Spanish Constitution of 1812
Constitution of Cádiz | |
---|---|
Senate of Spain | |
Cortes of Cádiz | |
Long title
| |
Territorial extent | Spanish Empire |
Passed | 19 March 1812 |
Enacted | 12 March 1812 |
Signed by | President of the Cortes of Cádiz 174 deputies 4 secretaries |
Effective | 19 March 1812 (first time) 1 January 1820 (second time, de facto) 1836 (third time, de facto) |
Repealed | 4 May 1814 (first time) April 1823 (second time) 18 June 1837 (third time) |
The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy (Spanish: Constitución Política de la Monarquía Española), also known as the Constitution of Cádiz (Spanish: Constitución de Cádiz) and as La Pepa,[1] was the first Constitution of Spain and one of the earliest codified constitutions in world history.[2] The Constitution was ratified on 19 March 1812 by the Cortes of Cádiz, the first Spanish legislature that included delegates from the entire nation and its possessions, including Spanish America and the Philippines. "It defined Spanish and Spanish American liberalism for the early 19th century."[3]
With the notable exception of proclaiming
When
Napoleonic political changes
Until the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, Ferdinand VII ruled as an absolute monarch. Napoleon forced Ferdinand's abdication as well as the renunciation of his father Charles IV's rights, and then placed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain.
Seeking to create legitimacy for Joseph I of Spain, Napoleon called the Cortes, whose delegates he had selected, to proclaim Joseph as the legitimate monarch. The Cortes then approved the French-style
Spanish Cortes of Cádiz
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2021) |
As Spaniards in the peninsula and overseas grappled with the new political reality, for them it created a crisis of legitimacy of rule. Many places in Spain created juntas to rule in the place of the legitimate monarch. A Supreme Central Junta was created to coordinate the multiplicity of juntas. Napoleon opened a new way for the Spanish Empire to be constituted. His vision acknowledged the aspirations of Spanish colonies for greater equality and autonomy. Spaniards rejecting Napoleon's rule meant they needed to offer political inducements for Spanish America and the Philippines to stay loyal to the empire. A new Cortes was called with delegates from Spain and the overseas components of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the Philippines. The Spanish organized an interim Spanish government, the Supreme Central Junta and called for a Cortes to convene with representatives from all the Spanish provinces throughout the worldwide empire, in order to establish a government with a firm claim to legitimacy. The Junta first met on 25 September 1808 in Aranjuez and later in Seville, before retreating to Cádiz. Cádiz was the most secure place for the Cortes to take place, since it was a fortified port. Retreating before the advancing French and an outbreak of yellow fever, the Supreme Central Junta moved to Isla de León, where it could be supplied and defended with the help of the Spanish and British navies, and abolished itself, leaving a regency to rule until the Cortes could convene. The Cortes of Cádiz crafted and adopted the Constitution while besieged by French troops, first on Isla de León (now San Fernando), then an island separated from the mainland by a shallow waterway on the Atlantic side of the Bay of Cádiz, and within the small, strategically located city of Cádiz itself
When the Cortes convened in Cádiz in 1810, there appeared to be two possibilities for Spain's political future if the French could be driven out. The first, represented especially by
The Cortes did not have revolutionary intentions, since the Supreme Central Junta saw itself simply as a continuation of the legitimate government of Spain in the absence of a monarch considered legitimate. The opening session of the new Cortes was held on 24 September 1810 in the building now known as the Real Teatro de las Cortes. The opening ceremonies included a civic procession, a mass, and a call by the president of the Regency, Pedro Quevedo y Quintana, the bishop of Ourense, for those present to fulfill their task loyally and efficiently. Still, the very act of resistance to the French involved a certain degree of deviation from the doctrine of royal sovereignty: if sovereignty resided entirely in the monarch, then Charles and Ferdinand's abdications in favor of Napoleon would have made Joseph Bonaparte the legitimate ruler of Spain.[9]
The representatives who gathered at Cádiz were far more liberal than the elite of Spain taken as a whole, and they produced a document far more liberal than might have been produced in Spain were it not for the war. Few of the most conservative voices were at Cádiz, and there was no effective communication with King Ferdinand, who was a virtual prisoner in France. In the Cortes of 1810–1812, liberal deputies, who had the implicit support of the British who were protecting the city, were in the majority and representatives of the Church and nobility constituted a minority. Liberals wanted equality before the law, a centralized government, an efficient modern civil service, a reform of the tax system, the replacement of
Terms
As the principal aim of the new constitution was the prevention of arbitrary and corrupt royal rule, it provided for a limited monarchy, which governed through ministers subject to parliamentary control. It laid out the structure of the three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial.[citation needed]
