Legalize ES — Spanish Legislation Git Repository Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection. What It Is legalize-es is a Git repository containing 8,600+ Spanish laws as Markdown files, with every legislative reform recorded as a Git commit. Each law is a single .md file named by its BOE identifier (e.g. BOE-A-1978-31229.md for the Spanish Constitution). Reform history goes back to 1960. Key capabilities: Full text search across all laws with grep Exact diff between any two versions of a law using git diff Timeline of all reforms to a specific law using git log Historical state of any law at any point in time using git show / git checkout Setup

Clone the full repo (includes all history)

git clone https://github.com/legalize-dev/legalize-es.git cd legalize-es

Shallow clone if you only need current state (much faster)

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/legalize-dev/legalize-es.git cd legalize-es All law files live in the spain/ directory. File Structure spain/ ├── BOE-A-1978-31229.md # Constitución Española ├── BOE-A-1995-25444.md # Código Penal ├── BOE-A-2015-11430.md # Estatuto de los Trabajadores ├── BOE-A-2000-323.md # Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil └── ... (8,600+ laws) YAML Frontmatter Every file starts with structured metadata:

titulo : "Constitución Española" identificador : "BOE-A-1978-31229" pais : "es" rango : "constitucion" fecha_publicacion : "1978-12-29" ultima_actualizacion : "2024-02-17" estado : "vigente" fuente : "https://www.boe.es/eli/es/c/1978/12/27/(1)"

rango values: constitucion ley-organica ley real-decreto-ley real-decreto-legislativo estado values: vigente — currently in force derogado — repealed Key Commands Find a Law by Topic

Search law titles in frontmatter

grep -rl "trabajo" spain/ | head -20

Search for a keyword across all law bodies

grep -rl "huelga" spain/

Case-insensitive search for a concept

grep -rli "protección de datos" spain/ Read a Specific Article

Find Article 18 of the Constitution

grep -A 20 "Artículo 18" spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

Find an article with context (10 lines before, 30 after)

grep -B 10 -A 30 "Artículo 135" spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md Find a Law by Its BOE Identifier

If you know the BOE ID

cat spain/BOE-A-1995-25444.md

Search by partial identifier

ls spain/ | grep "BOE-A-1995" Filter by Law Type

List all Organic Laws

grep -rl 'rango: "ley-organica"' spain/

List all currently active laws

grep -rl 'estado: "vigente"' spain/

List all repealed laws

grep -rl 'estado: "derogado"' spain/ Git History Commands See All Reforms to a Law

Full reform history of the Spanish Constitution

git log --oneline -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

With dates

git log --format = "%h %ad %s" --date = short -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

With full commit messages (includes reform source URL)

git log -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md Diff Between Two Versions

Diff of a specific reform commit

git show 6660bcf -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

Diff between two commits

git diff 6660bcf^ .. 6660bcf -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

Diff between two dates

git diff $( git rev-list -1 --before = "2011-01-01" HEAD ) \ $( git rev-list -1 --before = "2012-01-01" HEAD ) \ -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md Read Historical Version of a Law

State of the Constitution as of 2010-01-01

git show $( git rev-list -1 --before = "2010-01-01" HEAD ) :spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

Check out law at a specific commit (read-only inspection)

git show abc1234:spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md Find When a Specific Text Was Added or Removed

Find which commit introduced "estabilidad presupuestaria"

git log -S "estabilidad presupuestaria" -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

Find which commit changed a specific phrase

git log -G "límite de déficit estructural" --oneline -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md Programmatic Access Patterns Shell Script: Extract All Law Titles

!/bin/bash

Extract titles and identifiers from all laws

for file in spain/.md ; do id = $( grep 'identificador:' " $file " | head -1 | sed 's/.: "//;s/".//' ) title = $( grep 'titulo:' " $file " | head -1 | sed 's/.: "//;s/".*//' ) echo " $id | $title " done Shell Script: Find Laws Updated After a Date

