Spanish Constitution of 1931

The Spanish Constitution of 1931 was approved by the Constituent Assembly on 9 December 1931. It was the constitution of the Second Spanish Republic (founded 14 April 1931) and was in force until 1 April 1939. This was the second period of Spanish history in which both head of state and head of government were democratically elected.

A constitutional draft prepared by a commission under a reformist Catholic lawyer Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo having been rejected, an amended draft was approved by the Constituent Assembly on 9 December 1931. It created a secular democratic system based on equal rights for all citizens, with provision for regional autonomy. It introduced female suffrage, civil marriage and divorce. It permitted the state to expropriate private property, with compensation, for reasons of broader social utility. It also established free, obligatory, secular education for all and dissolved the Jesuits.

The Republic "was the culmination of a process of mass mobilisation and opposition to the old politics of notables." According to the historian Mary Vincent the Constitution envisaged "a reforming regime with an explicit and self-conscious view of what modernising Spain should entail. A secular state operating according to the rule of law with an admittedly ill-defined sense of social justice would open the way for an educated body of citizens to enjoy 'European' prosperity and freedom." According to Frances Lannon however, the articles on property and religion, with their exaltation of state power and disregard for civil rights, "virtually destroyed any prospect there had been for the development of a Catholic, conservative, Republicanism."

The constitution was criticized by the most religious sectors of the population as anticlerical or oppressive regarding the rights of Roman Catholics. . However, the Constitution broadly accorded civil liberties. Commentators have noted that the strain of church-state relations was a significant cause of the breakdown of the republic and of the Spanish Civil War.

The Second Republic began on 14 April 1931 after the departure from Spain of King Alfonso XIII, following local and municipal elections in which republican candidates won the majority of votes in urban areas. Though Alfonso did not formally abdicate, his departure from the country led to a provisional government under Niceto Alcalá Zamora, and a constituent Cortes drew up a new constitution.

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