The Monumento de la Constitucion
This monument was erected in 1813, during the Second Period of Spanish Colonial Occupation, to commemorate promulgation of Spain's first democratic constitution, following the expulsion of the Napoleonic regime.
In 1814, the constitutional government was overthrown and the monarchy restored, at which point Madrid ordered the destruction of all such monumnets throughout Spain's worldwide empire. St. Augustine officials, however, refused to destroy their monument, and today it remains perhaps the only surviving such monument in the world.
The Constitution Monument (Monumento de la Constitución), an 18-foot tall obelisk erected in 1813 during the second period of Spanish colonial occupation, is one of the few, perhaps only, surviving monuments of its kind in the world.
Project work began April 2008 with an architectural and engineering study that included a chemical analysis of the masonry object to determine the appropriate methods for restoring it. The stucco coating that protects the coquina stone was disintegrating.
Previous attempts to repair it over the past half century or more have failed. Because of the monument’s significance, the work of restoring it was carefully designed to follow standards set by the U.S. Department of the Interior. History of the Monumento de la Constitución
Restoration of the Constitution Monument completed October 2008.
On October 23, 2008, restoration of the monument in St. Augustine’s central plaza commemorating the Spanish Constitution of 1812 was completed. The project, directed by the Colonial St. Augustine Foundation, is part of a larger project that proposes eventually to restore all of the historic objects within the historic plaza, whose origins date to the urban plan of 1596 drafted by Spanish Governor Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo.
The project was assisted in part by grants from the Florida Department of State and the Lastinger Family Foundation. To complete payment for the work that has been done, the Foundation is continuing to raise funds through the sale of inscribed bricks and through solicitation of private contributions.
History of the Monumento de la Constitución
The Constitution Monument was constructed in 1813, during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821), to celebrate a newly formed constitutional government in Spain. On August 14, 1812, the Spanish Parliament issued a royal decree naming all plazas throughout the empire Plazas de la Constitución (Constitution Squares) and ordering the erection of commemorative monuments.
Work to build the St. Augustine monument began the following February. On September 15, 1814, news arrived from Havana of the overthrow of the constitutional government in Spain and restoration of the monarch, Ferdinand VII. By royal decree, destruction of the monuments scattered in towns throughout the Spanish empire began, but St. Augustine’s officials refused to tear down what they had sacrificed much to build.
St. Augustine’s Constitution Monument remains, then, one of the few, perhaps only, such commemorative structures still standing in the New World. Moreover, it is one of the oldest public monuments in the United States. A symbol of the Order of Masons engraved on one of the monument’s original tablets reveals the once pervasive influence of that Protestant-dominated secret order, extending even to what was at the time a Roman Catholic community.
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