The 19th Century in Spain: Revolutionary Changes and Their Limitations

Posted on May 14, 2024 in History

Revolutionary changes and their limitations

• Absolutism gave way to a liberal system, but this change took place in an atmosphere of great instability marked by civil wars, military coups d’état and the loss of the colonial empire.

• The population grew, but moderately; and the economy was modernised, but the progress was delayed, slow and less intense than in other European countries, which is why Spain continued to be an agrarian country.

A new class-based society was established, centred on wealth. However, landowners continued to have significant influence, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat grew very little, and the peasantry continued to make up the majority.

IDEOLOGICAL GROUPS

Joseph I Bonaparte reigned in Spain between 1808 and 1813. During this time, he implemented the Bayonne Statute, which established a conservative political system in which the king had executive power and the initiative to propose laws

These events divided Spaniards into two ideological groups:

  • The afrancesados accepted the new monarchy and supported its reforms. This small group of Spaniards was composed of members of the nobility, the high clergy and, primarily, civil servants.
  • The patriots refused to accept a foreign monarch imposed by military might. This group included most of the people, who defended the sovereignty of Ferdinand Vll and traditional values (God,country, king); and the liberals, primarily liberal bourgeois and professionals who wanted to endthe Old Regime and draw up a constitution.

(1788,1808)

– Reign of Charles IV

1795

– Peace of basel

1808

– Mutiny of Aranjuez

1808,1814 –

War of independece

1812

– constitution of 1812

1820

-Riegos uprising

1825

-Independece of Spanish America

1831

– Creation of the madrid stock

1868

-September revoluti

1833,1868-

Reign of Isabel II

1836

-Mendizabal disentailment

1845-

Moderate constitution

1848-

Barcelona.Mataro railway

1851-

MadridAranjuez railway

1855

MadozsLawofgeneral Dise

1860

-Urban enlarge projects

1873

-Begining First republic

1871

– Beginnign of reing of amadeo

1874

-Restoration of the monarchy

(1813)

Treaty of Valençay

 The War of Independence

The French invasion led to the uprising of the people of Madrid on 2 May 1808. Its spread to other cities entailed the beginning of the  War of Independence

  • In the first phase of the war, the French advance was stopped by the resistance found in cities like Girona, Zaragoza, Valencia and Cádiz, and the victory in the Battle of Bailén (1808). Napoleon then went to Spain with 250 000 soldiers and recovered almost all the territory.
  • From 1812 on, taking advantage of Napoleon’s problems in Russia and with the help of the British army that came ashore in Portugal, the French were defeated at Arapiles, Vitoria and San Marcial. As a consequence, Napoleon recognised Ferdinand VIl as King of Spain and the Indies in the Treaty of Valençay (1813), and withdrew from Spain.

The Cortes of Cádiz and the Constitution

Power was assumed by the Supreme Central Junta, which coordinated the war and undertook the political and social reforms that the country needed. In order to do so, the Supreme Junta summoned the Cortes of Cádiz (1810), elected by male popular vote. Among the Cortes delegates were absolutists, who defended royal sovereignty and keeping the Old Regime; and liberals, who were in favour of national sovereignty and the end of the Old Regime. The latter won the majority, and were able to get the Cortes to carry out legal reforms and approve a constitution.

  • The laws they approved established freedom of the press (1810), abolished manors (1811), trade guilds (1813) and the Inquisition (1813). With them, the foundations of the Old Regime were attacked.
  • The Constitution of 1812, the first in the history of Spain, recognised individual rights like equality before the law and established national sovereignty and the separation of powers. Thus, absolutism was replaced by a liberal political system.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN SPAIN

A Slow and partial industrialotation

  • • The low demand for industrial articles, due to modest population growth and to the impoverishment of the peasantry.
  • • The lack of entrepreneurial spirit among the bourgeoisie, that based its social prestige on the possession of land.
  • • Other factors were the technological gap and the shortage of raw materials, which compelled expensive imports of machines and resources; and political instability, which did not prompt a coherent economic policy.

The main industrial sectors

The basic industrial sectors were mining, the iron and steel industry and the textile sector.

