"Affirmative votes: 425, negative votes: 59, abstentions: 13". Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, president of the Cortes, announces the result of the vote and begins a long ovation. It is 21:35 on Thursday 18 November 1976. After three days of debate, Francoist Cortes have just approved the Law for Political Reform. A few...
On November 18, 1976, now half a century ago, the Cortes that emerged from Francoism approved the Law for Political Reform, opening the door to their own disappearance. This episode was dubbed the 'harakiri' of the Regime, the culmination of intense work of persuasion so that at least three quarters...
The Government's decision to reapprove the housing decrees rejected last week to now submit them to the Permanent Deputation has opened a new political battle over the use of this body during the electoral period. Vox has gone so far as to describe the operation as a "cacicada," and its...
In October 1976, Spain began to take its first formal steps towards the Transition. Just a month after the Council of Ministers approved the draft Law for Political Reform, on October 8, the president of the Government, Adolfo Suárez, faced the first major challenge against the pillars of Francoism to...
One more summer, the parliamentary news goes through the Permanent Deputation, on this occasion, due to the crisis in Ceuta. The illegal entry into Spanish territory of thousands of people on July 30 from Morocco led the Popular Group to request the urgent convening of the guard body with the...
This week marks 45 years since the publication in the BOE of the reform of the Civil Code that returned divorce to Spaniards. For the first time since the Civil War, the possibility of dissolving the marital bond civilly was recognized, not just separating physically or requesting annulment. Although it was a historic norm, it...
The magistrate of the Constitutional Court Luis Ortega stated that the institutional position occupied by chiefs of staff, "in a certain way privileged," contrasted "with the scarce opportunities for their work to be publicly recognized." A set of characteristics that, in his opinion, made "the cabinet an organ that simultaneously...
The Partido Popular has claimed this Saturday the figure of Adolfo Suárez coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his arrival to the Presidency of the Government, one of the decisive moments in Spain's recent political history. The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has recalled the former president as a symbol of harmony, freedom, and...
On July 1, 1976, Carlos Arias Navarro submitted his resignation as president of the Government. Half a century later, that move remains one of the institutional turning points in Spain's recent history: it closed the phase of continuity after Franco's death and opened the way for the appointment of Adolfo...
In April 1976, the North American weekly Newsweek attributed statements to King Juan Carlos I about the then Prime Minister, Carlos Arias Navarro, which pointed the great supporter of Francoism towards the exit: "He is an unmitigated disaster." Five words that the Government tried to downplay and that the Zarzuela did...
The appointment of Adolfo Suárez as President of the Government on July 3, 1976, took almost everyone by surprise and became one of Juan Carlos I's most questioned decisions in those years. However, the now King Emeritus maintains that he was the ideal candidate to assume the leadership of the...
This Wednesday, July 1, marks 50 years since the resignation of Carlos Arias Navarro as President of the Government, the head of the Executive that Juan Carlos I had "inherited" from Franco. That step back opened the door to La Moncloa for Adolfo Suárez, who a year later, at the...
The PP has presented a proposal in the Parliament for the 1976 Law on Political Association Rights to be recognized as one of the essential normative pillars of the Transition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its approval.The deputy Cristina Gil, promoter of the initiative, has emphasized that this norm...
The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has announced this Thursday that the Executive is studying the option of launching commemorative events for the "victory of society" against the attempted coup d'état of February 23, 1981. However, he has not specified whether the Government plans to...
When José Luis Ábalos filed the motion of no confidence, candidate Pedro Sánchez probably not only did not have all the odds in his favor (never before had a leader of the Executive been ousted), but he certainly did not expect to become seven years, 11 months, and 13 days...
"I didn't have time". This week marked the centenary of the birth of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo (1926-2008), who was President of the Government between 1981 and 1982. 645 days in Moncloa that earned him the record for the shortest-serving president in democracy. In his Memoria viva de la Transición, a work in...
During Holy Week of 1977, Spain projected itself before the world as a budding democracy. In the same way, months earlier, the attitude of the PCE during the funeral of the victims of the Atocha attacks had endowed it with legitimacy before public opinion. That April 9, which has gone down in...