The Restoration in Spain (1874-1923): Politics, Society, and Opposition

The Restoration in Spain (1874-1923)

The Bourbon Restoration and the Canovas System

After the pronouncement in Sagunto by General Martínez Campos (December 1874), Alfonso XII was proclaimed the new king. With the reinstatement of the Bourbons began the historical period of the Restoration (1874-1923). The architect of this period was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.

Peacemaking

The new government ended the 3rd Carlist War with the defeat in February 1876 of the pretender Don Carlos, who went into exile. The privileges of the Basque provinces were abolished, although economic agreements were established. It also ended the war in Cuba with the Peace of Zanjón in 1878, although it was not lasting.

The Cánovas System

The Cánovas system sought to return to the system prior to the revolutionary Sexenio. The bourgeois class was tired of the political instability (democratic monarchy of Amadeo I, federal republic, centralist republic). Cánovas needed a new constitution that was moderate and flexible, to establish some open “rules”, to gather within it all branches of liberalism, and to avoid pronouncements and maintain a stable political and public order, based on balance. The basic idea of the Cánovas system was shared sovereignty between the King and the Cortes (Parliament). It was based on the existence of a “historical constitution” of the nation, i.e., the traditional institutions – King and Cortes – official parties should accept this principle of constitutional legality.

The Constitution of 1876 and the Two-Party System

The new Constitution was enacted in June 1876, after little debate. Its main features were:

  1. Shared Sovereignty: (Cortes with the King) along the lines of doctrinaire liberalism.
  2. Extensive Powers of the Monarch: (summon, suspend, or dissolve the Cortes). The king holds the executive power, the Army leadership, and exercises a moderating role.
  3. Bicameral System: Senate with mixed members (appointed by the Crown and other corporations and some elected) and an elected Congress with members elected by the citizens. The Constitution did not determine the type of vote, referring to an electoral law that would set the census suffrage in 1890 and universal male suffrage later.
  4. Declaration of Broad Individual Rights: regulated by ordinary legislation. In practice, the rights were limited by restrictive laws. The 1879 press law criminalized any attack deemed against the political and social system of the Restoration.
  5. Religious Tolerance: The state opted for religious tolerance with other non-Catholic religions, while accepting the traditional privileges of the Catholic Church; it was an intermediate point between freedom of religion (1869) and the confessional state (1845).
  6. Centralized State: The state was organized centrally. It controlled the councils – in populations of more than 30,000 inhabitants, mayors were appointed by the King. It established unified legal codes and the legal equality of Spaniards, abolishing the privileges of the Basque provinces, establishing equality of taxation and military service for all.

The system was controlled with the formation of two main political parties. Cánovas brought together the various moderate forces (nobility, landowners, business oligarchy, senior military officers, Church) and founded the Conservative Party that supported the Alfonsine monarchy. The dynastic opposition party was the Liberal Party founded by Sagasta, which brought together supporters of the 1869 Constitution, calling for universal suffrage.

The parliamentary system, in form, was far from the British model, which Cánovas had used as inspiration. There was a pact between the two parties that established a remarkable “Turno” to govern and left out the rest of the parties. In practice, this system could only work through caciquismo (political bossism). The caciques, from the landed oligarchy, controlled political, economic, and social development, especially in rural areas. To ensure their party’s rule, they manipulated and distorted elections and used electoral fraud and falsification of official records.

On the death of Alfonso XII in 1885, his wife Maria Cristina became Regent. The two main parties continued the Turno after the “Pact of El Pardo” between Cánovas and Sagasta.

Opposition to the System

Opponents of the Cánovas system were a minority. Outside the system were anti-dynastic parties:

  1. The Carlists: They did not accept the Bourbon dynasty and had been defeated in the 3rd Carlist War in 1876. They split in 1888; those in the Catholic Union, founded by Pidal y Mon, were integrated into the Conservative Party, while the fundamentalists of Nocedal formed the Traditionalist Party.
  2. Republicanism: Lost the support of the middle classes, frightened by the disorders of the First Republic, and adapted easily to the Restoration. After the return to legality in 1881, thanks to the Liberal government of Sagasta authorizing freedom of association, it broke into factions. Castelar’s Possibilist Party accepted the Restoration but with universal suffrage; after 1890, it joined the Liberal Party. Salmerón sought to unite Republicans. Pi i Margall led the majority, federalist option, defending social reformism. Ruiz Zorrilla grouped radicals in the Progressive Party, organized from exile through failed pronouncements. After universal suffrage (1890), they reunited (except the Possibilists) in the Republican Union (1903), which allowed for the first time a significant Republican minority in Parliament.

