  We develop a Hamiltonian formalism suitable to be applied to gauge theories
in the presence of Gravitation, and to Gravity itself when considered as a
gauge theory. It is based on a nonlinear realization of the Poincar\'e group,
taken as the local spacetime group of the gravitational gauge theory, with
$SO(3)$ as the classification subgroup. The Wigner--like rotation induced by
the nonlinear approach singularizes out the role of time and allows to deal
with ordinary $SO(3)$ vectors. We apply the general results to the
Einstein--Cartan action. We study the constraints and we obtain Einstein's
classical equations in the extremely simple form of time evolution equations of
the coframe. As a consequence of our approach, we identify the
gauge--theoretical origin of the Ashtekar variables.
