CARL SCHMITT IN THE SPANISH CONSTITUTION OF 1978.GARCIA-PELAYO’S PAPERS

Abstract

The union between Carl Schmitt and a liberal and democratic Constitution seems impossible to many authors. Who could link, they will say, the Kronjurist of Nazism with a liberal and democratic Constitution; who does it, will continue, he does not know what he says, he is a completely ignorant of constitutional law and history. However, Manuel García-Pelayo, who was the first president of the Constitutional Court and indisputable master of constitutional science in our country, brings Schmitt’s theories to the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In his Inédito sobre la Constitución española de 1978 published in 2021, García-Pelayo offers a schmittian reading of the Constitution that we try to comment and develop in this paper in order to show the compatibility between Carl Schmitt and a liberal and democratic Constitution.