!/bin/bash

Laws updated after 2023-01-01

TARGET_DATE

"2023-01-01" grep -rl "ultima_actualizacion:" spain/ | while read file ; do date = $( grep 'ultima_actualizacion:' " $file " | head -1 | grep -o '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}' ) if [ [ " $date "

" $TARGET_DATE " ] ] ; then echo " $date $file " fi done | sort -r Python: Parse Law Frontmatter import os import yaml def parse_law ( filepath ) : """Parse a law Markdown file and return frontmatter + body.""" with open ( filepath , 'r' , encoding = 'utf-8' ) as f : content = f . read ( )

Extract YAML frontmatter between --- delimiters

if content . startswith ( '---' ) : parts = content . split ( '---' , 2 ) if len ( parts )

= 3 : metadata = yaml . safe_load ( parts [ 1 ] ) body = parts [ 2 ] . strip ( ) return metadata , body return { } , content

Example: list all active laws

laws_dir

'spain' active_laws = [ ] for filename in os . listdir ( laws_dir ) : if filename . endswith ( '.md' ) : filepath = os . path . join ( laws_dir , filename ) meta , body = parse_law ( filepath ) if meta . get ( 'estado' ) == 'vigente' : active_laws . append ( { 'id' : meta . get ( 'identificador' ) , 'titulo' : meta . get ( 'titulo' ) , 'rango' : meta . get ( 'rango' ) , 'ultima_actualizacion' : meta . get ( 'ultima_actualizacion' ) , } )

Sort by last update

active_laws . sort ( key = lambda x : x [ 'ultima_actualizacion' ] or '' , reverse = True ) for law in active_laws [ : 10 ] : print ( f" { law [ 'ultima_actualizacion' ] } [ { law [ 'rango' ] } ] { law [ 'titulo' ] } " ) Python: Get Reform History via Git import subprocess import json def get_reform_history ( boe_id ) : """Get all commits that modified a law file.""" filepath = f"spain/ { boe_id } .md" result = subprocess . run ( [ 'git' , 'log' , '--format=%H|%ad|%s' , '--date=short' , '--' , filepath ] , capture_output = True , text = True ) reforms = [ ] for line in result . stdout . strip ( ) . split ( '\n' ) : if line : hash_ , date , subject = line . split ( '|' , 2 ) reforms . append ( { 'hash' : hash_ , 'date' : date , 'subject' : subject } ) return reforms

Example usage

history

get_reform_history ( 'BOE-A-1978-31229' ) for reform in history : print ( f" { reform [ 'date' ] } { reform [ 'hash' ] [ : 7] } { reform [ 'subject' ] } " ) Python: Compare Two Versions of a Law import subprocess def diff_law_versions ( boe_id , commit_before , commit_after ) : """Get unified diff between two versions of a law.""" filepath = f"spain/ { boe_id } .md" result = subprocess . run ( [ 'git' , 'diff' , f' { commit_before } .. { commit_after } ' , '--' , filepath ] , capture_output = True , text = True ) return result . stdout def get_law_at_date ( boe_id , date_str ) : """Get the text of a law as it was on a given date (YYYY-MM-DD).""" filepath = f"spain/ { boe_id } .md"

Find the last commit before date

rev

subprocess . run ( [ 'git' , 'rev-list' , '-1' , f'--before= { date_str } ' , 'HEAD' ] , capture_output = True , text = True ) . stdout . strip ( ) if not rev : return None content = subprocess . run ( [ 'git' , 'show' , f' { rev } : { filepath } ' ] , capture_output = True , text = True ) . stdout return content

Example: see Constitution before and after 2011 reform

old_text

get_law_at_date ( 'BOE-A-1978-31229' , '2011-09-26' ) new_text = get_law_at_date ( 'BOE-A-1978-31229' , '2011-09-28' ) print ( "Pre-reform length:" , len ( old_text ) ) print ( "Post-reform length:" , len ( new_text ) ) Python: Search Across All Laws import os import re def search_laws ( query , laws_dir = 'spain' , rango = None , estado = 'vigente' ) : """Search for a regex pattern across all laws.""" results = [ ] pattern = re . compile ( query , re . IGNORECASE ) for filename in os . listdir ( laws_dir ) : if not filename . endswith ( '.md' ) : continue filepath = os . path . join ( laws_dir , filename ) with open ( filepath , 'r' , encoding = 'utf-8' ) as f : content = f . read ( )

