SPAIN

Spanish life at the end of the eighteenth century was chronicled in the paintings, tapestries, and engravings of a great Spanish genius: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828). Around 1790 the Aragonese artist depicted the vitality of village fiestas in colorful tapestries; he revealed sensual majas (beauties) in his paintings, while his engravings and drawings showed Spain's new collective passion for tauromaquia (bullfighting), which was just being accepted as an art form. A celebrated portraitist, Goya painted the aristocracy and later the revolutionary ambassadors. With a series of eighty prints, Los Caprichos (1799), he engraved "the inumerable foibles and follies to be found in any society." More important, like the painter Diego Velásquez (1599–1660), Goya recorded for history the misery of those on the bottom of Spanish society—the beggars and deformed—and also the misery of those above. The extent of the decay of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty is revealed in the faces depicted in La familia de Carlos IV (The family of Charles IV; 1800). Because the French emperor Napoleon I (1769–1821) focused only on this dynastic decay, and ignored the vitality of the people, the drama of the War of Independence exploded on Spain.

Charles IV (r. 1788–1808) was never more than a mediocre monarch, because his only real passion in life was hunting. In 1792 Manuel de Godoy (1767–1851) became his all-powerful prime minister, thanks to his love affair with the queen and the king's complete lack of interest his responsibilities as sovereign. During the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), Spain initially fought against France, but by 1796 Godoy had formed an alliance with France against Great Britain. A disaster in foreign affairs, Godoy's alliance with revolutionary France cost Spain the colonies of Santo Domingo, Trinidad, and Louisiana. During the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), after the destruction of the Spanish fleet at the hands of the British at Trafalgar in 1805, Spain was effectively cut off from its remaining colonies, which were left to fend for themselves, a situation that accelerated their move toward independence.

Finally, after Napoleon's victory over Prussia at Jena in 1806, Godoy negotiated with the French the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), which divided Britain's ally Portugal between France and Spain, and which should have made Godoy a crown prince. But the French general Andoche Junot's (1771–1813) army marched on Lisbon in 1807, and French forces occupied the fortresses of Navarre and Catalonia early in 1808. Godoy had clearly miscalculated—Spain's own independence was under threat. A palace plot tried to replace King Charles with his son Ferdinand (1788–1833), who proceeded to denounce his friends when it was uncovered. But, strangely, public opinion believed to have found in Ferdinand a popular hero and a martyr.

On 17 March 1808, as the French cavalry commander Marshal Joachim Murat (1767–1815) was marching on Madrid, a popular uprising in Aranjuez overthrew Charles and Godoy and proclaimed Ferdinand king of Spain (as Ferdinand VII; r. March–May 1808). Marshal Murat refused to recognize the new king and with a mixture of promises and threats was able to evacuate the entire royal family to Bayonne, where Napoleon was

awaiting them. The French emperor then forced Ferdinand to abdicate in favor of Napoleon's own elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844), and interned the Spanish Bourbons. Once the populace of the city of Madrid learned that the Spanish royal family was leaving the country, a crowd rose up against Murat's cavalry on 2 May 1808—Spain's war of independence had begun.

peninsular war (1808–1814)

Between 20 and 30 May 1808, Asturias, Aragon, and Galicia refused obedience to any authority who collaborated with the French armies. In the first days of June, Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed king just as the French army in Catalonia was defeated in Bruch and again close to the Guadalquivir River. Resistance to the invader was profound and included all provinces and all social classes to various degrees. The Spanish people waged war as a personal affair, revenge through the knife. It is certain that since the Middle Ages, the Spanish people had conserved a peculiar taste for macabre spectacles. "The honest men are not more loyal to me than the rabble," said Joseph Bonaparte. In face of a superior enemy, Spain reaffirmed its cohesion.

The movement was not only anti-French. In fact it was a prolongation of the uprising of Aranjuez, an expression of popular discontent within the country. However, most Spaniards could not agree where to place their hopes. For some, collaboration with France was the best way to renew the works of the eighteenth century, while others placed their hopes in the exiled Ferdinand. For still others, the patriarchal absolutism of Ferdinand was the guaranty of Spanish tradition—in other words, the medieval fueros (traditional rights) and the intimate relation between religion and politics. An uneasy alliance between "liberal" and "Carlist" Spain existed against the forces of the invader in a profound contradiction.

