Spanish Constitution of 1931

The Spanish Constitution of 1931 was the fundamental law of the Second Spanish Republic, approved on December 9, 1931, and in force until April 1, 1939, the end of the Spanish Civil War. It established a secular democratic system with equal citizenship rights, provisions for regional autonomy, female suffrage, civil marriage and divorce, and free mandatory secular education. Niceto Alcala-Zamora signed the document as the Republic's first president, a post elected for a six year term, alongside a unicameral Cortes Generales elected for four years. The constitution was strongly anticlerical: it abolished long-standing privileges of the Catholic Church, allowed nationalization of property with compensation, and, through its Articles 26 and 27, restricted Church property and barred religious orders from teaching. Historians identify these anticlerical provisions as a major factor in the polarization that contributed to the breakdown of the Republic and the onset of the Spanish Civil War.