The constitution has 384 articles in 10 major chapters or (Títulos). Chapter I was Of the Spanish Nation and Spaniards (articles 1–9). Chapter II (articles 12–26) was Of the Spanish Territory, Religion, Government and Rights of Citizenship. Chapter III (articles 27–167) dealt with the Cortes, the legislative branch of government. Chapter IV Of the King (articles 168–241) defined the powers of and the restrictions on the monarchy. Chapter V Of the Tribunals, and Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice (articles 242–308) concerned how laws would be administered by specific courts. Chapter VI Of the Internal Government of Provinces and of the Pueblos (articles 309–323) lays out governance at the provincial and local level. Chapter VII Of the Financial Contributions (articles 338–355) dealt with taxation. Chapter VIII Of the National Military Force (articles 356–365) specified how the military would operate. Chapter IX Of Public Education (articles 366–371) called for uniform public education from primary schools through university, as well as freedom of expression (article 371). Chapter X Of the Observance of the Constitution and the Way to Proceed to Amend it (articles 366–384).[10] The constitution had no bill of rights, which had been the case of the Constitution of the United States when it was first ratified. Rights and obligations of citizens were embedded in individual articles of the Spanish Constitution.[citation needed]
Male suffrage, which was not determined by property qualifications, favoured the position of the commercial class in the new parliament since there was no special provision for the Church or the nobility. Repeal of traditional property restrictions gave liberals the freer economy that they wanted. There was no provision for literacy of voters until 1830, which allowed men in the popular groups access to suffrage.[11] The constitution set up a centralized administrative system for the whole empire, in both Iberia and overseas components, based on newly-reformed and uniform provincial governments and municipalities, rather than maintaining some form of the varied historical local governmental structures.
The first provincial government created under the Constitution was in the province of Guadalajara con Molina. Its deputation first met in the village of Anguita in April 1813, since the capital Guadalajara was the site of ongoing fighting.[citation needed]
Establishment of Spanish citizenship
Among the most debated questions during the drafting of the constitution was the status of the
The Constitution gave Spanish citizenship to natives of the territories that had belonged to the Spanish monarchy in both hemispheres.
The peninsular deputies, for the most part, were also not inclined towards ideas of federalism promoted by many of the overseas deputies, which would have granted greater self-rule to the American and Asian territories. Most of the peninsulares, therefore, shared the absolutists' inclination towards centralized government.[22] Another aspect of the treatment of the overseas territories in the constitution, one of the many that would prove not to be to the taste of Ferdinand VII, that by converting the territories to provinces, the king was deprived of a great economic resource. Under the Antiguo Régimen, the taxes from Spain's overseas possessions went directly to the royal treasury. Under the Constitution of 1812, it would go to the state administrative apparatus.[citation needed]
Ayuntamientos
The impact of the 1812 Constitution on the emerging states of Spanish America was quite direct.
Promulgation
The Constitution was signed in March 1812, but it was not promulgated immediately throughout the empire. In New Spain, Viceroy
Repeal and restoration
When Ferdinand VII was restored in March 1814 by the Allied Powers, it is not clear whether he immediately made up his mind as to whether to accept or reject this new charter of Spanish government. He first promised to uphold the constitution, but was repeatedly met in numerous towns by crowds who welcomed him as an absolute monarch, often smashing the markers that had renamed their central plazas as Plaza of the Constitution. Sixty-nine deputies of the Cortes signed the so-called Manifiesto de los Persas ("Manifesto of the Persians") encouraging him to restore absolutism. Within a matter of weeks, encouraged by
Ferdinand's absolutist rule rewarded the traditional holders of power—
Legacy
The Cortes of Cádiz produced the first written Spanish constitution, promulgated in Cádiz on 19 March 1812, and is regarded as the founding document of liberalism in Spain. It is one of the first examples of classical liberalism or conservative liberalism worldwide. It came to be called the "sacred code" of the branch of liberalism that rejected a part of the French Revolution. During the early nineteenth century it served as a model for liberal constitutions of several Mediterranean and Latin American nations. It served as the model for the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, the Portuguese Constitution of 1822 and the Mexican one of 1824, and was implemented with minor modifications in various Italian states by the Carbonari during their revolt of 1820 and 1821.[27] The Plan de Iguala in Mexico in 1821 was a reaction to the Cadiz Constitution. Augustin de Iterbide did not like how the Spanish government was becoming more liberal; instead he wanted things to go back to the way they were. The Plan de Iguala increases the power of the Roman Catholic Church instead of decreasing it, and also called on the prince of Spain to come and rule over them.[28]
Gallery
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Anguita, where the act was signed to establish the first diputación provincial under the 1812 Constitution.
