ABSTRACT
Since 1812, the year of enactment of its first Constitution, Spain has had eight constitutional texts. It is said that the failure, until recently, of the Spanish constitutionalist movement has been mainly due to three factors. One has been social or socio-economic: the slow modernisation of Spanish society in the XIX century (both social and economical). Another has been political: the lack of a culture of negotiation and compromise among the members of the elites who led each process of change, and who, with few exceptions, preferred the imposition of ideas and formulations of one or other ideology to agreement or compromise with their opponents.2
The last factor has been ideological: the understanding of the Constitution as a mere political document and not as a legal one. The conception of the Constitution as a norma normarum and not as a lex, superior over the rest of the norms of the legal system.3
These three factors had disappeared in the political transition, from the end of Franco’s dictatorship in 1975 to the enactment of the present Constitution in 1978.4
