Constitutional Debates, Rhetoric, and Political Philosophy in Spain’s Parliamentary History

This book, ‘Constitutional Debates, Rhetoric, and Political Philosophy in Spain’s Parliamentary History’, explores the conceptual controversies, rhetorical devices, and political philosophy’s arguments in Spain’s constitutional debates during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Firstly, it argues that each constitutional debate studied here gave rise to conceptual controversies drawn on political philosophy’s arguments. Clashing ideological views resulted in the renewal of the country’s political vocabulary and institutions. Secondly, the chapter looks into the interdisciplinary bonds between political philosophy, conceptual history, and parliamentary history applied to the study of constitutional debates. Finally, it presents the structure of the book around eight chapters. From Chapters 2 to 7 constitutional debates are addressed. By contrast, Chapter 8 surveys the legacy of liberalism and constitutionalism in contemporary Spain.

This chapter surveys the main conceptual controversies argued by constituent representatives during nineteenth-century constitutional debates in Spain. Political concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘constitution’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘representation’, ‘constituent power’, and ‘freedom’ had partly new meanings that reflected the success of liberal ideas. Constitution, parliamentary representation, and freedoms became the bedrock of the revamped language of liberalism. Disagreements between absolutists and liberals during the Cortes of Cadiz (1810–1814), and between moderate and progressive liberals since the constitutional debate of 1836–1837, raised rival institutional solutions to problems such as the constitutional functions of monarchy, the choice between national and shared sovereignty between king and Cortes, together with the exercise of civil and political rights.

This chapter enquires into the political language during Spain’s twentieth-century constitutional debates, namely, the constitutional debates of 1931 and 1977–1978. Constitution, democracy, and parliament became intertwined ideals. The republican democracy envisaged in 1931 was connected to a partisan interpretation of democratic institutions. By recasting the political language of the country, expectations of political, social, and economic modernization became a turning point. For a number of constituent representatives, the ideal of a republican regime was prior to democracy. Unlike the republican democracy of 1931, the constitutional state designed during the constitutional debate of 1977–1978 strengthened political and social pluralism, compatible with the defence of parliamentary democracy.

This chapter appraises the two models of state that each constitutional debate in Spain’s twentieth century put into practice. The integral state of 1931 and the autonomist state of 1978 were designed in connection to scholarly disagreements about the advantages and flaws of centralism and federalism. Each of these designs was formulated as an alternative to the full decentralization of state competences. Concepts such as ‘competences’, ‘faculties’, and ‘self-rule’ were used during the constitutional sessions of both constitutional debates. The Constitution of 1931 delimited the competences that were transferred to regions, whereas the Constitution of 1978 left broad margins for state decentralization, unleashing a process of growing asymmetry between Spanish regions over time.

This chapter looks into the clashing reformist programmes of the political parties Union of Democratic Centre and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, on the one hand, and the conservative Popular Alliance, on the other hand. Against these three parties, during the debates of the Constituent Assembly of 1977–1978 the Communist Party of Spain, together with Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, endorsed an almost complete decentralization of state competences. In the case of Union of Democratic Centre and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, institutional reforms sought to equate the country with other European democracies admitting a partial decentralization of state competences. In the case of the Spanish Communist Party, reforms to decentralize Spain were deemed insufficient to satisfy the demands of self-determination in terms of a higher degree of self-rule for regions. Nevertheless, regional nationalist parties aimed to enshrine in the Constitution the access to secession from Spain for Catalonia and the Basque Country.

This chapter scrutinizes the rival envisionings of state institutions in the debates of the Constituent Assembly held between May and September 1978. Three aspects are of special relevance in that regard. First, popular and national sovereignty were presented as synonyms even though the Constitution only enshrined national sovereignty. Second, centrist and right-wing representatives accepted the rule of law as mainstay of democratic institutions against the distrust of regional nationalist parties. Third, the Constitution was regarded as the best instrument to protect individual and social rights. Fourth, constituent representatives of centre-right, centre and centre-left thought that the legislative power and, especially, the judiciary should be safeguarded against the executive power by setting constitutional limits to each branch. An independent judiciary was the precondition for a legitimate constitutional state.

This chapter enquires into the rival views about the structure of the state, the concept of ‘nationalities’ and the very idea of Spain as a nation in the constituent assembly of 1977–1978. In the first part, the conflicting understandings of regional autonomy as self-rule are discussed. In the second part, disagreements around the concept of ‘nationalities’ are surveyed to understand why that concept was eminently controversial. In the third part, ethnic and institutional interpretations about Spain as a political nation are contrasted with each other. To nationalist parties state decentralization was regarded as an instrument to hinder the unity of the Spanish nation in the long run.

This chapter enquires into the development of liberalism and democracy in contemporary Spain. It seeks to present current challenges to the constitutional state. First, it presents the main features of constitutional liberalism during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Second, it explores the Portuguese, the Greek, and the Spanish transitions to democracy to appraise their most salient aspects, essential to understand the foundations of their liberal democracies. Third, the chapter digs into the influence of the Council of Europe and the European Economic Community, later named as European Union, on Spanish democracy. Fourth, it distinguishes some remarkable consequences of the economic crisis of 2008 for Spanish democracy: the inrush of widespread populist rhetoric and the questioning of political and social pluralism in favour of partisans understandings of democracy.

This book has explored the Spanish constitutional debates of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries joining the perspectives of political philosophy, conceptual history, and parliamentary history. As research, it has aimed to answer how political philosophy arguments in the parliamentary deliberations inspired conceptual changes and informed the design of state institutions. In each constitutional debate, political representatives debated about every aspect of the Constitution. By doing so their deliberations often led to conceptual innovations and pervasive institutional reforms. Constitutional debates played a determinant role in renewing the political vocabulary of Spain. That process affected concepts such as ‘sovereignty’, ‘constituent power’, ‘constituted power’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘reform’, ‘self-rule’, ‘self-determination’, ‘nation’, and ‘nationalities’.