The Constitution of 1812 on the island

The Constitution of Cádiz was proclaimed on March 19, 1812. It said the Spanish nation included the overseas provinces, limited the king, and opened a short window in which Puerto Rico was not just a captaincy general but a place with constitutional rights on paper. Ramón Power y Giralt had already sat in those Cortes. The charter was the document his seat pointed at.

Enforcement on the island was real enough to be felt and brief enough to be snatched away. Elections, a new language of citizenship, and a check on purely military government came to a colony used to governors who were generals first. Then Ferdinand VII returned from French captivity in 1814, abolished the Constitution, and restored the old obedience. Liberals went silent or exiled themselves in their own homes. The charter came back with the liberal triennium of 1820 to 1823, and fell again. That pulse — on, off, on, off — is the principle of the nineteenth century here.

Do not confuse 1812 with autonomy. The Constitution made Puerto Ricans Spaniards of one nation, not citizens of a self-governing island. Madrid still named the captain general. What changed was the theory of the subject. A man with a vote in a Cortes is harder to treat as a file in a garrison. The later Autonomist Party would spend decades trying to turn that theory into a charter of island government. They would have it, on paper, in 1897.

The 1812 text also sat next to slavery. Cádiz's liberal language did not free the bound people of the Antilles. Sugar and the asiento's later life continued. A constitution can name citizens and leave a labor system intact. That contradiction is not a riddle. It is how Atlantic empires wrote.

Keep the date. March 19, 1812, is a liberal morning. 1814 is the closing door. The board records both, because a repealed constitution is still a fact. It teaches what the island asked for, and how fast a restored king could say no.

Sources: Biblioteca del Congreso, World of 1898: Puerto Rico. Freeze 2026-08-22.