The great provocateur in the conflict was the Catholic Church. The average guerrilla went into battle—with the "atheist" Frenchman—covered with religious symbols. During the siege of Saragossa, the townsfolk said, "The Virgen doesn't want to be French." But not all was unity: during the first days of the war, the insurgents showed an evident pleasure in killing former Spanish authorities. Joseph Bonaparte compared the Spanish revolt to the year II of the French Revolution. Despite Joseph's abolition of the hated Inquisition, liberals sympathetic to the French felt that popular combativeness, at the service of tradition and religion, could easily turn against them.

Paradoxically, the management of this mass movement fell back on a small minority from the days of "enlightened despotism" of Charles III (r. 1759–1788); men like José Moñino y Redondo, the conde de Floridablanca (1728–1808), and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744–1811), who joined the Junta Central de Resistencia. They continued in this leading role when the Cortes (parliament) was convoked in Cádiz. Because elections were impossible, the parliament became an artificial creation without direct contact with the guerrillas who were fighting the French. As Karl Marx later wrote: "At the time of the Cortes, Spain was divided into two parts, … action without ideas; in the rest of Spain, ideas without action." But that did not stop its mostly liberal constituents (lawyers, intellectuals, businessmen, and "Americans"—that is, creoles) from promulgating the first written constitution in Spain's history. The Constitution of 1812, commonly known as La Pepa, guaranteed national sovereignty and the legitimacy of Ferdinand VII as king.

Another interesting aspect of the war is how Spain reverted to an instinctive federalism, a terminology first coined by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856–1912). The mayor of the town of Móstoles declared war directly on Napoleon. The La Junta General del Principado de Asturias negotiated directly with Britain. The constitution of the Junta Central mentioned curious "federal" proposals. In fact, power in Spain had become atomized.

Militarily, the Peninsular War marked Britain's return to the European Continental theater. In 1808 Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley (1769–1851), later the first Duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal in 1808 at the head of an expeditionary force and defeated the French forces there under General Junot. In a controversial agreement called the Convention of Sintra, the British commander agreed to repatriate the bulk of the French forces to France. Wellesley was immediately recalled to London and replaced with General John Moore (1761–1809). At the same time, in Andalusia, French forces under General Pierre-Antoine Dupont de l'Étan (1765–1840) were defeated by a Spanish army at Bailén, an event which prompted the emperor Napoleon to take direct command in Spain.

At the head of over two hundred thousand troops, Napoleon chased Moore across northern Spain to the Galician port city of La Coruña, where the British general was killed during the forced evacuation of his army. Satisfied that one of his marshals could handle the situation, Napoleon returned to France, and never returned to Spain. Shortly thereafter, Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, returned to the Iberian peninsula to lead a new British force. Napoleon appointed Marshal André Masséna (1758–1817), known as the enfant chéri de la victoire (victory's dear child) as leader of French armies on the peninsula. Wellington's strategy was based on increasing the fortifications at Torres Vedras as a stronghold against French attack. Although Masséna spent over a month trying to break through the British lines, he failed and was recalled to France.

By 1811 Wellington had pushed the French forces out of Portugal, and began advancing into Spain. In 1812 Wellington won a crushing victory over the French and seized Salamanca. Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Russia in the winter of 1812 also worked in Wellington's favor; after losing his vast invasion force, the French emperor could not spare any fresh reinforcements for the peninsula. In 1813 Wellington routed the forces of King Joseph (Bonaparte) in the Battle of

Vitoria on 21 June, and crossed into France in 1814. The Peninsular War ended when Ferdinand VII was released from captivity at the Chateau de Valencay and returned to Spain to assume the throne.

the politics of the nineteenth century

The second reign of Ferdinand VII (1814–1833) was characterized by a curious mixture of cowardice and ferocious brutality. Its main features were the failure of the democratic spirit of 1812, and a general decay that became more profound as the Spanish empire in the Americas finally fell apart.

Within weeks of reassuming the Spanish throne, Ferdinand revoked the Constitution of 1812. Meanwhile, the South American wars of independence began in earnest in 1817, partly because of the independence exercised by the Juntas, or governing councils set up during the Peninsular War. With the ensuing shortfall in tax revenue, Spain rapidly went bankrupt. Between 1820 and 1823 however, a celebrated intermezzo took place. In Cádiz, a colonial expeditionary force mutinied, and its colonel, Rafael del Riego y Nuñez (1785–1823) rode across Andalusia proclaiming the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. When that rebellion looked close to collapse, yet another broke out in Galicia. When General Francisco Ballesteros (1770–1833) surrounded the royal palace, the king, startled by events, accepted the restoration of the 1812 constitution. But the ultras (absolutist royalists) remained active in Madrid. The moderates fell from power, and in Urgell, an intransigeant, "apostolic" regency was formed. At the Congress of Verona, François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) asked the Holy Alliance (Austria, Prussia, and Russia) to intervene in Spain, and the "100,000 sons of St. Louis" (Los cien mil hijos de San Luís), the royal French army, invaded Spain to crush the constitutionalists. While most generals avoided combat, French soldiers under Louis-Antoine Bourbon, the duc d'Angoulême (1775–1844), reestablished Ferdinand on his throne as absolute monarch.

