¿UTOPISTA O PRECURSOR? LA «CONSTITUCIÓN EUROPEA» DE JUAN FRANCISCO SIÑERIZ

Authors

  • NERE BASABE

Keywords:

europeanism, european Constitution, 19th Century.

Abstract

This article presents a very little known European Constitution project from the 19th Century. Its author, the Spaniard Juan Francisco Siñeriz (1778-1857), better known as a novelist than as a political thinker, published it in 1839 in Madrid. This Spanish European Constitution consists of thirteen articles of very general propositions, preceded by a preamble addressed to the Monarchs and Sovereigns of Europe and is followed by a more detailed appendix where the main principles of the Constitution are summarized: a European Confederation, a continental military alliance and a Supreme Court of Justice, emphasizing the importance of unity and the prevention of future revolutions. This work examines the content of this unprecedented Constitution and its implications, and investigates its influences from the Enlightenment authors to the contemporaneous Saint-Simoniens, in the aim of putting it into perspective within the general Europeanist thought of that period (in Spain as well as in the rest of the continent).

Published

2008-03-24