Du consensus populi à la volonté générale

• Main Author: Richard Hocquellet
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Casa de Velázquez 2005-04-01
• Series: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez
• Subjects: Liberal Revolution; Pactism; Patriciate; Patriotism; Public Opinion; Sovereignty
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/1591

The patriot uprising in the Spanish provinces in 1808 leads to the formation of the Junta suprema. The cronology and the composition of these inseructional governments show that the mobilisation results from the refusal of the dynastic change imposed by Napoleon and not from the militar ocupation of the contry. It means that the patriotic movement has a fundamental politic feature. The forms that takes this refusal reveal a special politic culture that the analysis of the power’s represententation of its promoters allows us to approach. The members of these juntas belong to the local elite and over all to the patriciado of the uprised towns. They share a same vision of the power’s representation that is basing on the old pactistic doctrine mixed with more recient notions of the natural right. The pactism gives a tradicional guide mark for oppose the abdication of the royal family. But, in the context of the first years of the 19th century, it is necesary think the legimity of any kind of government with the resort of the people rights, a concept diffused in spite of the attempts of contrarevolutionary blackade. By this way, the process that leads to the Cortes in Cadiz can begin.