A Survey of Constitutional Debates in Spain’s Nineteenth Century

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.