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Constitution of 1812 monument in St. Augustine, Florida. This obelisk was erected when the city was the capital of the Spanish Florida.
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Monument to the Constitution of 1812 in Cádiz, Spain
See also
- American Provincial Deputation of Spain
- Bayonne Constitution
- Cádiz
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Dos de Mayo Uprising
- History of democracy in Mexico
- List of constitutions of Spain
- Napoleonic Code
- Retroversion of the sovereignty to the people
- San Fernando, Cádiz
- Spanish American wars of independence
- Trienio Liberal
References
- ^ Because it was passed by the Cortes on the day of Saint Joseph (in Spanish, Pepe is a nickname for "José").
- ^ "¡Viva la Pepa! 1812, las Cortes de Cádiz y la primera Constitución Española" (in Spanish). National Geographic España. 17 March 2016. Archived from the original on 2 December 2019. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ Thiessen, Heather. "Spain: Constitution of 1812." Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 5, p. 165. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
- ^ "Constitución de 1812" (in Spanish). Congress of Deputies.
- ^ Thiessen, "Spain: Constitution of 1812", p. 166.
- ^ "1814 Fernando VII Returns to Power – War and Nation: identity and the process of state-building in South America (1800–1840)". Research at Kent). Retrieved 11 April 2024.
- ^ Zimmerman, A.F., "Spain and Its Colonies, 1808–1820." Hispanic American Historical Review 11:4(1931), pp. 439–440.
- ^ Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2006, p. 186. [ISBN missing]
- ISBN 0-631-14988-0. pp. 19–20.
- ^ Constitución de 1812
- ^ Articles 18–26 of the Constitution. Archived 9 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine Spain, The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2003.
- ^ Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 80–81.
- ^ Chust, Manuel (1999). La cuestión nacional americana en las Cortes de Cádiz. Valencia: Fundación Instituto de Historia Social UNED. pp. 43–45.
- ^ Chust, Manuel (1999). La cuestión nacional americana en las Cortes de Cádiz. Valencia: Fundación Instituto de Historia Social UNED. p. 55. Rodríguez, 82–86.
- ISBN 84-88490-55-0.
- ^ Articles 1, 5 and 10 established the Empire as the territory of Spain and Spaniards as all "freemen born and bred in the Spanish dominions," "foreigners who may have obtained letters of naturalization from the Cortes" or "those [people] who, without [these letters] have resided ten years in any village of Spain, and acquired thereby a right of vicinity" and "slaves who receive their freedom in the Spanish dominions."
- ^ "La nación española es la reunión de los españoles de ambos hemisferios."
- ^ Articles 18 through 22.
- ISBN 9972-42-607-6
- ^ Articles 22 and 29.
- ^ Chust, 70–74, 149–157. Rodríguez, 86.
- ^ Chust, 53–68, 127–150.
- ^ Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule, p. 197.
- ^ Brading, The First America, p. 555.
- ^ Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule, pp. 195–197.
- ISBN 84-87863-03-5, pp. 81–82.
- ISBN 978-0-299-06270-5.in 1825. Italian liberalism in 1820–1821 relied on junior officers and the provincial middle classes, essentially the same social base as in Spain. It even used a Hispanized political vocabulary, for it was led by giunte (juntas), appointed local capi politici (jefes políticos), used the terms of liberali and servili (emulating the Spanish word serviles applied to supporters of absolutism), and in the end talked of resisting by means of a guerrilla. For both Portuguese and Italian liberals of these years, the Spanish constitution of 1812 remained the standard document of reference.
