Abstract

AGUILAR RIVERA, José Antonio. Cadiz and the Atlantic Constitutional Experiment. Polít. gob [online]. 2014, vol.21, n.1, pp.03-24. ISSN 1665-2037.

This article analyses the place of Cadiz's Constitution within the Atlantic constitutional experiment. After contextualizing the historiographic debate between those that reduced the deliberation that took place in Cadiz to a mere adoption of foreign codes and laws on the one hand, and those defending it on nationalist and historical grounds on the other, the author suggests that the Cadiz experiment is closer to the Spanish American constitutional cycle. The Spanish Constitution evidently departs from the theoretical and institutional framework developed by the two important constitutional experiments that preceded it (the United States and France), but also presents original elements that sets it apart from a merely derivative exercise. This paper stresses the ambiguity of the nature of rights, historicism, religious intolerance and the definition of citizenship as elements proper to the text of 1812.

Keywords : Constitution; imitation; rights; citizenship; originality; copy.