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The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was established on 19 March 1812 by the Cádiz Cortes, Spain's first national sovereign assembly, the Cortes Generales ("General Courts"),〔(Diccionario de Historia de España. Jaime Alvar Ezquerra.2003 ) Cortes of Cádiz (1812) was the first parliament of Spain with sovereign power〕 in refuge in Cádiz during the Peninsular War. It established the principles of universal male suffrage, national sovereignty, constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press, and supported land reform and free enterprise. This constitution, one of the most liberal of its time, was effectively Spain's first (see ''Constitutions of Spain''), given that the Bayonne Statute issued in 1808 under Joseph Bonaparte never entered into effect. The Constitution never entered fully into effect either: much of Spain was ruled by the French, while the rest of the country was in the hands of interim ''junta'' governments focused on resistance to the Bonapartes rather than on the immediate establishment of a constitutional regime. In the overseas territories many did not recognize the legitimacy of these interim metropolitan governments, leading to a power vacuum and the establishment of separate juntas on the American continent. On 24 March 1814, six weeks after returning to Spain, Ferdinand VII abolished the constitution and had all monuments to it torn down. The Constitution Obelisk in Saint Augustine, Florida survived. The constitution was reinstated during the ''Trienio Liberal'' (1820–1823), and again briefly 18361837 while the Progressives prepared the Constitution of 1837. The Spaniards nicknamed the Constitution ''La Pepa'', possibly because it was adopted on Saint Joseph's Day, 'Pepa' being a nickname for 'Josephine'.〔''Pepe'' is the standard Spanish nickname for ''José'' (Joseph), and ''Pepa'' is the female equivalent (''la constitución'' is grammatically feminine). (Otras constituciones ) on the official Spanish government site about the Spanish constitution. Accessed 16 April 2006.〕 ==Background== The Cortes drafted and adopted the Constitution while besieged by 70,000 French troops in the south of Spain, first on Isla de León (now San Fernando), an island bordering the Bay of Cádiz, on the Atlantic coast, and then within the small, strategically located city of Cádiz itself. From a Spanish point of view, the Peninsular War was a war of independence against the French Empire and the king installed by the French, Joseph Bonaparte. In 1808, both King Ferdinand VII and his predecessor and father, Charles IV, had resigned their claims to the throne in favor of Napoleon Bonaparte, who in turn passed the crown to his brother Joseph. While many in elite circles in Madrid were willing to accept Joseph's rule, the Spanish people were not. The war began on the night of 2 May 1808, and was immortalized by Francisco Goya's painting ''The Second of May 1808'', also known as ''The Charge of the Mamelukes''. Napoleon's forces faced both Spanish regular troops and partisans and later British troops under the Arthur Wellesley. The Spanish partisans organized an interim Spanish government, the Supreme Central Junta and called for a Cortes to convene with representatives from all the Spanish provinces throughout the worldwide empire, in order to establish a government with a firm claim to legitimacy. The Junta first met on 25 September 1808 in Aranjuez and later in Seville, before retreating to Cádiz. The Supreme Central Junta, originally under the leadership of the elderly Count of Floridablanca, initially tried to consolidate southern and eastern Spain to maintain continuity for a restoration of the Bourbons. However, almost from the outset they were in physical retreat from Napoleon's forces, and the comparative liberalism offered by the Napoleonic regime made Floridablanca's enlightened absolutism〔Charles J. Esdaile, ''Spain in the Liberal Age'', Blackwell, 2000. ISBN 0-631-14988-0. p. 22.〕 a likely basis to rally the country. In any event, Floridablanca's strength failed him and he died on 30 December 1808. When the Cortes convened in Cádiz in 1810, there appeared to be two possibilities for Spain's political future if the French could be driven out. The first, represented especially by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, was the restoration of the absolutist ''Antiguo Régimen'' ("Old Regime"); the second was to adopt some sort of written constitution. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Spanish Constitution of 1812」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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