Spanish Constitution of 1978

A copy of the Spanish Constitution, signed by King Juan Carlos, is held at the Palace of the
Cortes.
Spain

This article is part of the series:

Politics and government of
Spain

The Constitution of Spain is regarded as the culmination of the Spanish transition to

democracy. It was enacted after a referendum on 6 December 1978 after approval by 88% of
voters.

Contents
• 1 Origins
• 2 Preamble
• 3 Structure of the State
• 4 Social rights
• 5 Reform
○ 5.1 Protected provisions
○ 5.2 The reform of the autonomy statutes
 • 6 References
• 7 External links

Origins
Constitutions of Spain
The constitutional history of Spain dates back to the Constitution of 1812. After the death of
dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, a general election in 1977 convened the Constituent Cortes
(the Spanish Parliament, in its capacity as a constitutional assembly) for the purpose of drafting
and approving the constitution.

Each of the Spanish parties had its recommendation to voters.

A seven-member panel was selected among the elected members of the Cortes to work on a draft
of the Constitution to be submitted to the body. These came to be known, as the media put it, as
the padres de la Constitución or "fathers of the Constitution". These seven people were chosen to
represent the wide (and often, deeply divided) political spectrum within the Spanish Parliament,
while the leading role was given to then ruling party and now defunct Unión de Centro
Democrático (UCD).
• Gabriel Cisneros (UCD)
• José Pedro Pérez-Llorca (UCD)
• Miguel Herrero y Rodríguez de Miñón (UCD)
• Miquel Roca i Junyent es:Miquel Roca (Convergència i Unió)
• Manuel Fraga Iribarne (Alianza Popular)
• Gregorio Peces-Barba (PSOE)
• Jordi Solé Tura (PSUC)
The writer (and Senator by Royal appointment) Camilo José Cela later polished the draft
Constitution's wording. However, since much of the consensus depended on keeping the wording
ambiguous, few of Cela's proposed re-wordings were approved. One of those accepted was the
substitution of the archaic gualda ("weld-colored") for the plain amarillo (yellow) in the
description of the flag of Spain.[citation needed]
The constitution was approved by the Cortes Generales on October 31, 1978, and by the Spanish
people in a referendum on December 6, 1978, before being promulgated by King Juan Carlos on
December 27. It came into effect on December 29, the day it was published in the Official
Gazette. Constitution Day on December 6 has since been a national holiday in Spain.
Preamble
Writing the preamble of the constitution was considered an honour, and a task requiring great
literary ability. The person chosen for this purpose was Enrique Tierno Galván. The full text of
the preamble states:
The Spanish Nation, wishing to establish justice, liberty and security, and to promote the
welfare of all who make part of it, in use of her sovereignty, proclaims its will to:
Guarantee democratic life within the Constitution and the laws according to a just
economic and social order.
Consolidate a State ensuring the rule of law as an expression of the will of the people.
Protect all Spaniards and all the peoples of Spain in the exercise of human rights, their
cultures and traditions, languages and institutions.
Promote the progress of culture and the economy to ensure a dignified quality of life for
all
Establish an advanced democratic society, and
Collaborate in the strengthening of peaceful and efficient cooperation among all the
peoples of the Earth.
Consequently, the Cortes approve and the Spanish people ratify the following
Constitution.
Structure of the State
The Constitution recognizes the existence of nationalities and regions (Preliminary Title).
Preliminary Title
Section 2. The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the
common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it recognizes and guarantees the right
to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the
solidarity among them all.
As a result, Spain is now composed entirely of 17 Autonomous Communities and two
autonomous cities with varying degrees of autonomy, to the extent that, even though the
Constitution does not formally state that Spain is a federation (nor a unitarian state), actual power
shows, depending on the issue considered, widely varying grades of decentralization, ranging
from the quasi-confederal status of tax management in Navarre and the Basque Country to the
total centralization in airport management.
Article 143
Section 1. In the exercise of the right to self-government recognized in Article 2 of the
Constitution, bordering provinces with common historic, cultural and economic
characteristics, island territories and provinces with historic regional status may accede
to self-government and form Autonomous Communities in conformity with the provisions
contained in this Title and in the respective Statutes.
Social rights
Monument to the Constitution of 1978 in Madrid.
The Spanish Constitution is one of the few Bill of Rights that has legal provisions for social
