Spanish Constitution of 1876

The Spanish Constitution of 1876 was promulgated on June 30, 1876, at the beginning of the reign of Alfonso XII, and was the basis of the political regime of the Bourbon Restoration. a constitutional draft promoted by a group of 300 notables, former senators and deputies from previous legislatures, summoned by the Prime Minister, the liberal-conservative Cánovas del Castillo. A commission of nine people resulted from them, chaired by Manuel Alonso Martínez, who would be the main editor of the final text. The project was approved with hardly any changes by the Cortes that emerged from the general elections in Spain in 1876 held only this time through universal (male) suffrage.

It remained in force until the coup d'état led by Primo de Rivera in September 1923, which makes it the longest-serving constitution in the history of Spain up to that moment (47 years).

José María Jover has highlighted that «any historical analysis of the Constitution of 1876 must start from the fact that the political dynamics foreseen in its articles —the decisive role of the electoral body, of the parliamentary majorities that theoretically share with the king the function of maintaining or overthrowing governments— not only is it not going to be developed in practice in accordance with such formal forecasts, but its very architects count in advance on that mismatch between the letter and the reality of its application." Starting from this duality " formal constitution and real functioning of political life" that will characterize the political regime of the Restoration, "the parties could [from power] develop their projects at the same time as having the budget and jobs in the administration with which they satisfy their clienteles; that is, to grant favors to his followers, who could share common ideas, but also sought material benefits", stated Carlos Dardé.

Preparation and approval

The Liberal-Conserver Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, President of the Government and main promoter of the new Constitution

Faced with the claims of the Moderate Party to restore the Spanish Constitution of 1845, after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy on December 30, 1874, the President of the Government Antonio Cánovas del Castillo imposed his criteria of drawing up and approving a new Constitution. To do this, it attracted the sector of the Constitutional Party headed by Manuel Alonso Martínez, who formed a new political group called the Parliamentary Center. On May 20, 1875, at the initiative of the "centralists" supported by the government, a meeting met Assembly of Notables made up of 341 former deputies and former monarchist senators from the Elizabethan era and the Six-year period. Alonso Martínez established the limits of the meeting (the Monarchy of Alfonso XII could not be questioned) and its purpose (the establishment of some constitutional bases that secure the throne):

Manuel Alonso Martínez, leader of the Constitutional Party sector, joined the Cánovas project to adopt a new constitution, abandoning the claim of the Spanish Constitution of 1869. According to Cánovas he convened the assembly of notables gathered in May 1875 and was part of the commission of nine members who drafted the draft Constitution. His followers were called centralists by the name of the group they formed: the Parliamentary Center.

The object of the meeting is neither can it be to discuss the Monarchy and the dynasty of Alfonso XII; these are subjects that are out of discussion always, and that all of us have sincerely and loyally recognized. We meet here, therefore, according to the call, to try to establish the basis for a common legality, to strengthen the throne and dynasty of Alfonso XII and to restore the constitutional regime and to ensure freedom by framing it with the order and principles of equity and justice necessary for the preservation and social order. I understand that to achieve this result it is necessary that we all make great concessions within our honor and convictions, thus giving a great test of patriotism...

As in the Assembly of Notables the moderates had the majority, Cánovas maneuvered so that the elaboration of the constitutional bases would be entrusted to a commission of 39 of them in which moderates, canovistas and centralists ―a commission of «practical and experienced men in public affairs», according to its president Manuel Alonso Martínez―, which in turn delegated their drafting to a subcommittee made up of nine people, including Alonso Martínez. The work of the commission and the subcommission, in which the Canovistas and centralistas had the majority, lasted for two months and the main stumbling block was the question of Catholic unity that would not finally be included in the base 11 regulating the religious question. The moderates publicly showed their disagreement in a manifesto on August 3 in which they called for the protest of the Catholics. On the other hand, around the Canovista nucleus, which was joined by former moderates, the Liberal-Conservative Party, which would be headed by Cánovas himself and of which some historians place its birth precisely in the Assembly of Notables.