Filter by frontmatter fields

if estado and f'estado: " { estado } "' not in content : continue if rango and f'rango: " { rango } "' not in content : continue matches = list ( pattern . finditer ( content ) ) if matches : titulo_match = re . search ( r'titulo: "([^"]+)"' , content ) titulo = titulo_match . group ( 1 ) if titulo_match else filename results . append ( { 'file' : filename , 'titulo' : titulo , 'match_count' : len ( matches ) , 'first_match_context' : content [ max ( 0 , matches [ 0 ] . start ( ) - 100 ) : matches [ 0 ] . end ( ) + 100 ] } ) return sorted ( results , key = lambda x : x [ 'match_count' ] , reverse = True )

Example: find all active organic laws mentioning "privacidad"

hits

search_laws ( "privacidad" , rango = "ley-organica" ) for h in hits : print ( f"[ { h [ 'match_count' ] } matches] { h [ 'titulo' ] } " ) print ( f" Context: ... { h [ 'first_match_context' ] . strip ( ) [ : 150] } ..." ) print ( ) Common Workflows Workflow 1: Research a Legal Topic

1. Find relevant laws

grep -rl "protección de datos personales" spain/

relevant_laws.txt

2. Get titles of matching files

while read file ; do grep 'titulo:' " $file " | head -1 done < relevant_laws.txt

3. Find the primary law (LOPD/GDPR implementation)

grep -rl 'rango: "ley-organica"' spain/ | xargs grep -l "protección de datos" Workflow 2: Track a Specific Reform

1. Find when Article 135 changed (2011 constitutional reform)

git log -S "estabilidad presupuestaria" --oneline -- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

2. View the exact changes

git show < commit-hash

-- spain/BOE-A-1978-31229.md

3. Read the commit message for official source

git show --format = "%B" < commit-hash

| head -10 Workflow 3: Export Laws to JSON import os , yaml , json laws = [ ] for fname in os . listdir ( 'spain' ) : if not fname . endswith ( '.md' ) : continue with open ( f'spain/ { fname } ' , 'r' , encoding = 'utf-8' ) as f : content = f . read ( ) if content . startswith ( '---' ) : parts = content . split ( '---' , 2 ) if len ( parts ) = 3 : meta = yaml . safe_load ( parts [ 1 ] ) meta [ 'filename' ] = fname laws . append ( meta ) with open ( 'laws_index.json' , 'w' , encoding = 'utf-8' ) as f : json . dump ( laws , f , ensure_ascii = False , indent = 2 , default = str ) print ( f"Exported { len ( laws ) } laws" ) Troubleshooting Repo is Too Large to Clone

Use shallow clone for current state only

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/legalize-dev/legalize-es.git

Or clone with limited history

git clone --depth 50 https://github.com/legalize-dev/legalize-es.git Git Log Shows No History After Shallow Clone

Fetch more history

git fetch --deepen = 100

Fetch full history

git fetch --unshallow Encoding Issues on Windows

Force UTF-8 in git

git config core.quotepath false git config i18n.logoutputencoding utf-8

In Python, always open files with encoding='utf-8'

Finding a Law Without Its BOE ID

Search by partial title (case-insensitive)

grep -ril "enjuiciamiento civil" spain/ | head -5

Or search in frontmatter only (faster)

grep

-rl

"Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil"

spain/

Data Source & License

Legislative content

Public domain — sourced from

BOE Open Data API

Repository structure, metadata, tooling

MIT License

Official source per law

See

fuente:

field in each file's frontmatter

Part of

:

Legalize

multi-country project

Upcoming

Programmatic API at legalize.dev