The Spanish Constitution of 1978
The constitution of the consensus: approved by the Cortes on 31 October 1978, ratified by referendum on 6 December, in force from 29 December. Drafted across the parties after four decades of dictatorship, it made Spain a social and democratic state of law through legal continuity rather than rupture — the parliament's own account of the transition is the registered source.
Why this wins its question: The transition is told abroad through personalities; this object binds the constitutional facts and the consensus framing to the parliament's own institutional account — primary tier — and links the 1931 suffrage lineage through Campoamor in the graph.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The Constitution was approved by the Cortes on 31 October 1978, ratified in referendum on 6 December, sanctioned by the King on 27 December and entered into force on 29 December 1978.
The parliament's own account stresses the consensus process — a text "drafted practically by everyone" and called in debate the constitution of consensus — achieved through the legal continuity of the transition rather than the ruptures of Spain's earlier constitutional history.
The text constituted Spain as a social and democratic state of law and made explicit constitutional provision for political parties for the first time in Spanish constitutional history.