• Mining experienced a strong expansion beginning in 1860, and turned Spain into a significant operator for minerals such as lead, iron, mercury and copper.
• The iron and steel industry began in Andalucia (1830-1865). But given the nonexistence of coal, it was transferred first to Asturias (1865 1880), with its abundant coal resources; and from 1880 on, to the Basque Country, where iron mines existed.
• The textile sector for cotton was concentrated in Catalonia. At first, the factories used hydraulic machines, which is why they were located along the rivers.


STATES IN THE REGION•  The Absolutist Sexennium (1814-1820). Ferdinand VI abolished the Constitution of 1812, thus annulling the work of the Cortes of Cádiz, and persecuted the liberals. Some were exiled, and others tried to attain power through uprisings or military coups d’état. • The Liberal Triennium (1820-1823). In 1820, the uprising led by commander Rafael de Riego at Las Cabezas de San Juan (Seville) prevailed. Frightened, Ferdinand VIl swore allegiance to the Constitution of Cádiz and accepted the liberals’ reestablishment of the work of the Cortes of Cádiz, such as the suppression of the manors, the elimination of the Inquisition, etc. Meanwhile, Ferdinand VIl obtained the aid of the absolutist powers of the Holy Alliance.  • The Ominous Decade (1823-1833). This period began with the repression of the liberals. The situation changed in 1830 with the succession problem, because when his daughter Isabella was born, Ferdinand VIl repealed the Salic Law that prevented women from inheriting the throne. Don Carlos, brother of Ferdinand VIl and until then his successor, did not accept it and received the support of the absolutists, which forced Maria Christina, wife of Ferdinand VIl, to rely on the liberals. 

The Independence of Spanish America In the last years of the reign of Ferdinand VIl, the independence of the Spanish colonies in America took place. The process was advanced by the criollos, dissatisfied with their political marginalisation, the high taxes and the social discrimination they faced compared to peninsular Spaniards.• The first stage (1810-1814) coincided with the War of Independence, during which revolutionary juntas displayed tendencies that favoured independence, led by Simón Bolivar and José de San Martín. They were repressed after the return of Ferdinand VIl to Spain. • The second stage (1815-1825). Ferdinand VI refused to grant any autonomy to the colonies. Thanks to British and American support, Spain was defeated at Pichincha (1822) and Ayacucho (1824), and its colonial empire was reduced to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Americas and the Philippines in Asia.


The PERIOD OF ISABELLA 1833-1874

The Regency stage Upon the death of Ferdinand VI, his daughter,Isabella I, just three years old, acceded to the throne.While she was a minor, regency was given to hermother, Maria Christina (1833-1840), and GeneralEspartero(1840-1843).In this period, the succession problem unleashed a civil war, the First Carlist War (1833-1839), which pitted the absolutists who defended Carlos against the liberals who favoured Isabella. The Conflictended in 1839, with the victory of Isabella and the Convention of Vergara. The reign of Isabella Il In 1843, Isabella Il was declared of legal age and her personal reign began. During her reign, the liberal regime was consolidated, based on a system of political parties. The reign, nevertheless, was characterised by tremendous political instability, driven by the confrontation between two liberal parties: the Moderate Party, composed of the upper bourgeoisie and some sectors of the middle class 

• In the Moderate Decade (1844-1854),the Constitution of 1845 was imposed.• In theProgressive Biennium (1854-1856), the Constitution of 1856 was written but not published. • And in the last years of the reign (1856-1868) the liberal moderates alternated in power with a new centrist party, the Liberal Union.

• The democratic monarchy (1871-1873) fell to the Italian Amadeo of Savoy by government appointment. He faced the political opposition of the Republicans, those in favour of the Bourbons, and several military insurrections. Faced with this situation, Amadeo abdicated in 1873 and the First Republic was proclaimed. • The First Republic (1873-1874) was a period of considerable political instability. The Republicans were divided between unionists, those in favour of a centralist State; and federalists, who defended a decentralised State.


AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATIONS  The The abolition of the feudal regime

The Cortes of Cádiz decreed in 1811 that jurisdictional manors in which the lord performed public functions such as administering justice would pass to the State and territorial manors in which the lord only obtained economic resources from the land would become private property, generally belonging to the noble families who had operated them for centuries.

Disentailment

The first disentailment measures were approved in the Cortes of Cádiz and the Liberal Triennium, but the process received its definitive push during the reign of Isabella I. The objective of these laws was to obtain resources for the State and to facilitate access by the peasantry to land ownership. But the results were not as expected. . 

