Abstract
This article aims to elucidate the relationship between the ideas of state, constitution, and Parliament in the Spanish constitutional debate of 1931. It argues that Members of Parliament (MPs) made a valuable contribution when understanding the relevance of this interrelation in terms of political philosophy and legal theory. From a methodological perspective, this study pays attention to the arguments of MPs in the course of the constitutional sessions which took place between August and December 1931. In doing so, it portrays the ideological differences of left-wing, centrist and right-wing parties in that constituent assembly. In the first section (“European influences on the Constitution of 1931”) the intellectual links with interwar trends of public law, administrative law and European constitutionalism are highlighted. The second section (“Constitution and Parliament according to Spanish representatives”), shows the meanings given to this nascent constitutional democracy by MPs. Despite their ideological differences they were in favour of strengthening Parliament and the Constitution as a prerequisite for safeguarding democracy. The conclusions resume the argumentative thread, that is to say, that the regime, a democratic republic, was understood by a large majority of MPs as the confluence of three conditions founded on doctrinal and conceptual exchanges from interwar European constitutionalism: the acknowledgement of parliamentary sovereignty, the legal and administrative revamping of institutions, and state intervention in the economy.
Highlights
Speeches on the role of Parliament and the Constitution were presented during the months of August and December 1931 in the constituent assembly (Cortes Constituyentes) of the Spanish Second Republic
For centre-left MPs, the Republican Action Party and some members of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the new constitutional state meant that only Parliament (Cortes) had the legitimacy to transform Spain through economic and social laws complying with the rights acknowledged in the new Constitution of 1931
As a token of the strong link between the role assigned to Parliament and the principle of the separation of powers, in the foundational manifesto of the Progressive Republican Party (Liberal Republican Right until 1931), published in July 1930, one of its first concerns had to do with parliamentarism
Summary
Speeches on the role of Parliament and the Constitution were presented during the months of August and December 1931 in the constituent assembly (Cortes Constituyentes) of the Spanish Second Republic. Analysing the legal references about the ideas of state and constitution during the constituent assembly the following speeches should be emphasised: Emiliano Iglesias Ambrosio, of the Radical Republican Party, quoted Preuss as inspiring the preamble and the preliminary title of the Constitution [DSCCRE, September 1931: 919]; Luis Araquistáin, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, understood the new ideas held by Kelsen and Duguit as representative of a new trend that considered society and individuals, neither the nation nor the state, the main focus of the law [DSCCRE, September 1931: 942–943]; Justo Villanueva, of the Radical Republican Party, resumed Jellinek’s ideas in his speech of 18 September 1931 to argue that the right to preserve the territory was an inescapable function of the state [DSCCRE, 18 September 1931: 1030]; Jiménez de Asúa claimed that the thesis of the integral state was intermediate between “the federal sense and the unitary sense” the same day that the Constitution was passed in Parliament [DSCCRE, 9 December 1931: 2907]. That fact entailed a new understanding of the role of representatives in the legal system which conferred them broader powers to decide on the legality of passed laws
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