Cortes of Cádiz

The Cortes of Cádiz was a Spanish parliament formed amid the collapse of royal authority during the Napoleonic invasion. Its constitutional program offered a model of popular sovereignty and equality before the law, but those principles met resistance from Mexican elites whose power rested on colonial privileges and coerced labor. The Cortes thus became central to the conflict over whether independence would preserve elite rule or open politics to broader participation.

Formation in a Constitutional Crisis

In February 1808, French armies invaded Spain and took Madrid by May. By September, King Ferdinand VII had been captured and forced to abdicate. The Junta Central, which took up resistance to the French, retreated south from Aranjuez as the invasion advanced and eventually reached Cádiz. Though besieged, the port held out; there the Junta established the Cortes.

In 1812, the Cortes produced a constitution calling for a constitutional monarchy based on popular sovereignty. It also demanded the end of special privileges and equality before the law. These proposals were not merely changes to the machinery of government: they challenged an imperial order in which colonial elites exercised authority through institutions shaped by the encomienda, forced labor, and concentrated power.

The Mexican Elite’s Resistance

The collapse of Spanish authority set off disputes throughout colonial Latin America over whether the Junta Central should be recognized. Local juntas began to form, and the possibility of independence grew. The first declaration came in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1809, but Spanish troops sent from Peru quickly crushed it.

In Mexico, elite attitudes had also been shaped by the 1810 Hidalgo Revolt. After Father Miguel Hidalgo’s forces sacked Guanajuato on September 23, they killed the senior colonial official and then attacked white people indiscriminately. The episode appeared to Mexican elites less like a controlled independence movement than class or ethnic warfare, uniting them in opposition. They feared that independence might bring popular participation, not simply a transfer of authority from Spain to local rulers. For the same reason, they viewed the Cortes’s constitutional program with deep skepticism and refused to recognize its legitimacy.

Renewed Constitutional Pressure and Independence

When Napoleon’s European empire collapsed in 1815, Ferdinand VII returned to power and the Cádiz Constitution was abrogated. The Crown began trying to recover its American colonies, but loyalist Mexico did not initially present it with the same challenge as other parts of the region.

That changed in 1820. A Spanish army assembled at Cádiz to sail for the Americas mutinied against Ferdinand; other army units joined it, compelling the king to restore the constitution and recall the Cortes. This new Cortes advanced a more radical program than the body that had written the 1812 constitution. It proposed abolishing every form of labor coercion and attacked special privileges, including the military’s right to try its own members in separate courts. Faced with the prospect that these measures would be imposed in Mexico, local elites chose separation from Spain over the constitutional changes.

The independence movement was led by Agustín de Iturbide, a former Spanish army officer. On February 24, 1821, he published the Plan de Iguala, envisioning an independent Mexico as a constitutional monarchy headed by a Mexican emperor. The plan removed the Cádiz Constitution’s provisions that Mexican elites considered threatening to their status and privileges, and it won immediate support. Spain soon recognized that it could not stop Mexican independence. Iturbide then used his military backing to have himself declared emperor, illustrating how independence could break with the Cortes’s reforming agenda while concentrating power in a new ruler.

Constitutional Significance

The Cortes’s importance lies both in its constitutional proposals and in the political reaction they provoked. Popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and the proposed end to coerced labor challenged the privileges on which colonial authority depended. In Mexico, the prospect of those changes helped prompt elites to pursue independence on terms that would protect their position rather than accept the Cortes’s legitimacy.

The contrast was therefore not simply between constitutional government and its absence. The decisive question was who would be included in political life and constrained by law. The Cortes advanced principles that challenged inherited privilege; the Mexican independence plan retained a constitutional-monarchical form while removing the measures local elites feared. Its role in the episode reveals how constitutional ideals could inspire political change yet also sharpen the struggle over who would control the resulting state.