solutions that have been put forward, from a constitutional design perspective (especially with regard to the appointment processes and composition of constitutional courts, as well as the adoption of alternative models of constitutional justice), to prevent, or at least hinder, the capture of constitutional review bodies by illiberal-populist regimes, do have some strengths, but also evident weaknesses.

This article aims to reflect on the possibilities and challenges involved with the adoption of gamified activities in hybrid educational contexts, focusing specifically on the teaching of Biology. To this end, we analyzed three gamified activities created on the Wordwall platform for the blended learning of core contents in Biology: Evolution, Genetics and Biodiversity. This is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach that considers the relevance of the production and analysis of pedagogical artifacts in the digital culture scenario. Finally, we found that gamification can be a promising strategy in times of multimodality and hybridity, provided that, when planned, it considers  the profiles of the students to whom it is addressed, as well as the socioeconomic contexts in which it will be used.

The exploratory nature of science provides a unique context for academic groups concerned with social responsibility. The Núcleo de Estudos em Microbiologia Agrícola (NEMA) is a Brazilian student organization in Microbiology at Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV). In this article, we will look at NEMA's six-year trajectory and how it has contributed to the popularization of Microbiology as well as to the professional training of graduate students.

We rarely, if ever, notice that water in plants is transported uphill, from the soil to the leaves. In a river, or when turning on a faucet, water flows downhill easily and quickly. Now, if we want the water to flow uphill, we know that we will need a pump to transport it, for example, from a cistern to the tank located on the roof of our house. So: how do trees do that? Together with the audience, students from 10 to 12 years old, we progressively constructed the desired answer, using different didactic resources, which facilitated the understanding of some theoretical contents of the physic-chemistry of water, foliar transpiration, xylem and cell wall characteristics.  

In this paper we present some ideas for the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) from a critical perspective based on the systematization of the development process of the second version of Caza Mosquitos (an application for mobile devices that addresses the problem of diseases transmitted by Aedes aegypti). Taking Latin American Popular Education (PE) as our central framework, we summarize the following points to be taken into account in ICT design processes: promote critical inquiry of reality; encourage collective work; foster the transformation of reality; use open source, open information management and appropriate graphical design. From a social perspective of technologies, we conceptualize what has been done as an activist Technological Creation for the purpose of collective action and social and, in this case, educational intervention.