The government then called elections, opening a debate in the council of ministers on whether universal (male) suffrage should be maintained in accordance with the Electoral Law of 1870, legislation from the "revolutionary era". At the proposal of Cánovas himself, it was agreed that they would be called by universal suffrage "for this one time", a concession to the constitutionalists to integrate into the new monarchy and that outraged the moderates. Cánovas then resigned to be consistent with his own convictions contrary to universal suffrage and to replace the three most right-wing ministers in the same operation, all of them of moderate origin, one of them the Marquis of Orovio. He was replaced by General Joaquín Jovellar Soler who would occupy the presidency of the Government exclusively during the period of drawing up the electoral lists, although in fact "the boss was Cánovas and politics was done from his private home", as a foreign ambassador commented. «This solution allowed Cánovas not to be directly and officially involved in the decision to maintain universal suffrage for the first elections. By doing so, regardless of his own convictions, he avoided the disqualification of the historical moderates, saving his leadership over the conservative party he was trying to create", Feliciano Montero has affirmed. Cánovas's opposition to universal suffrage would not change and when it was finally approved in June 1890 at the proposal of the liberal government of Sagasta, he affirmed during the debate of the law that its "sincere" application, "if it gives a true vote in the government of the country to the crowd, not only uneducated, that would be what less, but [to] the miserable and begging crowd", "it would be the triumph of communism and the ruin of the principle of property".

On the eve of the elections, which took place on January 20-24, 1876, while the ecclesiastical hierarchy deployed a campaign prohibiting Catholics from voting for the propagators of "that freedom of perdition », in reference to the religious tolerance advocated by the canovistas and the centralistas , the Commission of Notables published the Manifesto of the Notables in which it justified the constitutional bases that had drafted with a view to the great objective of "strengthening... the conquests of the modern spirit, establishing public order on solid foundations and protecting the fundamental principles of the Spanish monarchy from dangerous contingencies". In the Manifesto, made public on January 9, called for consensus:

Naturally, it was, therefore, that the parties, in response to their call, would agree to reach a common legality, because without a universally accepted king and a Constitution for all respected, there may indeed be a more or less intelligent and profitable dictatorship, but the monarchical-constitutional and parliamentary regime is absolutely impossible.

Francisco Romero Robledo, a «septembrist» «repentant» that joined the Canovis project. As Minister of the Interior, he highlighted for his electoral "maniobras" to obtain an overwhelming majority for the Government of Cánovas, thus inaugurating one of the defining characteristics of the political regime of the Restoration: electoral fraud.

Thanks to the "maneuvers" of the Minister of the Interior Francisco Romero Robledo the elections, in which there was an abstention that, according to official figures, exceeded 45% —65% in the big cities— brought an overwhelming Canovista majority in the Cortes (333 deputies out of 391) and the moderates only obtained twelve seats — "they were destroyed at the polls" — so many members of the old party from the Elizabethan era joined the party of Cánovas. The final blow to the moderates was dealt by Cánovas when, due to the discussion of article 11 of the Constitution, which did not recognize the Catholic unity whose maintenance the moderates advocated, he forced them to pronounce themselves by raising a cabinet issue. The "agony" of the Moderate Party, "however, lasted until 1882. The total absorption of moderantism by the Liberal Conservative Party was only culminated when in 1884, the Catholic Union, founded by Pidal in 1881, joined the party."

In contrast to Sagasta's constitutionalists, by agreement, Romero Robledo "granted" them twenty-seven seats ―one of them for Sagasta himself for Zamora that he would enjoy almost permanently― as a reward for the recognition they had received in November of 1875 of the new monarchy by publicly declaring its claim to "today be the most liberal government party within the constitutional Monarchy of Alfonso XII".

The Cortes that emerged from the elections, baptized by some critics as Las Cortes de los Milagros in reference to the massive electoral fraud, were the ones that from February 15, 1876, the day on which the king solemnly inaugurated the legislature, they discussed the draft Constitution in very few sessions ―the titles related to the Crown and its powers were not debated at the proposal of Cánovas, despite the protests of the few republican deputies, such as Emilio Castelar― and they finally approved it on May 24 in Congress ―by 276 votes against 40― and on June 22 in the Senate ―by 130 against 11―. it was properly constitutive. They limited themselves to accepting the text of the Commission and approving its content... On the last day of June the Constitution was ready for promulgation".

