Cortes

Representative assembly of the medieval Iberian kingdoms. The Cortes developed in the Middle Ages when elected representatives of the free municipalities acquired the right to take part in the affairs of the Curia Regis (King's Court). They were admitted because the crown was short of funds and lacked the right to raise taxes without the consent of the municipalities. Cortes were established in Len and Castile by the early 13th century and soon appeared in Catalonia (1218), Aragon (1274), Valencia (1283), and Navarra (1300). Today the term refers to the national legislatures of Spain and Portugal.

Cortes (kôr'tĕz, Span. kōr'tās), representative assembly in Spain. The institution originated (12th-13th cent.) in various Spanish regions with the Christian reconquest; until the 19th cent. the local cortes of Leon, Castile, Aragón, Catalonia, Navarre, Valencia, and other states met separately. The three estates-clergy, nobility, and burghers-voted the taxes, recognized the kings upon their accession, and indirectly exercised some legislative influence. The cortes of Aragón and Catalonia were particularly powerful. After the consolidation of the royal power (15th cent.) and the unification of Spain, the cortes were seldom convoked except to pay homage, and their powers were curtailed. The first national Cortes of Spain met at Cádiz in 1810 in the Peninsular War, the Spanish war of liberation from Napoleonic rule. They voted (1812) a liberal constitution, later (1814) revoked by Ferdinand VII. Thereafter the status of the Cortes frequently changed in its struggle for power with the king. At the fall of the monarchy in 1931, a constituent Cortes promulgated a republican constitution, and the Cortes was the parliament of Spain until 1939. Under Francisco Franco's dictatorship a Cortes was preserved but stripped of effective legislative power; a revived, bicameral Cortes was established in 1977. Under the Portuguese monarchy various legislative bodies were known as cortes.

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