Most liberal historians call the period from 1823 until Ferdinand's death in 1833 the "ominous decade" (la década ominosa) for good reason. Despite a general amnesty, Riego and his followers were the first to be publicly hanged. In 1825 the most popular leader of the guerrillas, El Empecinado, was shot. In 1826 it was the turn of Bazán. In 1831 General JoséMaría Torrijos was executed, and Mariana Pineda was garroted because she had sewn a liberal flag. But the "Apostolic" Ultras were still not satisfied. Recognizing Ferdinand's cowardly nature, the Ultras began promoting the king's brother, Don Carlos (Carlos María Isidro de Borbón; 1788–1855). But in 1830, Ferdinand's third wife, María Cristina (1806–1878), gave birth to a daughter. Don Carlos's supporters applied the Salic Law, of Bourbonic tradition, against the child. In order to avoid disinheriting his own daughter, Ferdinand turned again to the liberals, who forced him to make some concessions. Power became less oppressive, and the economy started to pick up. But after 1824, and the Battle of Ayacucho, any hope of regaining Spain's lost American colonies vanished as sixteen new American republics gained their independence.

Carlist wars

At Ferdinand's death, María Cristina became regent in the name of her daughter Isabella II (1830–1904). At the same moment, Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, was proclaimed king by his followers, and the First Carlist War broke out. It lasted seven years and affected above all the northern regions of the country: Catalonia, Navarre, the Basque provinces, and Valencia. Its high point came in 1835. With most of Spain north of the Ebro River controlled by his troops, the Basque Carlist general Tomás de Zumalacárregui y de Imaz (1788–1835) then threatened to march on Madrid. His mysterious death deprived Don Carlos of his best general and sealed the fate of the rebellion. At the same time, in Madrid, the regent tried to govern with the Castilian conservatives known as Moderados, and the opposition increased. In 1836 the "sergeants" managed to force the restoration of the Constitution of Cádiz on the regent at the palace of La Granja. The following year, María Cristina managed to have it replaced with a more moderate document.

The First Carlist War ended in 1839—when General Baldomero Fernández Espartero (1793–1879) embraced the Carlist general Rafael Maroto (1780–1848) at Vergara—but its legacy still lasts. Far beyond dynastic troubles, the Carlist wars were symbolic of the conflict between bureaucratic centralization and traditional foral rights, guaranteed in Spain since the Middle Ages as fueros. Only after Espartero, later known as the Duke of Victory, staged a coup d'état against María Cristina and replaced her as regent did the First Carlist War come to an end.

Espartero's initial popularity was short-lived: governing with a clique, Espartero had rebellious generals shot and bombarded Barcelona after an uprising. From that moment, Espartero was better known as Ayacucho, a rather unkind reference to his colonial past. By 1843, when General Ramón Maria Narváez (1800–1868) returned from exile, popular discontent had reached a climax in the cities. Finally, Espartero left for exile in London, but not before bombarding Seville.

Having reached a majority of age, Isabella was used by the moderates against the progessives. Her prime minister, General Luís González Bravo (1811–1871) and later Narváez forged the instruments of state control: in 1844 the rural police force Guardia Civil was created; in 1845 a constitution was promulgated that gave broad power to the executive. In 1848 the brutish Narváez was only able to stop the generalized European revolution by resorting to bloody repression. In 1847, however, small groups of Carlist guerrilleros began to reappear.

The marriage of the queen became the center of an international controversy that was resolved by marrying her off to a homosexual cousin. The intrigues of her favorites became the preferred subject of the Madrid rumor mill. But there were other notable scandals: the fortune of a dubious banker and the corruption surrounding the minister Luis José Sartorius Tapia. A coup of progressives and moderates called the Vicalvarada brought yet another general, Leopoldo O'Donnell (1809–1867), to head the government, and allowed Espartero to return home.