Agrarian improvements

These consisted of an increase in cultivated area, mainly grains and vineyards; a slow introduction of technical advances, such as the use of fertilisers and machines; and the expansion of irrigated landthrough the construction of dams and canals.

OTHER ECONOMIC SECTORS

6.2 Other economic sectors
Transport modernisation was made possible thanks to the Law of Highways of 1851, the Law of Railroads of 1855, and the arrival of foreign capital. The road network expanded until it reached 16807 km in 1874. The railway network began with the construction of the Barcelona- Mataró (1848) and Madrid-Aranjuez (1851) lines. A radial network that connected Madrid and the main ports was built beginning in 1855. The first streetcars pulled by mules were put into service in cities like Madrid and Valencia.
• The trading system was unified with the introduction of the metric decimal system in 1858. .
• Finance and capitalism grew in a limited fashion. Limited companies were created, public banks (Bank of Spain, 1856), private banks (Bilbao and Santander, founded in 1857), and the stock markets inMadrid (1831) and Barcelona (1851).


SOCIAL GROUPS

In the 19th century, the stratified society of the Old Regime was replaced by a new class-based society based on the economic power of each individual. As a consequence, social groups were contained in three classes, according to their wealth.
• The upper class was a small group that included the former nobility and the bourgeoisie.
– The former nobility landowners lost their privileges but consolidated their wealth by obtaining the private property of the manors and increased it by purchasing disentailed land.
– The bourgeoisie was hardly numerous, but it increased its power. In some cases, it was linked to industry (Catalonia, Basque Country); and in others, to commercial and agrarian activities (Andalucia, Valencia, etc.). Some tried to imitate the way of life
of the nobility, investing in disentailed land or trying to marry into the nobility.
• The middle class was not large. In the countryside it included medium-sized agrarian landowners; and in the cities, government officials, army officials, professionals (doctors, lawyers, notaries), artisanal workshop owners and small merchants.
• The lower class included small landowners, tenants and day labourers in the countryside; and employees, wage-earners and factory workers, who comprised an emerging and still scarce industrial proletariat in the cities.

Social conflicts and the labour movemen

Social conflicts were due to the poor living conditions of the most underprivileged groups. 
• In its beginnings it was characterised by activism, manifested in the spontaneous destruction of machines. Such was the case in Alcoy in 1821 and in Barcelona in 1835. Workers’ associations were also created to demand labour improvements, but they were barel yrelevant until the Glorious Revolution.
• Beginning in 1868 the ideologies present in the First International were spread: above all anarchism, with the Neapolitan Giuseppe Fanelli, and to a lesser extent Marxist socialism with Paul Lafargue. In 1870 the Spanish Regional Federation (FRE) was founded, integrated into the International Workers’ Association.


CULTURE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• The culture of the era was characterised by secularisation, or a lesser degree of religious Influence, as well as by obligatory and free public education for primary school,which included women for the first time, and by the growing influence of the press and public opinion.
 • Literature followed two main currents.Romanticism was expressed in different genres, such as poetry （Lord Byron),theatre (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) and the novel (Victor Hugo). Realism reflected the problems caused by industrialisation in novels by Stendhal and Charles Dickens.
• In Science notably progressed, above all physics,chemistry and natural sciences,with the revolutionary theory of the evolution of the species by Charles Darwin.Technology was demonstrated to the public in world’s fairs, like the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851.

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION Romanticism

 This artistic movement reached its peak in the first half of the 19th century as a reaction to Neoclassicism. It allowed for imagination, creativity, fantasy and the expression of feelings.
 • Architecture was inspired by past styles. The historicist style consisted of Neo-Romanesque buildings (the Marseille Cathedral),Neo-Gothic （British Parliament) and Neo-Baroque (Paris Opera)
•  Sculpture was characterised by movement and facial expressions.One of the most famous works is the relief ‘La Marseillaise’, by Francois Rude.

• Painting gave great importance to colour, light,· movement and expressiveness. The main topics were present and past realities, costumbrismo, depicting everyday reality and exotic scenes, passion and love, disasters and tragedies, as well as landscapes.

Realism

realism developed in the preiod from the revolution of 1848 to the 1870 and was characterised by its inspiration coming from reality and repressentations of daily people issues. The most important paintors were Francois Millet, Gustavo Courbet and Honore Daumier