The Restoration in Spain (1874-1923)
The Restoration in Spain (1874-1923)
The Restoration is a key period in contemporary Spanish history. It signifies the return of the Bourbon dynasty after the Revolutionary Sexenio, closing the democratic stage initiated by the Glorious Revolution and ushering in a long period characterized by relative political stability. Chronologically, it extends from the Pronouncement of Martínez Campos in Sagunto on December 29, 1874, where Alfonso XII was proclaimed King of Spain, until the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in 1923, which marked the final crisis of the system, already shaken by the Disaster of ’98. We can distinguish two phases:
a) Consolidation Phase (with two sub-periods):
- 1874-1885: From the beginning until the death of Alfonso XII and the Pact of El Pardo.
- 1885-1902: The Regency of Maria Cristina during the minority of Alfonso XIII.
b) Crisis Stage (1902-1923):
- From the beginning of the reign of Alfonso XIII until the coup d’état of Primo de Rivera, which would break the system. After the dictatorship, the Restoration system (1930-31) was not feasible.
The Cánovas System:
To achieve the peaceful development of political life, a liberal left willing to accept the new monarchy was needed. It was necessary to create two major parties that would alternate in power within the same constitutional legality. It was not necessary to use military force, as the pronouncements were a thing of the past. Each party would have its turn in power, hoping that the Constitution would not be imposed by the dogmatism of a single party. Alongside the Conservative Party created by Cánovas, the Liberal Party of Sagasta was formed. Both parties were called dynastic. The basis of the system was the bipartisan agreement that the two hegemonic political forces had reached to defend the monarchy, the Constitution, private property, and the liberal, unitary, and centralized state.
A Parody of Elections:
The electoral system was corrupted and manipulated. When the party in government suffered political attrition and lost the confidence of the king or Parliament, the monarch would call on the opposition to form a government. Then, the new head of the cabinet would call elections to build a sufficient parliamentary majority to exercise power stably. Fraud in the results and mechanisms of caciquismo ensured that these elections were always favorable to the government that called them. Theoretically, the alternation should function democratically, but in practice, the results were predetermined by the government calling the elections, making it totally undemocratic. In short, the government depended on the will of the king, who, by decreeing the dissolution of Parliament, put the creation of a new, subservient chamber in the hands of the ruling party. This is the exact opposite of what happens in a parliamentary system. This interference of the executive in the elections ensured the peaceful alternation between the dynastic parties.
To ensure the alternation, it was necessary to control the electoral process to obtain the desired result. This was achieved through two mechanisms: encasillado and electoral fraud.
Encasillado: Negotiating the agreement between the government, the Minister of the Interior, and the electoral districts on the candidates that suited the government. Deputies were also appointed from outside the constituency, the cuneros. The civil governor acted as an intermediary, and his mission was to ensure the victory of the agreed-upon and encasillado candidates. Thus, the civil governors passed a list of candidates to mayors and chiefs, and the entire administrative apparatus was put at their service to guarantee the election.
Electoral Fraud: This involved the systematic fraud and adulteration of election results through all sorts of illegal practices: manipulating the census by registering dead, missing, or non-existent people, or preventing undesirable people from voting; manipulating or destroying electoral records, buying votes, threatening the electorate with coercion of any kind; preventing opposition propaganda and intimidating its supporters, preventing polling station officials from acting, bribery, etc.
Cuneros: Deputies during the Restoration that the executive power placed in rural districts controlled by the government to ensure a safe seat. They had no connection with the constituency and may or may not reside in the region, but they were unaware of its problems.
When Cánovas or Sagasta were called by the king to form a new government, the goal was to ensure that their party won the elections and to dismiss officials in the political and administrative spheres who belonged to the other party, replacing them with their own. Therefore, they had to prepare the electoral process in two ways: by publishing a favorable electoral law and by having in each province a number of wealthy people (landowners, businessmen, and liberal professionals) who organized the election results by counting on the collaboration of local bosses. In other words, they needed the collaboration of:
The Oligarchy: This was the leading minority of the political parties, formed by the two men who normally resided in Madrid, from where they wove a network of influence.
Caciquismo: This was a kind of feudal or manorial survival that did not form part of the overall institutional power but dominated and controlled the main levers of power in rural areas. The bosses of each area prepared all the electoral intrigue of the district, and a whole series of irregular actions ensured the triumph of the chosen candidate. The boss was a character identified with a rich and influential person who, working as a couple, directly or indirectly owned most of the land in the district, whose population became clients and constituents, subject to surrendering their interests. The local bosses controlled the entire district. Small favors granted directly by the boss were transferred to the scale of the provincial party representative or directly to Madrid. Thus, the bosses were allowed to carry out discriminatory activities and to appreciate their kindness and respect for electoral loyalty to their interests. Therefore, a true cronyism developed.
In short, the politician in Madrid, the boss in each district, and the governor in the capital of each province, as a link between one and the other, constituted the three key pieces in the actual operation of the system. Behind it all was the Minister of the Interior, who was responsible for organizing and controlling all the electoral machinery.
As can be seen, in this system, the opinion of the people and their votes were not the decisive element when it came to electing their representatives. The decision was made before the election process took place. The rural districts, controllable and easily manipulated, represented 80% of the total votes; the votes of the urban districts, representing 20%, were distributed among the various dynastic parties and the opposition, because the workers’ vote was not conditioned and therefore difficult to manipulate. These were considered real votes. Therefore, the entire system relied on the votes of rural and illiterate Spain, whose economic instability made them easy prey for the party that held the reins. The government called elections, leaving a reasonable number of seats for the opposition to play the game. The political system could not function well without an opposition, which is why the government took the same care in building its majority as it did with the opposition. The dynastic parties did not prevent any significant participation. Due to electoral falsification, the alternation had a mathematical basis, as if half the electorate changed their political tendency with great precision for almost half a century.
Assessment:
The Restoration system was an undemocratic system; this was the price paid to achieve the desired political stability in the country. If it ultimately failed, it was due to its inability to reform and renew itself because it was an oligarchic and corrupt system that marginalized the majority of the population. All this highlights the contradictions between the theoretical or ideological functioning and the practical functioning of the Cánovas system. The moral weakness of a system based on the systematic distortion of a Constitution that it was committed to upholding was evident. It was a political system that was democratic in theory but functioned as an oligarchy in practice.