The National Heritage in Parliament. A Transition story

Abstract

In the context of the huge legislative work of the Spanish Transition to democracy, the regulation of the Royal Heritage or Crown Estate, today called National Heritage, was a mandate of the 1978 Constitution that was relegated due to the need to deal with more pressing political and economic issues, and which was only approached at the last moment, almost at the end of the First Term of the Spanish Parliament. Law of June 16, 1982, which was finally approved, had the unanimous cross-party support in the House.

The scientific literature has dealt with this issue monographically on several occasions. After the 1982 Law, there are several notable publications that analyze different aspects of the legal regime of these assets. What is missing, however, is a study that accounts for the law-making process of the 1982 Act. This is, indeed, a small story of the Spanish political Transition that deserves to be recovered for many reasons. The fact that it was approved with a broad consensus made it possible to lay the foundations of the legal regime of these assets for a long time, leaving them aside of the political ups and downs and power alternations.