Los diputados vascos y navarros en las Cortes de Cádiz. Tres lecturas diferentes de la relación entre Fueros y Constitución

Abstract

In the face of the damnatio memoriae to which the Spanish Constitution promulgated in Cádiz was condemned upon the return of Ferdinand VII in 1814, the papers recovered from the archives from this period- letters, illustrations and memoirs- from the Basque and Navarrese representatives and their respective regional governments, are presented in this paper as a means of offering a clearer insight into the debate that centred around the relationship between the 1812 Constitution and the ‘Fueros’ that historiographical publications from opponents of the liberalist 1812 Constitution attempted to suppress in the years that followed. Taken from the comprehensive biographical studies carried out on the aforementioned representatives to which we have access, their parliamentary interventions and various unpublished papers demonstrate the theoretical and practical limitations of the national sovereignty decreed in Cádiz. This applies to its external policies- its integration with the traditional European Christian Republic, which operated under a system of natural law, opposed to the Napoleonic Empire, the latter strictly adhering to the Code of Laws- as well as to its home affairs- the limits which the historicist language used in Cádiz imposed on all those territorial reformulations that refused the ‘Fueros’. Taking this distinction into consideration, we focus on the Manifesto of the Persians, which opposed the ideologies of the Constitution and wanted Ferdinand VII to restore absolutism. The aim here is firstly to identify those Basque and Navarrese representatives who subscribe to this Manifesto, or who could be said to sympathise with the ideas contained within it- they are in the minority- and secondly to investigate to what extent their opposition to the 1812 Constitution was based on an attempt to make religion prevail over constitutional, positive law or on the peculiarities of the ‘Fueros’ contrary to the mentioned Constitution.