Las competencias de la Generalitat de Cataluña en materia de protección pública de menores

Legal institutions for the public protection of minors are at present regulated by regulations enacted as civil legislation. This study looks at the reasons why this was the case. Catalan legislators continued down the road that Spanish state legislators had travelled beforehand. In fact, by this means Spanish state legislators sought, and to a large extent succeeded in, unifying, standardising and including the regulations in this area into common law. This process of "making civil" a task of the government had created distortions, ranging from some decreases in citizen's guarantees when dealing with the Government to considerable legal uncertainty. That is why it would be wise to retrace our steps to make the government's work in terms of the protection of minors more administrative. It is the right time to do so. A process reforming the legislation for public protection of minors is now under way in Catalonia. First, the Department of Justice is producing a draft law which will approve the second book of the Catalonia Civil Code, which regulates the protection of minors. At the same time, the Department of Social Action and Citizenship has begun the process to enact a new Law regulating childhood and adolescence. These legal texts will therefore regulate the public and private institutions protecting minors and a legal regime will be established for them. The Civil Code should regulate the legal/private institutions for the protection of minors, under the jurisdiction of civil legislation (art. 129 of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia). However, the legal and public institutions for the protection of minors should be regulated within a governmental framework, as social services and public protection of minors (art. 166 of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia). Despite this, to the extent that the private and public institutions for the protection of minors are interrelated, the two regulations must complement each other. This is beside the fact that a civil law contains administrative regulations; this is not the problem. The issue is clearly establishing the legal regime of the legal/public institutions for the protection of minors. The Government's work in terms of the public protection of minors must be subject to administrative law, insofar as the Government acts as a public authority, i.e. by exercising the prerogatives that the regulation confers on it to satisfy public interests, such as the protection of children.