Second French Empire
The Second French Empire the French Empire, was the regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France. Many historians disparaged the Second Empire as a precursor of fascism. By the late 20th century some were celebrating it as leading example of a modernizing regime. Historians have given the Empire negative evaluations on its foreign-policy, somewhat more positive evaluations of domestic policies after Napoleon liberalized his rule after 1858, he promoted French business, exports. The greatest achievements came in material improvements, in the form of a grand railway network that facilitated commerce and tied the nation together and centered it on Paris, it had the effect of stimulating economic growth, bringing prosperity to most regions of the country. The Second Empire is given high credit for the rebuilding of Paris with broad boulevards, striking public buildings, attractive residential districts for upscale Parisians. In international policy, Napoleon III tried to emulate his uncle, engaging in numerous imperial ventures around the world as well as several wars in Europe.
Using harsh methods, he built up the French Empire in North Africa and in Southeast Asia. Napoleon III sought to modernize the Mexican economy and bring it into the French orbit, but this ended in a fiasco, he badly mishandled the threat from Prussia, by the end of his reign, Napoleon III found himself without allies in the face of overwhelming German force. On 2 December 1851, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, elected President of the Republic, staged a coup d'état by dissolving the National Assembly without having the constitutional right to do so, he thus became sole ruler of France, re-established universal suffrage abolished by the Assembly. His decisions were popularly endorsed by a referendum that month that attracted an implausible 92 percent support. At that same referendum, a new constitution was approved. Formally enacted in January 1852, the new document made Louis-Napoléon president for 10 years, with no restrictions on reelection, it concentrated all governing power in his hands. However, Louis-Napoléon was not content with being an authoritarian president.
As soon as he signed the new document into law, he set about restoring the empire. In response to inspired requests for the return of the empire, the Senate scheduled a second referendum in November, which passed with 97 percent support; as with the December 1851 referendum, most of the "yes" votes were manufactured out of thin air. The empire was formally re-established on 2 December 1852, the Prince-President became "Napoléon III, Emperor of the French"; the constitution had concentrated so much power in his hands that the only substantive changes were to replace the word "president" with the word "emperor" and to make the post hereditary. The popular referendum became a distinct sign of Bonapartism, which Charles de Gaulle would use. With dictatorial powers, Napoleon III made building a good railway system a high priority, he consolidated three dozen incomplete lines into six major companies using Paris as a hub. Paris grew in terms of population, finance, commercial activity, tourism. Working with Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Napoleon III spent lavishly to rebuild the city into a world-class showpiece.
The financial soundness for all six companies was solidified by government guarantees. Although France had started late, by 1870 it had an excellent railway system, supported as well by good roads and ports. Napoleon, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly awakened hostility of public opinion, tried to gain the support from the Left that he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy, the general amnesty of August 16, 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist or authoritarian empire towards the liberal, parliamentary empire, to last for ten years; the idea of Italian unification – based on the exclusion of the temporal power of the popes – outraged French Catholics, the leading supporters of the Empire. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in Louis Veuillot's paper the Univers, was not silenced by the Syrian expedition in favour of the Catholic Maronite side of the Druze–Maronite conflict. Ultramontane Catholicism, emphasizing the necessity for close links to the Pope at the Vatican played a pivotal role in the democratization of culture.
The pamphlet campaign led by Mgr Gaston de Ségur at the height of the Italian question in February 1860 made the most of the freedom of expression enjoyed by the Catholic Church in France. The goal was to mobilize Catholic opinion, encourage the government to be more favorable to the Pope. A major result of the ultramontane campaign was to trigger reforms to the cultural sphere, the granting of freedoms to their political enemies: the Republicans and freethinkers; the Second Empire favored Catholicism, the official state religion. However, it tolerated Protestants and Jews, there were no persecutions or pogroms; the state dealt with the small Protestant community of Calvinist and Lutheran churches, whose members included many prominent businessmen who supported the regime. The emperor's Decree Law of 26 March 1852 led to greater government interference in Protestant church affairs, thus reducing self-regulation. Catholic bureaucrats both were biased against it; the administration of their policies affected not only church-state relations but the internal lives of Protestant communities.
