December 27, 1978

Spanish Constitution of 1978

King Juan Carlos I sanctions and promulgates Spain’s 1978 Constitution

The referendum had been three weeks earlier, and the signed Constitution still was not legally operative when everyone left the chamber.

A solemn joint session at the Palacio de las Cortes

What happened on 27 December 1978 was a signature, not a vote. The Congress of Deputies and the Senate met jointly in Madrid for a solemn session at which King Juan Carlos I sanctioned the Constitution.

He promulgated and signed the text; the presidents of the Cortes, the Congress and the Senate signed it too. The pen he used is preserved with the document in the Congress archive.

The referendum was on 6 December

The Cortes had approved the completed draft on 31 October, and voters ratified it three weeks before the signing, on 6 December. The Central Electoral Board recorded 26,632,180 registered electors and 17,873,301 voters, with 15,706,078 in favour and 1,400,505 against.

Nor did the Constitution take effect that evening. Its final provision made it operative on the day of publication — 29 December 1978, in the Boletín Oficial del Estado.

The article filed here is about 2005

The corpus entry’s linked topic and article both describe Spain’s referendum of 20 February 2005 on the proposed European constitutional treaty — a different constitution, a different decade, a different question.

The claim that one ceremony “officially ended 40 years of military dictatorship” does not survive the sequence either. Spain’s transition began after Franco’s death in 1975 and ran through parliamentary approval, ratification, sanction and publication.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited

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