Cortes of Cadiz: Social and Economic Reforms in Spain
Social and Economic Legislation of the Cortes of Cadiz
Main Measures of an Economic and Social Nature Adopted by the Courts
The Constitution of Cadiz, the first stemming from national sovereignty, was passed in 1812. It declares all citizens equal before the law, meaning the end of differences between estates with tax, military, and legal privileges. It recognized a number of rights: to education, freedom of the press, inviolability of domicile, freedom, and property. Catholicism is declared as the only permitted religion.
Freedom of the press was established prior to the adoption of the Constitution. Cadiz lawmakers not only drafted the Constitution but also imposed a series of reforms that sought to overthrow the estate society. Between June and October 1813, they adopted a set of accords of great importance to achieve this goal.
One of the first issues addressed, due to the urgent need for funds for war, was the confiscation of Church property and civil rights. To solve the problems of the Spanish hacienda, an alternative was proposed: the national assets were declared – the Inquisition had been eliminated – and recently deleted convents with fewer than 12 members, the military orders, and half of the property of communal councils. With its sale, payment of the debt was made.
- Abolition of the Inquisition.
- Tax privileges disappear, replaced by a tax system that forces everyone to pay taxes according to wealth.
- The Law on Suppression of jurisdictional domains, ending the ability of the gentlemen (noble) to collect taxes (rights to use gates, bridges, mills, land dwelling, etc.) and prosecute those under their jurisdiction.
- It also eliminates primogeniture and orders the decoupling of titles.
- It proclaims the freedom of work and contract, ending the authority of the unions, growing, and hiring.
- It establishes a new concept of ownership, such as bourgeois property, free and absolute (the owner has no notch). This benefits owners in the field to devote time to their farmland as they saw fit. Tenants and owners have personal contracts (the capitalist).
Meaning of this Legislation: From the Old Regime to Economic and Social Change
Courts will adopt legislative laws that represent the end of the Ancien Régime. They affect the nobility, church, and social-economic structure of the country. The Church was damaged by more liberal legislation. In fact, a doctrine of liberalism was tried by the Church as a result of legalizing the confiscation made to the Church (in times of Charles IV and Joseph I), and new, limiting the number of monasteries and the suppression of the tithe.
Another sector affected was the Mesta, whose power was greatly limited by the freedom of crops. The nobility lost, as we pointed out, privileges and jurisdiction. Finally, measures were introduced and advocated by the Enlightenment, who had tried to implement during the partial and limited enlightened reform that favored the owners, both noble and bourgeois.
The Problem of Succession at the End of the Reign of Ferdinand VII
The Legal Basis
The end of the reign of Fernando VII was marked by the succession question. Ferdinand had no offspring despite his three previous marriages, so in 1829, he married his niece Maria Cristina de Borbon, who a few months later became pregnant, posing the problem of succession.
The King issued the Pragmatic Sanction (an act that had been enacted by Charles IV in 1789) and repealed the Salic Law, which excluded women from the succession. Contested by the Carlists as an attack on the rights of Infante Don Carlos (brother of the King), it became a battle of the first magnitude when the Infanta Isabel was born in October and became heir.
In September 1832, the events of La Granja took place. Successive intrigues at the bedside of the dying king made Fernando sign the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction. But surprisingly, the King was restored and put it back in place. He immediately dismissed the Carlist chief ministers, while Queen Maria Cristina was authorized to preside over the Council of Ministers. He quickly decreed the reopening of the universities and enacted a general amnesty, freeing political prisoners and allowing the return of exiles. Intransigent generals were replaced by commanders loyal to Ferdinand VII, and in April, Charles left the court and moved to Portugal.
The Carlists claimed that Carlos, the brother of Fernando VII, should be the King of Spain, as the Salic Law was not regarded as repealed. After Charles’s death, his descendants continued to lead this portion: his son (Charles VI for Carlists) and grandson (Charles VII).
The Result: Carlist Opposition to the Elizabethan Monarchy
The death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, the self-proclamation of Charles (Abrantes Manifesto) as king, and the maintenance of Princess Elizabeth as the rightful heir opened the period of the Carlist Wars of succession to the crown and the end of the absolutist period.
The Carlist issue was not merely a succession dispute; it involved other factors, including ideological confrontation, as the Carlists were bitter enemies of liberalism and the means it involved: economic freedoms, secularization, and uniformity of the territory. Carlism was an ideology summed up in his “God, Country, and King,” defending the Old Regime and the monarchy of divine origin. They also demanded the maintenance of the charters and traditional privileges against the centralizing policies of the liberal regime, i.e., the foralist, according to which regions should maintain their autonomous government institutions, their own system of justice, and tax exemption and fifth for military service. Foralism was the most important issue in the Third Carlist War.
The Carlist faction gained the support of various sectors of Spanish society (peasants, lower nobility of northern Spain, most conservative sectors of the Church, some army officers, rural areas in some regions: the Basque Country, Navarra, Catalonia, and northern Castilla) and even of foreign powers: Austria, Prussia, Naples.
Workers in the cities, the ecclesiastical hierarchy (few), and the nobility remained loyal to Queen Elizabeth II, like most of the army. They were also supported in the international arena, as France, Portugal, and Britain signed the Quadruple Alliance with the Elizabethan regime.