Napoleon III manipulated a range of politicized poli
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
First French Empire
The First French Empire the French Empire,Note 1 was the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte of France and the dominant power in much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. Although France had established an overseas colonial empire beginning in the 17th century, the French state had remained a kingdom under the Bourbons and a republic after the Revolution. Historians refer to Napoleon's regime as the First Empire to distinguish it from the restorationist Second Empire ruled by his nephew as Napoleon III. On 18 May 1804, Napoleon was granted the title Emperor of the French by the French Sénat and was crowned on 2 December 1804, signifying the end of the French Consulate and of the French First Republic; the French Empire achieved military supremacy in mainland Europe through notable victories in the War of the Third Coalition against Austria, Prussia and allied nations, notably at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. French dominance was reaffirmed during the War of the Fourth Coalition, at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt in 1806 and the Battle of Friedland in 1807.
A series of wars, known collectively as the Napoleonic Wars, extended French influence to much of Western Europe and into Poland. At its height in 1812, the French Empire had 130 departments, ruled over 70 million subjects, maintained an extensive military presence in Germany, Italy and the Duchy of Warsaw, counted Prussia and Austria as nominal allies. Early French victories exported many ideological features of the French Revolution throughout Europe: the introduction of the Napoleonic Code throughout the continent increased legal equality, established jury systems and legalised divorce, seigneurial dues and seigneurial justice were abolished, as were aristocratic privileges in all places except Poland. France's defeat in 1814, marked the end of the Empire. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte was confronted by Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès—one of five Directors constituting the executive branch of the French government—who sought his support for a coup d'état to overthrow the Constitution of the Year III.
The plot included Bonaparte's brother Lucien serving as speaker of the Council of Five Hundred, Roger Ducos, another Director, Talleyrand. On 9 November 1799 and the following day, troops led by Bonaparte seized control, they dispersed the legislative councils, leaving a rump legislature to name Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos as provisional Consuls to administer the government. Although Sieyès expected to dominate the new regime, the Consulate, he was outmaneuvered by Bonaparte, who drafted the Constitution of the Year VIII and secured his own election as First Consul, he thus became the most powerful person in France, a power, increased by the Constitution of the Year X, which made him First Consul for life. The Battle of Marengo inaugurated the political idea, to continue its development until Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Napoleon planned only to keep the Duchy of Milan for France, setting aside Austria, was thought to prepare a new campaign in the East; the Peace of Amiens, which cost him control of Egypt, was a temporary truce.
He extended his authority in Italy by annexing the Piedmont and by acquiring Genoa, Parma and Naples, added this Italian territory to his Cisalpine Republic. He laid siege to the Roman state and initiated the Concordat of 1801 to control the material claims of the pope; when he recognised his error of raising the authority of the pope from that of a figurehead, Napoleon produced the Articles Organiques with the goal of becoming the legal protector of the papacy, like Charlemagne. To conceal his plans before their actual execution, he aroused French colonial aspirations against Britain and the memory of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, exacerbating British envy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine and beyond, to Hanover and Cuxhaven. Napoleon would have ruling elites from a fusion of the old aristocracy. On 12 May 1802, the French Tribunat voted unanimously, with the exception of Carnot, in favour of the Life Consulship for the leader of France; this action was confirmed by the Corps Législatif.