The labor movement also opposed the Cánovas system. With progressive industrialization and the consolidation of capitalism, it underwent development, while retaining its poor living and working conditions. It was divided into two conflicting tendencies: anarchism and socialism, both revolutionary. Integrated into the International, its break came in the wake of the Congress in Zaragoza in 1872, due to the discrepancy between Marx and Bakunin. This division was the cause of its weakness. During the Restoration, workers’ associations were illegal until 1881.

  1. Anarchism: Based mainly among peasants, it was widely deployed in Andalusia and Catalonia underground since January 1874. It had been weakened by internal dissensions and government persecution on account of the Black Hand case in 1883. Beginning in 1881, it grew significantly, holding the new Federation of Workers in the Spanish Region. Some anarchist organizations were carrying out terrorist activities or propaganda by the deed. In 1911, the anarchist union CNT (National Confederation of Labor) was created.
  2. Socialism: The socialist current developed around a Marxist party, the PSOE, founded in Madrid in 1879 by Pablo Iglesias and a small group of printers and intellectuals. In 1888, it founded its own union, the General Union of Workers (UGT). The official newspaper of the party was El Socialista (1886). This trend took hold in Madrid, Extremadura, Castilla la Nueva, and from there it spread to the mining and industrial centers of Asturias, Biscay, and Catalonia. More organized, but less numerous than the anarchists, it grew a lot in the last decade of the century.

Regionalism and Nationalism

Regionalism and nationalism were opposition movements, enhanced by the local bourgeoisie. The Cánovas system proved unable to integrate them.

Regionalism seeks to defend the region through administrative autonomy. Nationalism holds that each people or nation has the right to exercise sovereignty over its territory, which means that each cultural identity should correspond to an independent state. Both movements emerged in peripheral areas due to the failure of liberalism to create a Spanish nationalism that would be the backbone of Spanish society.

Catalonia

By mid-century, a cultural movement emerged, the Renaixença, which sought the recovery of the Catalan language and culture. Floral Games were introduced in 1859. The initiator of Catalanism was Valentí Almirall, a former federal Republican, creator of the Catalan Center (1882) and author of Lo Catalanisme (1886), which advocated autonomy versus centralization. La Unió Catalanista (1891) developed the Bases de Manresa (1892), the first program of Catalanism, written by Enric Prat de la Riba, who represented the conservative, Catholic, and bourgeois Catalanism. In 1901, the first major Catalan political party was born, the conservative Regionalist League, led by Prat de la Riba and Francesc Cambó, which aspired to the autonomy of Catalonia to promote its modernization.

Basque Country

Sabino Arana founded the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in 1895. Arana defended the Basque race, language (Euskera), Catholic fundamentalism, and traditional privileges, abolished in 1876; fervently anti-Spanish, he demanded the restoration of the independence of the Basque Nation. His motto was God and Old Laws. He idealized rural Basque society and rejected industrialization because he believed that non-Basque immigrants (maketos) would degenerate the Basque race through interbreeding. He designed the Ikurriña, or the Basque national flag. The PNV was divided between a radical independence movement and a more moderate trend that sought autonomy for the Basque Country within Spain, gaining votes among the middle classes.

Galicia

Regionalism was later and emerged as a reaction against the backwardness of Galicia. It started with the Rexurdimento, a cultural movement of intellectuals who defended the Galician language and culture, such as Manuel Murguía, of a liberal-democratic tendency, and Alfredo Brañas, a traditionalist.

Other Regions

In Andalusia, there was a first attempt at regionalism with Blas Infante, but it would take a long time to consolidate. The same happened in Valencia, Aragon, and the Balearic Islands.