On 13 November, the Plenary of the Constitutional Court published an important judgment on civil law, for which Judge Xiol Ríos was the rapporteur. Five dissenting opinions were issued (Ollero, Montoya, Narváez, Martínez-Vares and Enríquez Sancho). The judgment analyses the constitutionality of Law 3/ 2017, of the sixth book of the Civil Code of Catalonia, with regard to contract law. It rejects the state appeal on all points except in relation to state competence over notarial public instruments. Transfer contracts (sale and purchase, exchange), as well as the mandate and management of other people's business, are considered to be a development of Catalonia's own civil law, on the basis of a long line of case law favourable to foral law and tending to prevent them from being reified over time. This development, together with the preservation and modification of civil law, is only reserved for those Communities with their own civil law at the time of the publication of the 1978 Constitution.

But the ruling goes one step further. One, in relation to consumer contracts. The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (EAC) regulates a plurality of consumer law, of which consumer contracts can be considered one aspect. This is how the Court has considered it, over and above its place in Art. 149.1.6, which establishes the exclusive competence of the State in matters of commercial legislation, in order to maintain the unity of the market and uniform consumer protection. It is worth noting at this point how the unification of the market in contractual matters is transferred to the transposition of European instruments, as will be the case of Directives 2019/770/EU and 2019/771/EU, in the area of digital supply and consumer sales contracts. This has the curious result of reversing the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity.where this is necessary for the proper functioning of the internal market (Art. 81 2 TFEU) insofar as it is the European legislator who comes to favour, ad intramarket unity in Spain. However, the state's concern for market unity did not lead to a recourse to the regulation of the assignment of mortgage credits. Art. 569.28.2 requires a different threshold for its validity to that established in state, civil and mortgage legislation (this last point requires special study).

The second issue is new. It relates to the judgment's interpretation of the basis of contractual obligations. This matter has traditionally been considered an exclusive competence of the State, based on the wording of Art. 149.1.8 CE, hierarchically superior to Art. 129 EAC. However, it is now considered a matter shared between the State and the Autonomous Communities, included in the dynamics of the distribution of competences between the State and the Autonomous Communities. bases-development such as education, health, energy and the environment. The ruling considers that the State has not developed the bases of contractual obligations (it has not formally specified them), the Civil Code being of pre-constitutional origin. If they had been established, they would oblige the autonomous legislator to adjust to their limits. While this is happening, the Autonomous Communities cannot be obliged to wait for the specific pronouncement of the State legislator and can exercise their competence respecting the principles derived from the Constitution and existing legislation, as the Constitutional Court has considered in the aforementioned areas, since STC 1/1982, 28 January 1982. This doctrine also allows, on the basis of its precedents, the Autonomous Communities with regulatory capacity to develop the basics through the achievement of their own legislative options, beyond what has been determined by the State. And even reproduce the state text, if necessary, by introducing it into the bases, in order to make the autonomous text more comprehensible. The consequence of the above is that the civil law of Catalonia (as any of the Autonomous Communities with civil regulatory capacity would be susceptible) constitutes a legal subsystem, self-sufficient and susceptible to development. With the only limit of its statutory framework and the bases that the State may have established. However, the Constitutional Court has considered that the State's legislative competence in the area of organising public registers and instruments has been violated. It has done so on the occasion of the establishment of a notarial resolution procedure, (Art. 621-54.3), which is required for deeds entering the Land Register. This follows in the wake of the judgments that annulled the regulation of the public deed for de facto unions in Navarre and Madrid (the latter Community without regulatory capacity). Although this is true, it is worrying that the broad autonomous regulatory competence has precisely this limit. As the Parliament of Catalonia emphasised, it prevents the accommodation of civil institutions to the protection afforded by the notarial function. This was also pointed out by the STC 4/2014. Therefore, in view of the evolution of constitutional doctrine, that substantive right which has access to the public document, containing the notarial record of the requirements for the validity and effectiveness of the legal act or business regulated by the autonomous legislator, should be excluded from the competence limit. This interpretation would prevent the loss of those guarantees derived from the notarial function, as well as their undue circumscription to ordinary law, to the detriment of market unity and therefore legal certainty.