This governing duo was short lived. The two generals were overwhelmed by the extent of a popular uprising in Andalusia and were consequently

fired by the queen. From 1856 to 1868, Narváez alternated power (el turno) with O'Donnell and his Liberal Union, as other political parties were being born: republicans under Emilio Castelar y Ripoll (1832–1899) and Nicolás Salmerón y Alonso (1832–1908), and a federal party set up under Francisco Pi y Margall (1824–1901). Further foreign incidents brought two more generals onto the stage: Francisco Serrano y Domínguez (1810–1885) and Juan Prim (1814–1870). In the space of four years, Prim undertook no less than seven pronunciamientos, or coups d'état. In 1867 O'Donnell died, and in 1868 Narváez died. The queen was unanimously considered unbearable because of her private life. González Bravo tried to put down the agitation and became hated as a consequence. The fleet, garrisons, and local councils proclaimed fundamental freedoms and universal male suffrage. Serrano, who was chosen as chief, defeated the queen's troops, and Isabella left for exile in France.

As provisional leaders, Serrano and Prim convoked the Cortes. The result was a brilliant parliament that voted a very democratic constitution, but under a monarchy. A new difficulty arose: the choice of a king. The choice fell on Amadeo Ferdinando Maria di Savoia (1845–1890; r. 1870–1873), son of the king of Italy. Unfortunately, the very day of Amadeo's arrival in Spain, Prim was assassinated (30 December 1870). Alone, the king was left in an impossible position. The split inside the radical party between Práxedes Sagasta (1825–1903) and Manuel Ruíz Zorrilla (1833–1895), the outbreak of yet another Carlist war (1873–1876), and social agitation, led the king to abdicate, and the first Spanish republic was proclaimed on 11 February 1873.

The republic's first president was Estanislao Figueras (1819–1882; r. 1873), followed by Francisco Pi y Margall (r. 1873). Soon after, the republic's federalism was replaced by cantonalism and the cantons then declared independence. Pi resigned to avoid bloodshed. Even Salmerón (r. 1873) did not wish to apply the death penalty. With Emilio Castelar y Ripoll's (r. 1873–1874) arrival in power, the republic was instantly transformed into a unitary and authoritarian state, but it was too late. On 3 January 1874, General Manuel Pavía y Lacy (1814–1896) rode his horse into the Cortes and dissolved the parliament. A provisional dictatorship prepared the restoration of the monarchy in the name of Alfonso XII, (1857–1885; r. 1874–1885) Isabella's son. The young prince arrived back home from Britain accompanied by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (1828–1897).

Bourbon Restoration (1875–1917)

The period known as the Bourbon Restoration was dominated by two large political parties, the conservatives and liberals, who took turns running the government. The two major parties were surrounded by strong oppositions: to the right the Carlists and to the left the Republicans. From 1875 to 1885, with the Second Carlist War ended, a cleverly written constitution was promulgated that assured power on the local level to the caciques, or chiefs, and the alternation of power between the two major parties on the national level. This system for exchanging power became known as el turno, and the personality most associated with this period is the ultraconservative Cánovas del Castillo. In 1885, however, King Alfonso XII died unexpectedly, and the queen, who was pregnant, became regent.

The queen regent María Cristina (1858–1929) ruled from 1885 until 1902 and was highly respected. Under the dominating personality of Sagasta, the major political parties entered into a sort of truce. In 1898 Spain's attempts to suppress the independence movements in Cuba and the Philippines failed when the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, and the United States declared war on Spain. Although it was revealed many years later that the explosion was the result of a spark in the coal bunker, the United States used the event as a pretext to seize Spain's last colonial possessions. Despite the gallant stand of the Spanish naval squadron under Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete (1839–1909) in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba and the country's sound finances, the defeat of 1898 marked the catastrophic end of an empire and was comparable in many ways to France's defeat by Prussia in 1870. The immediate consequence of the independence of the ever-faithful colony Cuba was to arouse the intellectuals in the restless regions of Catalonia and the Basque provinces.

Under Alfonso XIII (1886–1941; r. 1886–1931) from 1902 to 1914, these tensions became even more accute. The social climate was seething after 1898 and the attempts to pacify Spanish Morocco. On 31 May 1906 Alfonso married Victoria Eugénie Julia Ena—then known as Princess Ena of Battenberg (1887–1969)—a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. As their coach wound its way back to the royal palace, an anarchist threw a bomb that exploded in the midst of the crowd. Although many were killed, both Alfonso and his wife escaped harm. A strong character, the king preferred power and intrigue, with the consequence that by 1920 Alfonso had managed to make himself as detested as his grandmother Isabella; like her, he had became unbearable for the Spanish people.

