The criticisms of the European doctrine to the Cortes of the Cádiz Constitution

Abstract

A significant group of European intellectuals, politicians and statesmen were very critical of the Cortes ruled by the Constitution of 1812. Conservatives and Anglophile liberals coincided in seeing two main defects in the Spanish Parliament: on one hand, in its unicameral structure; on the other hand, in its funcions, due to the excessive weight of its competencies in the face of the Crown’s weakness. These two problems really boiled down to one: the Cortes of the Constitution of 12 were incompatible with the idea of constitutional balance characteristic of the British political system, which had become the great post-revolutionary reference point. For its part, European progressive and radical liberalism welcomed much better the parliamentary model of the Constitution of Cadiz, which they considered the heir of French revolutionary constitutionalism. This did not prevent them from also raising some criticisms of its design which, paradoxically, derived from considering that some of the characteristics of that Parliament tended to weaken it.