rights, including the definition of Spain itself as a Social and Democratic State, subject to the
rule of law (Sp. Estado social y democrático de derecho) in its preliminary title.
Other constitutional provisions recognize the right to adequate housing [1], employment[2], social
welfare provision[3], health protection[4] and pensions.[5]
Due to the political strength of the Communist Party of Spain during the Transition, the right to
State intervention in private companies in the public interest and the facilitation of access by
workers to ownership of the means of production were also enshrined in the Constitution.[6]
Reform
The Spanish Constitution has been reformed once (Article 13.2, Title I) to extend to citizens of
the European Union the right to active and passive suffrage (both voting rights and eligibility as
candidates) in local elections.
The social democratic PSOE government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has announced its
intention to undertake a major reform of the constitution during its tenure. The proposed
modifications would include
1. succession in the monarchy on the basis of age only, and not gender, thus abandoning the
traditional Castilian rules set in the Siete Partidas. While the rights of the current heir
apparent Felipe, Prince of Asturias, are to be maintained, the goal is to reform before his
eventual children are born. This issue has been refreshed when Felipe's wife, Letizia
Ortiz, announced her first and second pregnancies and after the birth of the Infanta
Leonor of Spain. The Prince however has reminded reformers that there is time since he
comes first in the succession line.
2. an overhaul of the Spanish Senate transforming it into a chamber of territorial
representation
3. officially incorporating the European Constitution (should one be approved)
4. listing the names of the existing autonomous communities
The proposal has been met with scepticism from some quarters (notably in the main opposition
party Partido Popular, PP) because some of these reforms deal with protected sections of the
constitution, which would require supermajorities in order to be modified (see below).
Furthermore, even an amendment of a non-protected part of the Constitution would require the
agreement of the main opposition party or at least some of its representatives, because it would
require the support of three-fifths of each House, which is 210 votes in the Congress of Deputies
and 159 in the Senate.
The current version restricts the death penalty to military courts during wartime, but the death
penalty has since been removed from the Code of Military Justice and, hence, has lost all
relevance. Amnesty International has still requested an amendment to be made to the
Constitution to firmly and explicitly abolish it in any eventuality.
Protected provisions
Title X of the Constitution establishes that the approval of a new constitution or the approval of
any constitutional amendment affecting the Preliminary Title, or Section I of Chapter II of Title I
(on Fundamental Rights and Public Liberties) or Title II (on the Crown)—the so-called
"protected provisions"—are subject to a special process that requires (1) that two-thirds of each
House approve the amendment, (2) that elections are called immediately thereafter, (3) that two-
thirds of each new House approves the amendment, and (4) that the amendment is approved by
the people in a referendum.
Curiously, Title X does not include itself among the "protected provisions" and, therefore, it
would be possible, at least in theory, to first amend Title X using the normal procedure to
remove or reduce severity of the special requirements, and then change the formerly protected
provisions. Even though such a procedure would not formally violate the law, it could be
considered an attack on its spirit.
The reform of the autonomy statutes
The "Statutes of Autonomy" of the different regions are the second most important Spanish legal
normatives when it comes to the political structure of the country. Because of that, the reform
attempts of some of them have been either rejected or produced considerable controversy.
The plan conducted by the Basque president Juan José Ibarretxe (known as Ibarretxe Plan) to
reform the status of the Basque Country in the Spanish state was rejected by the Spanish Cortes,
on the grounds (among others) that it amounted to an implicit reform of the Constitution.
The People's Party attempted to reject the admission into the Cortes of the 2005 reform of the
Autonomy Statute of Catalonia on the grounds that it should be dealt with as a constitutional
reform rather than a mere statute reform because it allegedly contradicts the spirit of the
Constitution in many points, especially the Statute's alleged breaches of the "solidarity between
regions" principle enshrined by the Constitution. After failing to assemble the required majority
to dismiss the text, the People's Party filed a claim of unconstitutionality against several dozen
articles of the text before the Spanish Constitutional Court requiring for them to be struck down.
