El concepto de "bloque de la constitucionalidad", inspirado en el francés "bloc de constitutionnalité", es adoptado por la doctrina española a prin- cipios de los años 80, pasando, poco tiempo después a la jurisprudencia consti- tucional. Desde entonces, y en 25 años de uso por el Tribunal Constitucional y la doctrina, la deriva de este concepto ha sido notable. La aproximación más simple al término, y también la más extendida, lo asocia a la idea de un conjunto de normas cuya función consiste en atribuir o modificar la atribución de las competencias de las Comunidades Autónomas, labor que la Constitución no realiza de forma directa, sino a través de algunas disposiciones de rango inferior. No obstante esta aproxima- ción ha sido superada en la práctica y ha de reconocerse que hoy el bloque se acerca más a un concepto procesal, asociado a la función que desempeñan las normas inte- grantes del bloque como parámetro de la constitucionalidad del resto de disposicio- nes del ordenamiento jurídico.
The term "bloque de la constitucionalidad", which refers to a group of laws that have a special constitutional nature, was inspired by the french "bloc de constitutionnalité", and was progressively adopted by the Spanish authors in the eighties, being also eventually adopted by the Constitutional Court as well. Since then, and after more than 25 years of using this term, the evolution of its legal meaning has been considerable. The most simple and widespread definition of the bloque associated the term with a set of constitutional laws that have a special authority, bestowed upon them by the Constitution, which allows them to assign or modify the level of authority of the Autonomous Communities. Since the Spanish Constitution does not directly attribute authority to the Communities, but leaves this task to the intermediary laws which form part of the bloque, their relevance would be indisputable. However, this vision of the bloque has eventually evolved into a different meaning, so that it is now more a procedural term, associated to the examination of the constitutionality of the rest of the laws that the Constitutional Court must undertake.