Liberal State Building in Spain: 1833-1868
Item 3: Liberal State Building 1833-1868
1. The Regency and the Carlist Problem 1833-1843
A. The Opposition to Liberalism: The Carlist Wars
1) Causes of War
- Questions of inheritance: Two sides
- Elizabethan / Cristina
- Carlist claimed by the brother of Fernando VII
- Ideological conflict
- Carlist absolutists were regional and maintained social and territorial privileges
- María Cristina de Borbón was supported by the Liberals
2) Support to the Conflict
- The Carlist side
- Social support: Peasantry, part of the lower nobility and the army, the more conservative Church fearful of confiscations
- Regional support: Basque Country, Catalonia, Maestrazgo; little support from large cities for the Carlists
- The Elizabethan side
- The bourgeoisie, urban workers, higher clergy, and the nobility
- International support: France, Portugal, and the United Kingdom formed the Quadruple Alliance
3) First Carlist War 1833-1840
- The Carlists dominated the north and tried to bring the insurrection to the issuance of Gomez and the Royal Expedition that traveled throughout Spain for support, without success
- Since 1837, liberal successes, led by Espartero. It comes at last to the Convention of Vergara: hug between Maroto and Espartero involving the submission of the Carlists
4) Carlism after 1840
- Second Carlist War in 1846 was the failure of the marriage of Elizabeth II and Charles VI
- Third War 1872-1876: against Amadeo I and the Republic. Set in the Basque country and Catalonia. With the return of the Bourbons, the pretender Charles VII went to France. The Carlists began a decline, but they will regain prominence in the Civil War in 1936
B. The Regencies: The Triumph of Liberalism
1) The Regency of Maria Cristina de Borbón 1833-1840
The Attempt to Transition to Liberalism: A Royal Statute
- Starring monarchists as liberal reformers and moderates, the queen supported the Liberals and joined the absolutist Carlists
- Royal Statute of 1834. It is a charter granted in which sovereignty rests with the king and has no bill of rights
- Progressive liberal revolts controlled by the National Militia seeking more radical changes
The Progressive Revolution: The Constitution of 1837 and the Confiscation of Mendizábal
- Mendizábal, Finance Minister and President, is dismissed
- This is causing the Farm Ruling or “Sargenteo”
- Birth of the Constitution of 1837:
- It is a progressive constitution, aiming to reconcile with the moderate liberals
- National sovereignty, but the Crown has power; in practice, shared sovereignty (Cortes / King)
- Division of powers; in practice, the legislature vested in the courts and the king
- Has an important Bill of Rights. But there is no census suffrage and religious freedom
- Bicameral Cortes, is a very conservative Senate
- Economic Liberalization: Lordships and primogeniture disappear, as do the Mesta and guilds
- Half of the confiscation is taken up. Initiated with the Mendizábal confiscation, it was the expropriation of property that was nationalized and disentailed and subsequently sold at public auction to the highest bidder
Secularization had three objectives:
- The main objective was financial, for income to pay the debt register
- Political objective, to expand the social basis of liberalism with the purchasers of goods disentailed
- Social objective: Create an agrarian middle class of peasant proprietors
The results were not as positive as expected:
- The problem of debt was not solved
- In the political sphere, liberalism gained currency, but created a gap between liberalism and Catholic public opinion
- In the social field, disentailed assets were bought by nobles and the wealthy urban bourgeoisie
- The confiscation did nothing to mitigate social inequality; the new bourgeois owners raised rents even higher than the Church had
- Problems in consolidating progress, as progressives must use the military coup, the coup of Espartero
2) The Regency of Espartero: 1840-1843
- Queen Maria Cristina placed Espartero as Regent, and he imposed a liberal authoritarian regime with dictatorial airs
- Espartero had rivals within the army
- Espartero’s measures:
- Confiscation of the secular clergy
- Free trade with England and France, causing problems with the Catalan bourgeoisie due to competition
- Revolts: Espartero reacted by bombarding Barcelona
- General insurrection in which the moderates take advantage and move against the progressives
- The first step is to declare Isabel of age
2. The Reign of Isabel II 1843-1868: The Conservative Domain
