The 1992 Amendment of the Spanish Constitution: A Tale of Two Words

Since its entry into force on 29 December 1978, the Spanish Constitution has only been amended once. The formal simplicity of this amendment—the addition of two words to the original constitutional text—its widely acknowledged lack of serious political implications, the fact that it was passed with the highest degree of consensus among parliamentary political forces, and the fact that it was debated in the middle of the summer on the eve of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, made it pass virtually unnoticed for most Spanish citizens. Notwithstanding these facts,...