The Spanish Restoration: Monarchy, Politics, and Society (1875-1902)

The Spanish Restoration and the Canovist System (1875-1902)

The Restoration of the Monarchy: Alfonso XII (1875-1885)

The instability of the Sexenio was the primary cause of the success of the Restoration. Cánovas prepared for the return of the son of Isabel II, who had abdicated in his favor in June 1870. Cánovas accelerated the process during the government of Serrano.

1. Principles of the Restoration

Cánovas offered a program of national reconciliation in return for accepting the monarchy, excluding only Carlists and Republicans. To achieve this, it was essential to sway international public opinion and gain the support of France and Austria-Hungary. The army supported the coup led by Martínez Campos. Cánovas wrote the Manifesto of Sandhurst (six months late in its drafting), which presented the son of Isabel II (Alfonso XII) as a constitutional monarch, not an absolute one, but respectful of liberal Catholicism.

Cánovas took charge of a ministry-regency, concentrating all powers as in a dictatorship. He decreed press censorship, to be lifted except for Republicans. He sought to establish a moderate order (“peace and order”), suspended pieces of legislation (e.g., the law of associations), and gained the support of Sagasta, leader of the liberal-progressives. Imitating the English system of alternation in power, he adopted a more tolerant stance, supporting, for example, civil marriage and universal suffrage.

On February 14, 1875, Alfonso XII entered Madrid amid popular indifference. He was supported by the upper classes and the aristocracy. The social disorder of the First Republic was the best advertisement for the Restoration.

2. The Constitution of 1876

It was a short, pragmatic, flexible, and tolerant constitution, based on a doctrinaire approach. It was similar to that of 1845 but included some rights from 1869. Inspired by the English turnismo of the Whigs (Liberals) and Tories (Conservatives), Cánovas aimed to incorporate traditional elements of the state: the two basic institutions of sovereignty, the hereditary monarchy and the Cortes, predating any written documentation and products of the will of centuries. This is what was called the Historical Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy.

The monarchy did not represent the state; the monarchy was the state. It was a symbol of historical continuity, a guarantee of social order, and the cornerstone of the system. The army, which had been the other major pillar of 19th-century liberalism, was to be left out, especially after the pacification of Cuba and the end of the Third Carlist War.

Sovereignty was shared; legislative power resided in the Cortes and the King. The King had a moderating role in the constitution. For this to be effective, broad powers were granted to the monarch (supreme commander of the armed forces, royal prerogative to appoint and dismiss ministers, dissolve parliament, and call elections), so that the system ultimately depended on the specific personality of the King.

The Cortes were divided into an upper house, or Senate, and a lower house, or Chamber of Deputies. The Senate was composed of three types of senators: senators by their own right (the King’s sons, grandees of Spain, high-ranking officials of the church, army, and administration), senators for life (appointed by the Crown from among prominent scholars, professors, etc.), and senators elected by restricted suffrage and indirectly by state corporations and major contributors.

On the religious issue, conservatives imposed an ambiguous formula that left the state confessional (Catholic) but did not explicitly guarantee religious freedom.

One of the strengths of the Constitution was that it could serve both progressives and conservatives. For example, the type of suffrage was not specified. Universal male suffrage was approved (“for this time”) on June 30, 1876, but when the conservatives returned to power, they imposed census suffrage over Sagasta’s parliament.

3. Performance of the System and Political Forces

Inspired by the British two-party system, a system of alternating parties was established. Two main parties were organized:

• Conservative Party: Heir to the moderate unionists. Cánovas managed to unite many of the supporters of Isabel II and revolutionaries of the administration. Their base was in the bourgeoisie, aristocracy, and senior civilian and military officials, especially in southern Spain, where they also had support among the middle classes. Their leader was Cánovas. The party emerged from a meeting in the Senate in May 1875, with former parliamentarians of the monarchies of Isabel II and Amadeo I, including, in 1884, the Catholic Union of Pidal y Mon. To their right was only Carlism.
• Liberal Party: Gathered radical democrats (who did not fully unite) and also the unionist left led by Sagasta. It was born out of dissatisfaction with the Restoration (Martínez Campos, for example). Its base was among merchants and industrialists, mainly in the north. Its origin was in the Constitutional Party founded by Sagasta and Serrano. Later, in 1879, the Center joined with the Constitutional Liberal Party, and in 1881, the Liberal Fusionist Party was formed with Sagasta as its leader.

The law of 1878 returned to census suffrage. In 1879, the press law and the 1880 law limited constitutional freedoms of assembly. The education system was also controlled. The first Liberal government lasted from 1881 to 1883. It was more liberal, restoring academic freedom and freedom of assembly, removing censorship, and reforming the finance and civil code.

