Relaciones entre municipios y provincias
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The difficulties of the suppression or forced mergers of municipalities lead to emphasise and design the intermunicipal governance. In a country with small municipalities that have low management capacity and a high level of municipal fragmentation, it is necessary the articulation of the intermunicipal governance to avoidboth the control of municipalities by higher levels of governments and the articulation of conditioned financial systems. Intermunicipal governance should be regulated as an affair of the State and considered as a pillar
of the “State of the Autonomies”. Moreover, it should not be treated as a subject under the urban or regional planning competence of the Autonomous Community or as a matter to be disputed by the State and the Autonomous Communities. Precisely, this is the constitutional regime of the Province: a local entity that is the result of an amalgamation of municipalities. In this regard, taking into account a constitutional mandate, the amalgamation of municipalities should be governed to transform the same in an articulation of municipalities. The Province, therefore, shows a twofold dimension: intermunicipal and intermediate level of government. Consequently, when the State and the Autonomous Community legislate, they find an articulated municipality where the competences of the Province make effective the subsidiarity principle establishing municipal competences and avoiding the intervention of the Autonomous Community because of the low management capacity of municipalities.