A general plebiscite followed thereafter resulting in 3,653,600 votes aye and 8,272 votes nay. On 2 August 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Consul for life. Pro-revolutionary sentiment swept through Germany aided by the "Recess of 1803", which brought Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden to France's side. William Pitt the Younger, back in power over Britain, appealed once more for an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against Napoleon to stop the ideals of revolutionary France from spreading. On 18 May 1804, Napoleon was given the title of "Emperor of the French" by the Senate. Note 3In four campaigns, the Emperor transformed his "Carolingian" feudal republican and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman Empire; the memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after Julius Caesar and Charlemagne, used to modify the historical evolution of France. Though the vague plan for an invasion of Great Britain was never executed, the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of Austerlitz overshadowed the defeat of Trafalgar, the camp at Boulogne put at Napoleon's disposal the best military resources he had commanded, in the form of La Grande Armée.
In the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon swept away the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire and created in southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria
Magna Carta
Magna Carta Libertatum called Magna Carta, is a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments, the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War. After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, issued at the same time.
Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes. His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law; the charter became part of English political life and was renewed by each monarch in turn, although as time went by and the fledgling English Parliament passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance. At the end of the 16th century there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms, they argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights, that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus. Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings propounded by the Stuart monarchs.
Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta, until the issue was curtailed by the English Civil War of the 1640s and the execution of Charles. The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century, it influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the American Constitution in 1787, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States. Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained a powerful, iconic document after all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today cited by politicians and campaigners, is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".
In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral. There are a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia; the original charters were written on parchment sheets using quill pens, in abbreviated medieval Latin, the convention for legal documents at that time. Each was sealed with the royal great seal: few of the seals have survived. Although scholars refer to the 63 numbered "clauses" of Magna Carta, this is a modern system of numbering, introduced by Sir William Blackstone in 1759; the four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library for one day, 3 February 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215, as part of the events leading to the outbreak of the First Barons' War.
England was ruled by the third of the Angevin kings. Although the kingdom had a robust administrative system, the nature of government under the Angevin monarchs was ill-defined and uncertain. John and his predecessors had ruled using the principle of vis et voluntas, or "force and will", taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions justified on the basis that a king was above the law. Many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, with the counsel of the leading members of the realm, but there was no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so. John had lost most of his ancestral lands in France to King Philip II in 1204 and had struggled to regain them for many years, raising extensive taxes on the barons to accumulate money to fight a war which ended in expensive failure in 1214. Following the defeat of his allies at the Battle of Bouvines, John had to sue for peace and pay compensation. John was personally unpopular with many of the barons, many of whom owed money to the Crown, little trust existed between the two sides.
A triumph would have strengthened his position, but in the face of his de
Tetrarchy
The term "tetrarchy" describes any form of government where power is divided among four individuals, but in modern usage refers to the system instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293, marking the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and the recovery of the Roman Empire. This tetrarchy lasted until c. 313, when mutually destructive civil wars eliminated most of the claimants to power, leaving Constantine in control of the western half of the empire, Licinius in control of the eastern half. Although the term "tetrarch" was current in antiquity, it was never used of the imperial college under Diocletian. Instead, the term was used to describe independent portions of a kingdom that were ruled under separate leaders; the tetrarchy of Judaea, established after the death of Herod the Great, is the most famous example of the antique tetrarchy. The term was understood in the Latin world as well, where Pliny the Elder glossed it as follows: "each is the equivalent of a kingdom, part of one"; as used by the ancients, the term describes not only different governments, but a different system of government from the Diocletianic arrangements.
The Judaean tetrarchy was a set of four independent and distinct states, where each tetrarch ruled a quarter of a kingdom as they saw fit. When authors described the period, this is what they emphasized: Ammianus had Constantius II admonish Gallus for disobedience by appealing to the example in submission set by Diocletian's lesser colleagues. Only Lactantius, a contemporary of Diocletian and a deep ideological opponent of the Diocletianic state, referred to the tetrarchs as a simple multiplicity of rulers. Much modern scholarship was written without the term. Although Edward Gibbon pioneered the description of the Diocletianic government as a "New Empire", he never used the term "tetrarchy", it did not appear in the literature until used in 1887 by schoolmaster Hermann Schiller in a two-volume handbook on the Roman Empire, to wit: "die diokletianische Tetrarchie". So, the term did not catch on in the literature until Otto Seeck used it in 1897; the first phase, sometimes referred to as the diarchy, involved the designation of the general Maximian as co-emperor—firstly as Caesar in 285, followed by his promotion to Augustus in 286.