During the early part of his reign, the conservative politician Antonio Maura y Montaner (1853–1925) managed to make himself equally hated. Out of the Union General de Trabajadores, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, or PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), was created in 1888. Maura's liberal rival Sigismundo Moret y Prendergast (1838–1913) became involved in petty intrigues. The most serious problems occurred in Catalonia, where worker anarchism and regionalism supported by the middle classes was on the rise. In 1906 Solidaridad Catalana stood in the elections, and in 1909 the call-up for troops to serve in Morocco led to the Semana Trágica (tragic week) in Barcelona, when the brutal repression of a series of strikes by the government caused a general uprising that saw the burning of many churches and convents. Maura was replaced by José Canalejas y Méndez (1854–1912), who tried to resolve the Moroccan problem and limit the power of the clergy. In an effort to head off the centrifugal force at work, he gave the Catalans limited autonomy with a new institution, the Mancomunitat de Cataluña (commonwealth of Catalonia). But Canalejas also fell victim to an anarchist assassin. The Conde de Romanones and García Prieto then alternated with Eduardo Dato Iradier (1856–1921; premier 1913–1915, 1917, 1920–1921), Maura's great rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party. With the outbreak of World War I, those who were pro-Allies clashed with those who were sympathetic to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire). Spain was still divided between authoritarians and liberals, and right and left—black and red.

fundamental problems

The recurring leitmotif of the nineteenth century in Spain was a fundamental weakness at the center of power that allowed conspiracies and intrigue to flourish. Democratic traditions simply did not take hold: the most popular constitutional texts (the constitutions of 1812 and 1869) were only briefly applied. The others (1834, 1837, 1845, 1856) were compromises imposed by circumstance. The constitution of 1876 proved more robust and lasted longer. Under this charter, universal male suffrage was introduced in 1890, and it managed to regulate political life until 1923.

In 1898, however, just as in 1640 and 1700, this constitution could not stop the centrifugal forces at work in the most economically advanced provinces, which were of course the same areas of the old Carlist rebellions: Catalonia and the Basque provinces. The economic background that had fueled the independence movements in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898 accentuated Catalan and Basque opposition to Madrid's authority. Simply put, these more advanced regions were increasingly unwilling to subsidize with tax revenue the backward areas of Castile and Andalusia.

In Catalonia, Enric Prat de la Riba (1879–1917) became the founding father of the Lliga of Catalan regional conservatives, which dominated Catalan national aspirations for close to twenty years. Without any doubt, "the earth, the race and the language" clearly defined the rebirth of Catalan identity, which became known as catalanismo. After 1898 the intellectuals began using the term nationality. Between 1833 and 1850, the Catalan language recovered its place thanks to authors like Buenaventura Carles Aribau (1798–1862), and historic works made the region's glorious past fashionable again. Even the reconquest of the language led by Pompeu Fabra (1868–1948) stems from the desire for political autonomy. The wily art critic, essayist, and philospher Eugenio d'Ors (1881–1954) eulogized Catalonia's classical past with Noucentisme, a term he coined to characterize twentieth-century Catalan culture, and associated French monarchical fascism with Mediterranisme.

In the Basque provinces a disaffected Carlist, Sabino Arana (1865–1903), reestablished Basque nationalism as an oppostion to the Castilian center. His book, Bizkaia por su independencia: Las cuatro glorias patrias (1895) recounts the history of four medieval battles where Basques reaffirmed their independence over the Leonese and the Castilians. Arana's book is considered the bible of Basque nationalism, and he is still regarded as the founding father of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco, or Basque Nationalist Party.

As the extent of the disaster of 1898 sank in, a group of literary figures emerged that revitalized Spanish cultural life. The Generation of 1898 included the Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864–1936), the Galician novelist Ramón Maria del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936), the dramatist and Nobel prize winner Jacinto Benavente y Martínez (1866–1954), and the Basque novelist Pío Baroja (1872–1956). In architecture, Antonio Gaudi y Cornet's (1852–1926) very personal style gave Barcelona its most striking landmarks since the Gothic era. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) studied in Germany and returned with the vitalty he found there. In painting, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) came to the forefront. Obsessed with the so-called Spanish Problem, they restored Spain's cultural preeminence despite a century of wars, coups, and colonial disaster.

See alsoAnarchism; Ferdinand VII; Generation of 1898; Liberalism; Portugal; Revolutions of 1820.

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Christopher Jones