The amended Autonomy Statute of Catalonia has also been legally contested by the surrounding
Autonomous Communities of Aragon, Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community[7] on
similar grounds as those of the PP, and others such as disputed cultural heritage. As of January
2008, the Constitutional Court of Spain has those alleged breaches and its actual compliance
with the Constitution under judicial review.
Prominent Spanish politicians, mostly from the People's Party but also from the ruling Socialist
Party (PSOE) and other non-nationalist parties[citation needed], have advocated for the statutory reform
process to be more closely compliant with the Constitution, on the grounds that the current wave
of reforms threatens the functional destruction of the constitutional system itself. The most cited
arguments are the self-appointed unprecedented expansions of the powers of autonomous
communities present in recently-reformed statutes such as:
 • The amended version of the Catalan Statute prompts the State to allot investments in
Catalonia according to Catalonia's own percentage contribution to the total Spanish GDP.
The Autonomy Statute of Andalusia –a region with a lower contribution to Spain's GDP
than the one of Catalonia– requires it in turn to allocate state investments in proportion to
its population (it is the largest Spanish Autonomous Community in terms of population).
These requirements are legally binding, as they are enacted as part of Autonomy Statutes,
which rank only below the Constitution itself. It is self-evident that, should all
autonomous communities be allowed to establish their particular financing models upon
the State, the total may add up to more than 100% and that would be inviable[8]. Despite
these changes having been proposed and approved by fellow members of the PSOE,
former Finance Minister Pedro Solbes disagreed with this new trend of assigning state
investment quotas to territories based on any given autonomous community custom
requirement[9] and has subsequently compared the task of planning the Spanish national
budget to a sudoku.
• The Valencian statute, whose reform was one of the first to be enacted, includes the so-
called Camps clause (named after the Valencian President Francisco Camps), which
makes any powers assumed by other communities in its statutes automatically available
to the Valencian Community.
• Autonomous communities such as Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia or Extremadura, have
included statutory clauses claiming exclusive powers over any river flowing through their
territories. Nearby communities have filed complaints before the Spanish Constitutional
Court on the grounds that no Community can exercise exclusive power over rivers that
cross more than one Community, not even over the part flowing through its territory,
because its decisions affect other Communities, down or upstream.
References
1. ^ Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution states: "All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and
adequate housing. The public authorities shall promote the necessary conditions and establish
appropriate standards in order to make this right effective, regulating land use in accordance with
the general interest in order to prevent speculation. The community shall have a share in the
benefits accruing from the town-planning policies of public bodies".
2. ^ Article 40 states: "The public authorities shall promote favourable conditions for social and
economic progress and for a more equitable distribution of regional and personal income within
the framework of a policy of economic stability. They shall in particular carry out a policy aimed
at full employment."
3. ^ Article 41 states: "The public authorities shall maintain a public Social Security system for all
citizens guaranteeing adequate social assistance and benefits in situations of hardship, especially
in case of unemployment. Supplementary assistance and benefits shall be optional."
4. ^ Article 43 states: "The right to health protection is recognized. It is incumbent upon the public
authorities to organize and watch over public health by means of preventive measures and the
necessary benefits and services. The law shall establish the rights and duties of all in this respect."
5. ^ Article 50 states: "The public authorities shall guarantee, through adequate and periodically
updated pensions, a sufficient income for citizens in old age. Likewise, and without prejudice to
the obligations of the families, they shall promote their welfare through a system of social
services that provides for their specific problems of health, housing, culture and leisure."
6. ^ "La elaboración de la Constitución", Miguel Herrero y Rodríguez de Miñón
7. ^ Admitidos los recursos de Aragón, Valencia y Baleares contra el Estatuto catalán. hoy.es
8. ^ Solbes cuadra un sudoku de 23.000 millones · ELPAÍS.com
9. ^ "Solbes rechaza vincular la nueva financiación a las balanzas fiscales", El País. 03/12/2007