A. The Moderate Decade 1844-1854
1) Ramón María Narváez and Political Stability: The Constitution of 1845
- Triumph of doctrinaire liberalism, moderate or conservative, the most undemocratic, stopping any reform
- Political stability was valued, order over liberty; domain of the oligarchy, electoral distortion, corruption, marginalization of progressives
2) The Constitution of 1845
- Introducing or deleting items that make it more conservative
- Basic ideas are:
- Sovereignty shared between the Courts and the king
- Very limited rights: very censitary suffrage, and Catholicism as the official religion
- Very limited separation of powers; legislative power of the king’s bicameral legislature (Senate with an aristocrat)
3) The Actions of Government
- Control of land and people:
- The post of civil governor is created at the provincial level
- The Civil Guard was created to maintain order
- Progress in the codification of law (Penal Code)
- Reform of the Treasury (Mon-Santillán Law):
- Everyone pays taxes in proportion to their income
- Strengthening of indirect taxes, thus harming the poorest
- Continued deficit problems of the state
- Approach to the Church, as it is angry about the confiscation: the Concordat of 1851 is reached, which establishes state money to maintain the Church
4) Opposition to Conservatism
- The Puritans, left of the moderates, are appalled by the authoritarianism of Narváez, who keeps the Cortes suspended for long periods, and by corruption
- Liberals: there now appears to your left a group of Democrats who defend economic liberalism, are supporters of full freedoms and universal suffrage
B) The Progressive Biennium 1854-1856
1) The Revolution of 1854
- Statement of moderate leftists and progressives, submitted by the troops of O’Donnell. The Manzanares Manifesto is attached, a document agreed upon by the opposition, stating its purpose
- More popular and democratic rebellions also arise, forming revolutionary juntas
- The queen called to govern the supporters of Espartero, praised by the old Puritans
2) The Government of Espartero: The Progressive Reforms
- His government meant the containment of the more democratic and popular claims of the revolution of 1854
- Restoration of progressive laws and institutions: freedom of the press, national militia, electoral law, and progressive city councils
- Draft Constitution of 1856, called “Unborn”
- 1855 General Disentailment of Madoz, Minister of Finance. Assigned to the church and state and municipal lands. It accounted for the final liquidation of the depreciated property. Their results were very positive:
- The perennial problem of public debt was not solved
- It hurt the poorest neighbors
- Economic Law: the law of railway concessions or the Banking Act to create a national market, which will enable a huge boost to the construction of railways and the development of private banking in Spain
3) The Government of Espartero: Social Conflicts
- The weak Spanish industrialization explains the weakness of the labor movement until the Democratic Sexenio. In the 1830s, some associations emerged, such as mutual aid societies, which carried out some Luddite protests, such as the conflict of 1835 in a steam factory. These first signs of the labor movement were repressed by the government of the time
- The workers’ strikes of the biennium, leading to the general strike of July 1855 which, together with various subsistence riots, will bring down Espartero
- O’Donnell ends with the strength of the National Militia dominated by Democrats
C. The Moderate Revolt 1856-1868
1) The Alternation Between Moderates and Unionists, Conservative Forces
- Again comes the idea of order and pragmatism above all
- Alternate moderate governments and unionists
- Exclusion of progressives and Democrats
2) The Economy
- It is an economic union in which economic progress is the ultimate goal of policy, such as public investment, railways, with corruption
- Campaign for Morocco 1859-1860: prestige of General Prim
3) The Internal Political Opposition to the Regime
- The moderate Constitution of 1845 is replaced, with tight political and social control
- Insurrections of progressives who collaborated with the Democrats
- Pact of Ostend 1866 between the opposition forces, in order to democratize, and to overthrow the queen
- The main supporters of the queen die in 1868, including O’Donnell and Narváez, and even the Union accedes to the Covenant of Ostend
- The economic crisis since 1866 provides the general discontent that facilitates making the revolution of September 1868