The Constituent Assembly ( pt, Assembleia Constituinte) was the

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

constituent assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

elected on 25 April 1975, after the Carnation Revolution (25 April 1974), for the purpose of adopting a

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

for the Third Portuguese Republic, the Constitution of 1976.

Background

After the Carnation Revolution, the

National Salvation Junta The National Salvation Junta ( pt, Junta de Salvação Nacional, ) was a group of military officers designated to maintain the government of Portugal in April 1974 after the Carnation Revolution had overthrown the '' Estado Novo'' dictatori ...

dissolved all political offices previously existing in the '' Estado Novo'' (Law no. 1/74). On 14 May 1974, the President of the National Salvation Junta,

António de Spínola António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola (generally referred to as António de Spínola, ;This surname, however, was not accompanied by the grammatical nobiliary particle "de". 11 April 1910 – 13 August 1996) was a Portuguese military o ...

, abolished the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

and the Corporative Chamber (Law no. 2/74), the two parliamentary chambers in the ''Estado Novo'', and established a transitory constitution (Law no. 3/74) to be used until the new constitution was approved.

Elections

The election of the Constituent Assembly was carried out in Portugal on 25 April 1975, exactly one year after the Carnation Revolution and was the first free election in fifty years, the first in the new democratic regime created after the revolution. The election was won by the Socialist Party, with the Democratic Party being the second most voted party. The parliament had a large majority of parties defending

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

democratic socialist Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within ...

ideas and the Constitution, approved on 2 April 1976, reflected such influence.

References

1975 establishments in Portugal 1976 disestablishments in Portugal Political history of Portugal 1970s in Portugal

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

{{Portugal-poli-stub

Background

Elections

See also

References