Content

The Constitution of 1876, a short text (89 articles plus one additional), constitutes a kind of synthesis of the Constitutions of 1845 ―moderate― and 1869 ―democratic―, but with a strong predominance of the first since it collected its fundamental doctrinal principle: the shared sovereignty of the Cortes with the king ―theory elaborated by the Spanish doctrinaire liberalism (Jaime Balmes, Donoso Cortés) based on the idea of the internal constitution defended by Jovellanos in the Cortes of Cádiz― to the detriment of the principle of national sovereignty on which that of 1969 was based. This is how Cánovas del Castillo defended the principle of "shared sovereignty" King/Cortes:

All monarchists, without exception, agree that the practical form of sovereignty is that the exercise of sovereignty is fully entrusted to the Crown with the Courts; that only the Courts with the Crown can constitutionally legislate; and that only in the Crown with the Courts, not in the Courts without the Crown, or in the Crown without the Courts... sovereignty is represented... For us never, by any way, can be reached by legality to the suppression of the monarchy, because there is no legality without the monarchy; because without the monarchy there may be struggle, there may be force, there may be battles, but there is neither, nor there can be, legality.

The principle of king/Cortes shared sovereignty derived from the idea that «in Spain the Monarchy was not a mere form of government, but the very core of the Spanish State. That is why Cánovas suggested to the Commission of Notables that in its opinion it proposed the exclusion of the titles and articles referring to the Monarchy from the examination and debate of the Cortes. The Monarchy thus remained above legislative determinations, both of an ordinary and constitutional nature"., above the struggle of the parties", Manuel Suárez Cortina has affirmed.

From the Constitution of 1869 it preserved the broad declaration of individual rights, but recognized them with restrictions by opening the possibility that ordinary laws limited them, cut their exercise or even suspended them. Regarding the conflicting issues, an ambiguous wording was chosen, to be determined by the laws that developed it, which made it possible for each party, conservative or liberal, to govern with its own principles, without the need to alter the Constitution.

An example of this is the question of suffrage: it was left to the electoral law to determine whether it would be restricted ―as defended by the moderates and the Canovistas― or universal ―as the constitutionalist “revolutionaries” of Sagasta defended―. Thus, the electoral law of December 28, 1878 approved by the Cortes with a conservative majority determined the return to restricted suffrage ―only one in six men over the age of 25 had the right to vote: about 850,000, 5% of the population total ―, while a new law approved in 1890 by Parliament with a liberal majority would definitively implement universal (male) suffrage, with which between four and a half million and five million people now had the right to vote. However, with both laws, fraud was what characterized the Restoration elections. Governments were formed before the elections and then called and always achieved a large majority in Congress.

Opening session of the Courts held at the Senate Palace on 1 July 1878 (The Spanish and American Illustration8 July 1878).

In another of the conflicting issues ―the composition of the Senate, the Upper Chamber of the Restoration Courts, with the same powers as the Congress of Deputies― a Solomonic decision was adopted: half of the 360 senators would be for life by "own right" (the admirals of the Navy, the general captains of the Army and the First Class Majors of Spain), or appointed by the king (at the proposal of the Government); and the other half elected for a period of five years by various civil, political and religious corporations, and by the largest taxpayers in each province, through indirect suffrage. This solution had the precedent of the individual vote presented by the moderate "puritan" Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, former boss of Cánovas, to the constitutional reform of 1845.

As for the Congress of Deputies, article 30 established that they would be elected for a period of five years, although in practice no legislature would last that long ―only the liberal "Long Parliament" from 1885 to 1890 came close to exhausting the mandate ―. In fact, the average would be just over two years. But the Constitution did not establish the duration of the sessions, so, as would happen frequently and arbitrarily during the reign of Alfonso XIII, governments could suspend them.

One deputy was elected for every 50,000 inhabitants. The majority corresponded to single-member districts and about a hundred to circumscriptions in which up to 8 deputies were elected using a partial multi-member majority vote. Only Spanish citizens over the age of twenty-five could vote years and that they had resided in the town included in the electoral district for at least two years. Women, young people and those who had lost their civil rights due to being in prison did not have the right to vote. All citizens who had the right to vote were included in the electoral roll. In order to be elected deputy, it was necessary to be Spanish, of secular status, of legal age, and enjoy all civil rights.

The deputies attached to the Government form what is called a majority. Groups formed by other parties are said to be in opposition, because they discuss the government's measures and sometimes oppose them. The opposition groups form what is called minorities. The majority is the one that serves as the basis for the Government to be able to approve the laws, since through it in the voting it can reach a majority of votes. Minorities' primary mission is to control the acts of the Government and to serve as a regulator of power, offering an obstacle to any abuse of that same power. In addition, today's minorities can become tomorrow's majority, and this is taken into account by the rulers.^{[citation needed]}

