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Spain CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM
The 1978 Constitution dismantled the political system
of the
Franco regime and established Spain as a democratic state
ruled
by law. The writing of the Constitution was a long and
arduous
task, involving extensive negotiations and compromise.
Spain has
a history of failed constitutions, and the framers of the
1978
Constitution endeavored to devise a document that would be
acceptable to all the major political forces.
In July 1977, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs
was
formed, made up of thirty-six deputies from the newly
elected
Cortes. These deputies in turn appointed a seven-member
subcommittee that included members of the major national
parties
and one representative, a Catalan, of the regional
parties. This
group was to produce a draft constitution, which it
completed in
December and presented to the full committee. Vigorous
debate
ensued, and by the time the draft was returned to the
subcommittee for final revision in January 1978,
individual
Cortes deputies and party caucuses had proposed more than
1,000
amendments.
As the seven subcommittee members attempted to address
the
issues raised by these amendments, consensus began to
break down
over provisions concerning the Roman Catholic Church,
education,
labor lockouts, and the regional issue. The PSOE delegate
withdrew from the subcommittee in protest on two
occasions, and
it required delicate diplomatic maneuvering on the part of
Prime
Minister Adolfo Suarez Gonzalez to surmount the stalemate
in the
constituent process. Compromise agreements were reached by
the
end of May, when the text went back to the full committee.
By
June 20, this committee had completed revisions of the
draft
document, which was presented for debate in the Congress
of
Deputies (lower chamber of the Cortes) in July, a year
after the
formation of the constitutional committee.
The text was passed with negligible opposition,
although
deputies of the Basque Nationalist Party (Partido
Nacionalista
Vasco--PNV) abstained because of what they termed the
inadequate
provisions for regional autonomy
(see Regional Government
, this
ch.). The draft constitution then went to the Senate
(upper
chamber of the Cortes), where it again received more than
1,000
amendments and was revised by another constitutional
committee.
At the end of September, the full Senate discussed the
text and
approved it. Because there were differences between the
version
passed by the Senate and the one approved by the Congress
of
Deputies, another committee, including both senators and
deputies, was required to resolve the discrepancies. This
group
also added the stipulation that the prime minister must
either
call for new elections or seek a vote of confidence within
thirty
days of the promulgation of the new constitution.
On October 31, 1978, both chambers overwhelmingly
approved
the text of the new Constitution, which was presented to
the
people in a referendum on December 6, 1978. Of the 67.7
percent
of eligible voters who went to the polls, 87.8 percent
accepted
the new Constitution, which was signed by the king on
December
27.
The Constitution that the Spaniards ratified in 1978 is
long
and complicated. In their efforts to avoid dogmatism and
to gain
widespread support, the framers had produced a document
that was
hailed as a triumph for consensus politics, but at the
same time
the new Constitution included ambiguous language and
contradictory provisions, which gave rise to problems of
interpretation in subsequent months and years.
Data as of December 1988
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