After a reasonable period of two to five years, the government changed hands between the two dynastic parties. The King, making use of the royal prerogative, appointed the head of the other party as President of the Council, dissolved the Parliament, and the new party, once in power, prepared the elections and, through electoral manipulation, always managed to obtain a majority in Parliament. The system was based on caciquismo in rural areas and electoral fraud (rigging), so that the oligarchy (ministers, governors, senators, and representatives) directed political life.

Outside the system were:

• Carlists: The war ended in 1876 with Martínez Campos. In the north, it lasted somewhat longer. Carlism was less successful than in the revolutionary era. There was also a statutory reform (July 1876) by which the Basques were subject to taxes and special services. In 1878, an economic agreement gave them some autonomy. This also weakened the strength of the Carlists. Carlism was ultimately defeated, first by the surrender of Ramón Cabrera (with his subsequent recognition of Alfonso XII) and the flight of Charles VII after the defeat of Treviño.
• Republicans: Castelar collaborated with the system, while others attempted insurrection.
• Regionalists and Nationalists:

1. Catalan Nationalism: The Renaixença meant the recognition of Catalan as a language of culture and intellectual activity, as well as a major historical language, and the assertion of the special arts and Catalan identity of the region. On the other hand, the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie felt underrepresented in the central government and demanded greater protectionism (see the conflict with Espartero). Political Catalanism began as a traditionalist movement, but it found in Valentí Almirall a figure within liberalism. He founded the Centre Català in 1882. The drafting of the Bases de Manresa (1892) by the Unió Catalanista was very important. It advocated for a powerful Catalonia within the Spanish state, with its own competencies. It represented conservative nationalism. After the disaster of 1898, Catalan nationalism achieved some electoral success in 1901 and created the Regionalist League of Prat de la Riba and Francesc Cambó, representatives of progressive Catalan nationalism.
2. Basque Nationalism: At its inception, it was influenced both by Carlism and the defense of the fueros (privileges) and by the development of a cultural movement in defense of the Basque language (Euskera). The great inventor of Basque nationalism was Sabino Arana, who founded the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). His ideology was much more traditionalist and ultra-Catholic, and he saw the arrival of immigrants, whom he called by the derogatory term Maketos, as a threat to Basque culture. His motto was “God and the old law.” At first, the PNV was fiercely pro-independence and somewhat racist, but it moderated some time later.

• The Labor Movement: It was divided between socialists and anarchists. The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was dissolved in 1874. The Associations Act of 1881 allowed for its creation. Two main branches can be identified:

1. Anarchism: It was the most influential working-class ideology during the Restoration. It was introduced by the Italian Giuseppe Fanelli, a disciple of Bakunin. Initially, it favored direct action (terrorist actions to ignite the fuse of revolution), such as the attacks against Martínez Campos and Alfonso XII, or the one that killed Cánovas. Later, an anarcho-syndicalist sector emerged, through the union Solidaridad Obrera, the germ of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT). The creation of anarchist circles to bring culture to the working class was also essential.
2. Socialism: In 1879, Pablo Iglesias, a Madrid printer, founded the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). It was legalized in 1881 by Sagasta. Its aim was to achieve political power for the working class, and it combined revolutionary ideology with participation in political life. Its media organ was El Socialista. In 1888, it created a union, the General Union of Workers (UGT). To organize, it founded Casas del Pueblo (People’s Houses).

The problems facing the system were: the Third Carlist War, the problem of Cuba, and Catalan regionalism. Cánovas’s government succeeded in ending the Carlist War after more than a year of fighting. After pacifying the central area and Catalonia, the last campaign was conducted in Navarra and the Basque Country. It ended in February 1876 when Don Carlos crossed the border and took refuge in France. The Ten Years’ War in Cuba was ended by Martínez Campos with the Peace of Zanjón in 1878.

In 1883, Segismundo Moret, Minister of the Interior, created a commission for social reform. Legal uniformity was attempted.

4. The Regency of Maria Cristina (1885-1902)

Alfonso XII’s death was a crisis but not the breakdown of the Restoration. Cánovas, to avoid naming the daughter of Alfonso XII as heir and returning to the Carlist problem, made a pact with Sagasta. He proposed waiting for the birth of the child that Maria Cristina was expecting from Alfonso XII. This is known as the Pact of El Pardo. Javier Tusell argues that such a pact did not exist.