The religious question: the controversial article 11

The most controversial issue in the Constitution was undoubtedly the religious issue. The freedom of religion recognized in the Spanish Constitution of 1869 was abolished, but in the final wording of article 11 in which the issue was addressed, Cánovas had to use all their authority to impose themselves on the moderates, and to resist the formidable pressure from the Vatican and the Spanish Catholic hierarchy, who wanted Catholic unity to be recognized in the Constitution (as in that of 1845). One million signatures and deputies from the Canovista majority, of moderate origin, also showed themselves in favor of Catholic unity, thereby putting the continuity of the government itself at risk. Cánovas' response was to make the religious issue a cabinet issue, thus forcing the dissident deputies to take a position. Almost all of them backed down —"renouncing the moderate party"— and Cánovas's proposal was able to go ahead. Only about twenty deputies left the government ranks to join the group of pure moderates, who are the ones who would give life to the Moderate Party, which from then on became a marginal entity until its final dissolution in December from 1882.

Cánovas's alternative affirmed the confessional (Catholic) nature of the State, but at the same time established tolerance for other religions that were allowed private worship. religious promulgated in the Constitution of 1869, also, and above all, meant the denial of the principle of Catholic unity that had prevailed before 1869 and that many wanted to restore with the Restoration. The measure put an end to the difficulties experienced by the Protestant communities in Spain and to the endless series of conflicts that had hampered foreign relations (especially with England) during the reign of Elizabeth II", has stated the historian Carlos Dardé. However, The solution given to the religious question was nothing new, as it coincided with the one proposed in the nonnata Spanish Constitution of 1856, Feliciano Montero pointed out.

The argument used to defend relative religious tolerance was the existence in Spain of foreigners ―many of them managers of railway or mining companies― who had to be allowed to celebrate their own cults. Failure to do so would mean, according to Minister Manuel Alonso Martínez, "building a wall between Spain and foreigners like the one in China" and also impeding the "development of progress and science".

The conflicting article 11 of the Constitution, drafted personally by Cánovas himself, was finally as follows:

Art. 11. The Catholic, Apostolic Religion, Romana is that of the State. The Nation is obliged to maintain the cult and its ministers. No one shall be disturbed in the Spanish territory by his religious opinions or by the exercise of his respective cult, except for respect for Christian morals. However, other ceremonies or public demonstrations will not be permitted than those of the State religion

The Catholic Church would end up accepting the new situation because it trusted that subsequent organic laws would respect its interests, which actually happened, as the Spanish cardinal primate recognized years later: «article 11 of the Constitution has protected more effectively than a provision prohibiting Catholic interests".

The “turn”

According to the 1876 constitution, the president of the Council of Ministers was not responsible to the Cortes, but to the monarch. This corresponded to the appointment of the president (after the resignation of the previous one), dissolve the Cortes and call new elections from which it was known that he would emerge victorious. This system is known as turnismo and consisted of the peaceful alternation of the two main parties as previously agreed.

The following elections were held during the term of this Constitution:

Signatories

Monument to Alonso Martínez in the square that bears his name of Madrid (J. L. Parés, 1994).

• The king, Alfonso XII.
• The President of the Council of Ministers and Acting Minister of Finance, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.
• State Minister Fernando Calderón Collantes.
• The Minister of Grace and Justice, Cristóbal Martín de Herrera.
• War Minister Francisco de Ceballos.
• The Minister of Marina, Vice Admiral Juan Bautista Antequera and Bobadilla.
• The Minister of the Interior, Francisco Romero Robledo.
• The Minister of Promotion, Francisco de Borja Queipo de Llano, VIII count of Toreno.
• The Minister of Ultramar, Adelardo López de Ayala.

Assessment

Historian Manuel Suárez Cortina has made the following assessment of the Constitution:

If it is estimated its duration is to recognize that it represented a fundamental element in political stability over half a century. With its limitations, and restrictions of rights as important as religious freedom, or the elective character of the Senate that constituted one of the battle horses of the struggles for constitutional reform in Europe for centuries, it draws attention here to a primordial element: that of the parliamentary nature of the system. If we understand by parliamentary regime a democratic political form in which a central position is attributed to Parliament and in which relations between Government and legislative are balanced, the Constitution of 1876 does not constitute a true parliamentary regime, but a constitutional Monarchy, since it is the king, and not the Parliament, the real axis of political life.[... ]
This imbalance between Executive, Crown and Parliament would have to be the cause of the subsequent failure of the parliamentary regime, not because of its languish, but because of the inability of the system to integrate the most dynamic sectors of Spanish society... The failure of this transition from a constitutional Monarchy to a parliamentary one is one of the central elements of the limitations of the constitutional text of 1876...