The Spanish pattern of conspiracy and revolt by liberal army officers ... was emulated in both Portugal and Italy. In the wake of Riego's successful rebellion, the first and only pronunciamiento in Italian history was carried out by liberal officers in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Spanish-style military conspiracy also helped to inspire the beginning of the Russian revolutionary movement with the revolt of the Decembrist army officers
- ISSN 0018-2168.
Primary sources
- The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy. Archived 9 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine Biblioteca Virtual "Miguel de Cervantes" on-line version of a partial translation originally published in Cobbett's Political Register, Vol. 16 (July–December 1814).
Further reading
- Anna, Timothy E. "The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World: The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812." (2018): 523–524.
- Annino, Antonio, "Cádiz y la revolución territorial de los pueblos mexicanos, 1812–1821." Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, siglo XIX. De la formación del espacio político nacional: 177–226.
- Artola, Miguel. La España de Fernando VII. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1999. ISBN 84-239-9742-1
- Benson, Nettie Lee, ed. Mexico and the Spanish Cortes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966.
- Congleton, Roger D. "Early Spanish Liberalism and Constitutional Political Economy: The Cádiz Constitution of 1812. 2010." (2010): 18–19.
- Davis, John. "The Spanish Constitution of 1812 and the Mediterranean Revolutions (1820–25)." Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 37.2 (2012): 7.
- Eastman, Scott, and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, eds. The rise of constitutional government in the Iberian Atlantic world: the impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. University of Alabama Press, 2015.
- Esdaile, Charles J. Spain in the Liberal Age. Oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. ISBN 0-631-14988-0
- Garrido Caballero, Magdalena. "The Legacy of 1812 in Spain and Russia." Istoriya 7.8 (52) (2016): 10–20.
- Hamnett, Brian. "The Medieval Roots of Spanish Constitutionalism." The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World (1812): 19–41.
- Harris, Jonathan, "An English utilitarian looks at Spanish American independence: Jeremy Bentham's Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria," The Americas 53 (1996), 217–233
- Herr, Richard, "The Constitution of 1812 and the Spanish Road to Constitutional Monarchy," pp. 65–102 (notes on pp. 374–380) in Isser Woloch, ed. Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8047-4194-8. (A volume in the publisher's series The Making of Modern Freedom.)
- Kobyakova, Ekaterina. "The Idea of Civil Society in the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 and the Spanish Constitution of 1978." Istoriya 7.8 (52) (2016): 10–20.
- Lovett, Gabriel. Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
- Mecham, J. Lloyd. "The origins of federalism in Mexico." The Hispanic American Historical Review 18.2 (1938): 164–182.
- Mirow, Matthew C. "Visions of Cádiz: the Constitution of 1812 in historical and constitutional thought." Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 53 (2010): 59–88.
- Muck, Allison. The Constitution of 1812: An Exercise in Spanish Constitutional Thought. Diss. Pennsylvania State University, 2015.
- Rieu-Millan, Marie Laure. Los diputados americanos en las Cortes de Cádiz: Igualdad o independencia. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1990. ISBN 978-84-00-07091-5
- Ripoll, Carlos. St. Augustine and Cuba: The Monument to the 1812 Spanish Constitution. Editorial Dos Ríos, 2002.
- Roberts, Stephen GH, and Adam Sharman. 1812 Echoes: The Cadiz Constitution in Hispanic History, Culture and Politics. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
- Rodríguez O., Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-62673-0
- Rodríguez O., Jaime E. "'Equality! The Sacred Right of Equality': Representation Under the Constitution of 1812." Revista de Indias 68.242 (2008): 97–122.
- Rodríguez, Mario. The Cádiz Experiment in Central America, 1808 to 1826. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. ISBN 978-0-520-03394-8
- Saenz, Charles Nicholas. "Slaves to Tyrants: Social Ordering, Nationhood, and the Spanish Constitution of 1812." Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 37.2 (2012): 4.
- Schofield, Philip. "Jeremy Bentham and the Spanish Constitution of 1812." Happiness and Utility: Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen (2019): 40.
- Sobrevilla Perea, Natalia. "The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World. The impact of the 1812 Cadiz Constitution of 1812." (2015).
- Zimmerman, A.F. "Spain and Its Colonies, 1808–1820." Hispanic American Historical Review 11:4(1931) 439–463
External links
- Spanish Wikisource has original text related to this article: Constitución española de 1812