How should we understand the claims on the right to decide on status made within plurinational member states of the European Union by actors and institutions seeking to protect the self-government of sub-state nations or peoples, or at least their right to consent to their ascribed status? Peaceful solutions to conflicts involving contested claims over territory, citizenship, and national sovereignty (authority) can be found when a conceptual or cultural transformation takes place towards a pluralist and bottom-up or federal concept of plurinational democracy, recovering the centrality of self-determination as the self-assertion of a political community. Constitutional law based on the popular sovereignty of a majority nation within plurinational democracies often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured constituency, and the existence of national or territorial minorities. If constitutions are interpreted as precluding any claim to self-determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim, then an undemocratic, sacralized model of militant constitutionalism may emerge. That model is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national mould, a pre-defined demos. This article revisits the claims of sovereignty made by national territorial minorities in Spain, against the background of the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary that precludes these constituencies from engaging in political debates on the right to decide. The resulting sacralization of the Constitution leads to a new version of the model of ‘militant democracy’, a militant nationalist constitutionalism, which can be countered by an alternative, secular, even profane approach to the Constitution.

中文翻译：

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欧洲的多民族民主：追求世俗的宪政

我们应该如何理解欧盟多民族成员国内的行动者和机构提出的关于决定地位的权利的主张，这些主张旨在保护次国家或人民的自治权，或者至少是他们同意自己的权利的权利。归属地位？当观念或文化发生转变，转向多元、自下而上或联邦的多民族民主概念时，就可以和平解决涉及领土、公民身份和国家主权（权力）争议的冲突，恢复自决的中心地位作为一个政治共同体的自我主张。多民族民主国家中以多数民族的人民主权为基础的宪法常常忽视人民的定义问题作为预先设定的选区，以及民族或领土上少数群体的存在。如果宪法被解释为排除选区的任何自决主张，以及有关该主张的任何辩论，那么可能会出现一种不民主的、神圣化的激进宪政模式。这种模式与其说是为了保护民主，不如说是为了强加一个国家模式，一个预先定义的演示。本文以西班牙司法机构的宪法原则阻止这些选区参与有关决定权的政治辩论为背景，重新审视西班牙境内少数民族提出的主权主张。由此产生的宪法神圣化导致了“激进民主”模式的新版本，一种激进的民族主义宪政主义，可以通过另类的、世俗的、甚至是亵渎的宪法方法来对抗。