Diocletian took care of matters in the eastern regions of the empire while Maximian took charge of the western regions. In 293, Diocletian thought that more focus was needed on both civic and military problems, so with Maximian's consent, he expanded the imperial college by appointing two Caesars —Galerius and Constantius Chlorus. In 305, the senior emperors jointly abdicated and retired, allowing Constantius and Galerius to be elevated in rank to Augustus, they in turn appointed two new Caesars—Severus II in the west under Constantius, Maximinus in the east under Galerius—thereby creating the second Tetrarchy. The four tetrarchs based themselves not at Rome but in other cities closer to the frontiers intended as headquarters for the defence of the empire against bordering rivals and barbarians at the Rhine and Danube; these centres are known as the tetrarchic capitals. Although Rome ceased to be an operational capital, Rome continued to be nominal capital of the entire Roman Empire, not reduced to the status of a province but under its own, unique Prefect of the City.
The four tetrarchic capitals were: Nicomedia in northwestern Asia Minor, a base for defence against invasion from the Balkans and Persia's Sassanids was the capital of Diocletian, the eastern Augustus. Sirmium was the capital of the eastern Caesar. Mediolanum was the capital of the western Augustus. Augusta Treverorum was the capital of Constantius Chlorus, the western Caesar, near the strategic Rhine border; this quarter became the prefecture Galliae. Aquileia, a port on the Adriatic coast, Eboracum, were significant centres for Maximian and Constantius respectively. In terms of regional jurisdiction there was no precise division among the four tetrarchs, this period did not see the Roman state split up into four distinct sub-empires; each emperor had his zone of influence within the Roman Empire, but little more high command in a'war theater'. Each tetrarch was himself in the field, while delegating most of the administration to the hierarchic bureaucracy headed by his respective Pretorian Prefect, each supervising several Vicarii, the governors-general in charge of another, lasting new administrative level, the civi
1946 Italian general election
General elections were held in Italy on Sunday, 2 June 1946. They were the first after World War II and elected 556 deputies to the Constituent Assembly. Theoretically, a total of 573 deputies were to be elected, but the election did not take place in the Julian March and in South Tyrol, which were under military occupation by the United Nations. For the first time, Italian women were allowed to vote in a national election. Electors had two votes: one to elect the representatives and one to choose the institutional form of the state. To emphasise the restoration of democracy after the fascist era, a pure party-list proportional representation was chosen. Italian provinces were united in 31 constituencies, each electing a group of candidates. At constituency level, seats were divided between open lists using the largest remainder method with the Imperiali quota. Remaining votes and seats were transferred at national level, where special closed lists of national leaders received the last seats using the Hare quota.
At the end of World War II, Italy was governed under transitional laws as a result of agreements between the National Liberation Committee and the royal Lieutenant General of the Realm Humbert II. As no democratic elections had taken place for more than 20 years, legislative power was given to the government but, after the first election, the Italian Council of Ministers would have to receive a vote of confidence by the new Constituent Assembly; the three main contestants were Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party, which had both received popular support before the fascist era, the Italian Communist Party, which had strengthened itself with the armed struggle against Nazism and fascism during the war. The Italian Liberal Party, heir of the pre-fascist and conservative ruling class, proposed an alliance called National Democratic Union. Monarchists groups created the National Bloc of Freedom, while the social liberal Action Party and Labour Democratic Party hoped to maximize the positive image of the governments that they ruled in the National Liberation Committee.