Sagasta, head of the Fusionist Party, led a government called the Long Parliament (1885-1890). The Fusionist Party sought to incorporate the Republicans. There was a Republican coup attempt (Villacampa, Madrid, 1886), which precluded collaboration with the Canovist system. The Republicans were divided between the Possibilists (Castelar), who were treated like the Fusionist Party, and Salmerón, who founded the Centralist Party. Carlist Catholics were also divided. Cándido Nocedal represented fundamentalist traditionalism.

Sagasta’s government committed to a series of reforms:

• Universal Suffrage (1890): More symbolic than real. Conservatives disowned it because they believed it would lead to more corruption. It might have benefited the more moderate Republicans.
• Jury Act (1888)
• Law of Associations for religious congregations and also for social organizations (1887).
• Economic Development Act, of a free-trade nature.
• Reform of the Civil Code (1889): Allowed civil marriage, local government reform.
• Finance Reforms
• Reform of Colonial Administration.
• Reforms in the army: Conscription (the conservatives were against it), and a failed reform of the General Staff.

The Minister of State, Segismundo Moret, favored a more active foreign policy and established embassies in London, Berlin, Rome, and Vienna. He secured the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) due to friction with France in Morocco. The agreement was secretly renewed in 1891 but not in 1895. However, this did not help Spain in the Caribbean, where it would face problems.

Sagasta left the government over an alleged financial scandal and division within his party. There were elections in 1891, and the census increased from one to four million voters. Liberals and Conservatives alternated in power, with Cánovas winning. There were strong criticisms from other parties.

Conservatives changed the open-door policy to protectionism to please the Castilian and Andalusian grain producers, the Catalan textile industry, and the northern steel industry. This was the “protective tariff” of 1891, which led to high prices. There was also division among conservatives: Silvela favored public morality (which was related to regenerationism), and Romero Robledo advocated for a tough stance on Cuba. A movement emerged to counter the liberal Catholic laity. Conservatives became supporters of state intervention in the economy. This change in attitude was influenced by: the Rerum Novarum (Encyclical of Leo XIII), the Church’s social approach, the Krausists, supporters of intervention, the influence of German “state socialism,” and the warning from the party holding the first May Day celebration in 1890.

The social issue was a hot topic in the Andalusian countryside and the Catalan textile sector. There were attacks against Martínez Campos, the Liceu in Barcelona, and the Jerez uprising (the Black Hand). Repression was harsh (anti-terrorism law), accelerating the conflict. Cánovas was assassinated, and there were mining and industrial strikes in the north.

5. Caciquismo

The alternation of political parties was a formula with immediate benefits. Thanks to electoral manipulation, it gave both parties the possibility of alternating in government peacefully. As it was already agreed upon, permanent electoral fraud was used to safeguard the political, economic, and social order. The political system worked from top to bottom. The parties were in the hands of “notables” who organized the electoral machinery and controlled local power through the practice of caciquismo. This guaranteed the exercise of power by an oligarchy. Power relations were reduced to a simple scheme. A group composed exclusively of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy dominated the system, while the “real Spain,” formed by the middle and lower classes, was excluded from political decision-making.

The encasillado was the candidate who was “fitted” into the system, distorting the national will. The formula consisted of the elaboration of a list that included the candidates favored by the government. These official candidates had virtually won the election through pressure or rigging, coercion, violence, fraud, vote-buying, falsification of records during the count, and the existence of pucherazo or lázaros (people who substituted voters).

Caciquismo was a socio-political phenomenon that lasted throughout the Restoration. It consisted of the power held in certain areas, especially rural ones, by individuals with political influence (mayors), economic power (“gentlemen,” landowners), or prestige and status (lawyers, doctors). They relied on the peasantry. The caciques were members of a local or regional elite, rooted in rural areas with a closed society, and acted as intermediaries between the latter and the state. This phenomenon also occurred in southern Italy and Yugoslavia. In a backward rural world, peasants became outdated and considered the cacique a mediator with the state who would solve their problems regarding conscription, paperwork, taxes, etc., for which they were grateful. In many cases, this was sealed by a fictive kinship (godparents). It should also be noted that personnel might change, but the cacique always remained, as the real party that provided the central political power with a way to connect with the social reality of the Old Regime.

The caciques were, therefore, the most influential individuals in the locality and, in practice, the political actors in charge of collecting votes and rigging the election for the deputy corresponding to the encasillado. Caciquismo was part of social relations, especially in rural areas. Large landowners used their control over municipalities and county councils to subjugate farmers and laborers. In exchange, they became dispensers of favors in exchange for favors, creating a system of “clientelism” and “patronage.” The golden rule was “for enemies, the law; for friends, favors.”