The election gave a large majority to the government formed by the three leaders of the CLN, which were joined by the Republican Party after the exile of Humbert II. The alliance lasted for a year. Together with the election, a constitutional referendum took place. Italian electors had to choose if they wanted to continue the reign of Humbert II of Savoy or to turn Italy into a republic. While all regions of Northern Italy as far as Tuscany and Marches gave a majority to the republic, all regions of Southern Italy to Lazio and Abruzzo voted to maintain the monarchy
Spanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy, known in Spain as the Transition, or the Spanish transition is a period of modern Spanish history, that started on 20 November 1975, the date of death of Francisco Franco, who had established a military dictatorship after the victory of the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. However, historians disagree on the exact date the transition was completed: some say it ended after the 1977 general election. Others suggest. At its latest, the Transition is said to have ended with the first peaceful transfer of executive power, after the victory of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the 1982 general election. Francisco Franco came to power in 1939, following the Spanish Civil War, ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975. In 1969, he designated Prince Juan Carlos, grandson of Spain's most recent king, Alfonso XIII, as his official successor. For the next six years, Prince Juan Carlos remained in the background during public appearances and seemed ready to follow in Franco's footsteps.
Once in power as King of Spain, however, he facilitated the development of a constitutional monarchy as his father, Don Juan de Borbón, had advocated since 1946. The transition was an ambitious plan that counted on ample support both outside of Spain. Western governments, headed by the United States, now favoured a Spanish constitutional monarchy, as did many Spanish and international liberal capitalists; the transition proved challenging, as the spectre of the Civil War still haunted Spain. Francoists on the far right enjoyed considerable support within the Spanish Army, people of the left distrusted a king who owed his position to Franco; the realisation of the democratic project required that the leftist opposition restrain its own most radical elements from provocation, that the army refrain from intervening in the political process on behalf of Francoist elements within the existing government. King Juan Carlos I began his reign as head of state without leaving the confines of Franco's legal system.
As such, he swore fidelity to the Principles of the Movimiento Nacional, the political system of the Franco era. Only in his speech before the Cortes did he indicate his support for a transformation of the Spanish political system; the King did not appoint a new prime minister, leaving in place the incumbent head of government under Franco, Carlos Arias Navarro. Arias Navarro had not planned a reform of the Francoist regime, he believed political changes should be limited: he would give the parliament, the Cortes Españolas, the task of "updating our laws and institutions the way Franco would have wanted."The reform programme adopted by the government was the one proposed by Manuel Fraga, rejecting Antonio Garrigues' plan to elect a constituent assembly. Fraga's programme aimed to achieve a "liberal democracy", "comparable to rest of Western European countries" through a "gradual and controlled process", through a series of reforms of the pseudo-constitutional Fundamental Laws of the Realm; this is why his proposal was dubbed as a "reform in the continuity", his support came from those who defended a Francoist sociological model.
In order for reform to succeed, it had to earn the support of the hardcore Francoist faction known as the Búnker, which had a major presence in the Cortes and the National Council of the Movement, the two institutions that would have to approve the reforms of the Fundamental Laws. It had to garner support within the Armed Forces and in the Spanish Labour Organisation. Besides, it needed to please the democratic opposition to Francoism; the approach towards the dissenters was that they would not be part of the reform process, but would be allowed to participate in politics more with the exception of the Communist Party. This conservative reform was inspired by the historical period of the semi-democratic Bourbonic Restoration, it was criticised for not taking into account the social and political circumstances of the time; the project coalesced into a proposal to reform three of the Fundamental Laws, but the exact changes would be determined by a mixed commission of the Government and the National Council of the Movement, as proposed by Torcuato Fernández-Miranda and Adolfo Suárez.
The creation of the commission meant that Fraga and the reformists lost control of much of the legislative direction of the country. So, the new Law of Assembly was passed by the Francoist Cortes on 25 May 1976, allowing public demonstration with government authorization. On the same day the Law of Political Associations was approved, supported by Suárez, who affirmed in parliamentary session that "if Spain is plural, the Cortes cannot afford to deny it". Suárez's intervention in favor of this reform shocked many, including J
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