First Spanish Republic
The First Spanish Republic was the political regime in force in Spain from its proclamation by the Cortes on February 11, 1873, until December 29, 1874 when the pronouncement of General Martínez Campos gave rise to to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
Marked by three simultaneous armed conflicts (the Cuban Ten Years War, the Third Carlist War and the cantonal uprising) and by internal divisions, the first republican attempt in the history of Spain was a short experience, characterized by the political instability: in its first eleven months there were four presidents of the Executive Power, all of them from the Federal Republican Party, until the coup d'état of General Pavía on January 3, 1874 put an end to the federal republic, proclaimed in June 1873, and gave way to the establishment of a unitary republic under the dictatorship of General Serrano, leader of the conservative Constitutional Party; in turn interrupted by the pronouncement of Martínez Campos in December 1874.
The First Republic is part of the Democratic Six-Year Period, which begins with the 1868 Revolution that gave way to the reign of Amadeo I of Savoy, which was followed by the Republic, and ends with the pronouncement of Martínez Campos in Sagunto.
Proclamation of the First Republic
King Amadeo I renounced the throne of Spain on February 11, 1873. His abdication was motivated by the difficulties he had to face during his short reign, such as the war in Cuba since 1868; the outbreak of the third Carlist war in 1872; the opposition of the "alfonsinos" monarchists, who aspired to the Bourbon restoration in the figure of Alfonso de Borbón, son of Isabel II; the various republican insurrections; and the division among his own supporters. In addition to that, the ephemeral monarch had practically zero popular support. The final trigger was the government crisis, caused by the artillery conflict that began with the appointment of Baltasar Hidalgo de Quintana as captain general, whom the artillery officers could not see since June 22, 1866, all asking for his absolute license. or withdrawal. The Government decided to dissolve the artillery corps, obtaining 191 votes in Parliament on February 7, the same ones that had elected Don Amadeo, who did not use the royal prerogative in favor of the artillerymen and signed the decree dissolving the artillery corps. artillery on the 9th, then abdicating on February 11.
On Monday, February 11, the newspaper La Correspondencia de España broke the news that the king had abdicated and, immediately, the Madrid federals crowded into the streets demanding the proclamation of the Republic. The Government of the Radical Party of Ruiz Zorrilla met; Within it, opinions were divided between the president and the ministers of progressive origin, who wanted to establish themselves as a provisional government to organize a consultation with the country on the form of government —a position that was also supported by the Constitutional Party of General Serrano, because of that the immediate proclamation of the Republic would not take place—, and the ministers of Democratic origin, headed by Cristino Martos and supported by the president of the Congress of Deputies, Nicolás María Rivero, who opted for the joint meeting of Congress and the Senate that, constituted in Convention, they would decide the form of government, which would lead to the proclamation of the Republic, given the majority that formed in both chambers the sum of federal republicans and these radicals of Democratic origin.
President Ruiz Zorrilla went to the Congress of Deputies to ask the deputies of his own party, with an absolute majority in the Chamber, to approve the suspension of sessions for at least twenty-four hours, enough to restore order. Likewise, he requested that no decision be taken until the letter of resignation to the Crown of King Amadeo I reached the Cortes. With all this, Ruiz Zorrilla tried to buy time, but was disavowed by his own Minister of State, Cristino Martos, when he told the Chamber that, as soon as the king's formal resignation arrived, power would belong to the Cortes and "here there will be no possible dynasty or monarchy, here there is nothing else possible than the Republic." Thus, the motion of the Republican Estanislao Figueras for the Parliament to declare itself in permanent session was approved, despite Ruiz Zorrilla's attempt to prevent the radicals from supporting it. Meanwhile, the building of the Congress of Deputies had been surrounded by a crowd that demanded the proclamation of the Republic, although the national militia managed to dissolve it.
The following day, Tuesday February 12, the Republican district chiefs threatened the Congress of Deputies that if they did not proclaim the Republic before three in the afternoon, they would start an insurrection. The Republicans in Barcelona sent a telegram to their deputies in Madrid to the same effect. Then, the Democratic ministers headed by Martos, together with the presidents of Congress and the Senate, Rivero and Laureano Figuerola, decided that both Chambers should meet, before which Amadeo I's resignation from the throne was read. of the President of the Government, Ruiz Zorrilla, Minister Martos announced that the Government returned its powers to the Cortes, with which they became a Convention and assumed all the powers of the State. Then, various Republican and Radical deputies presented a motion for the two chambers, constituted in the National Assembly, to approve the Republic as a form of government and elect an Executive accountable to it. The proposition read as follows:
The National Assembly assumes all powers and declares as a form of Government of the Republic, leaving the Constituent Courts organizing this form of government.
Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, until then President of the Government, intervened to say:
I will protect and protest, even if I am left alone, against those deputies who have come to Congress as constitutional monarchists who believe they are authorized to take a decision that overnight can make the nation of monarchy to republican.
Next, Republican Emilio Castelar took the podium and delivered this speech that was met with rousing applause:
Gentlemen, with Fernando VII the traditional monarchy died; with the escape of Isabel II, the parliamentary monarchy; with the resignation of Don Amadeo de Saboya, the democratic monarchy; no one has finished with it, has died for itself; no one brings the Republic, brings it all the circumstances, brings it a conjuration of society, of nature and of history. Gentlemen, let us greet her as the sun rising by its own strength in the sky of our homeland.
At nine o'clock on the night of February 11, 1873, the Congress and the Senate, constituted in the National Assembly, proclaimed the Republic by 258 votes against 32:
The National Assembly resumes all powers and declares the Republic as a form of government of Spain, leaving the Constituent Courts organizing this form of government. An executive branch shall be elected by direct appointment of the Courts, which shall be moved and accountable to the Courts themselves.
After a three-hour recess, the Chambers met again to appoint federal republican Estanislao Figueras president of the Executive Power, who would lead a government agreed between the radicals and the federal republicans, and made up of three republicans —Emilio Castelar in State, Francisco Pi y Margall in the Interior and Nicolás Salmerón in Grace and Justice—and five radicals—José Echegaray in Finance, Manuel Becerra and Bermúdez in Development, Francisco Salmerón in Overseas, General Fernando Fernández de Córdoba in War and Admiral José María Beránger in Marina. Cristino Martos was elected president of the self-proclaimed National Assembly — "the true power in a Convention situation" — by 222 votes, compared to the 20 that Nicolás María Rivero had.
On February 16, the Barcelona republican newspaper, La Campana de Gracia, published the following article in Catalan:
Ha la tenim! Ha la tenim, ciutadans! The throne is ensorrat per ampre in Espanya. Ja no hi haurà altre king que'l poble, nor month form of rulership that the just, the holy and noble Federal Republic. [...]
Republicans espanyols! In some solemn moments of the quals depen the life of the nation, it is quan that coneixen als homes and is quan coneixen als pobles.
Donem the nostre moral support to the homes to qui hém donat nostres aplausos, a qui hém fet objecte de nostre entusiasme. Posémnos a las sevas ordres, baix la flag de nostres principis inmaculats é integros, y avassallem quants obstacles se presentin, per erigir definitivement en Espanya lo temple del dret, de la justicia, de la moralitat y de l'honra, que es lo de la República Democrática federal!
We got it! We got it, citizens! The throne has fallen forever in Spain. There will be no more king than the people, no more form of government than the just, holy and noble Federal Republic.
[...]Spanish republicans! In these solemn moments of which the life of the nations depends, it is when men are known and it is when people are known.
We give our moral support to the men we have given our applause, to whom we have expressed our enthusiasm. Let us put ourselves at your command, under the banner of our immaculate and full principles, and let us take down all the obstacles that arise, to finally erect in Spain the temple of law, justice, morality and honour, which is that of the federal democratic Republic!
Estanislao Figueras held the position of "president of the Executive Branch" (head of State and Government), but not that of "president of the Republic", since the new republican Constitution was never approved. In his speech, Figueras said that the arrival of the Republic was "like the iris of peace and harmony of all Spaniards of good will."
Government of Estanislao Figueras
The first Government of the Republic had to face a very difficult economic, social and political situation: a budget deficit of 546 million pesetas, 153 million in debts for immediate payment and only 32 million to cover them; the Artillery Corps had been dissolved at the height of the virulence of the third Carlist war and the war against the Cuban independence fighters, for which there were not enough soldiers, weapons or money; a serious economic crisis, coinciding with the great world crisis of 1873 and exacerbated by political instability, which was causing an increase in unemployment among day laborers and workers, which was being responded to by proletarian organizations with strikes, marches, protest rallies and occupation of abandoned land.
But the most urgent problem that the new government had to address was to restore the order that was being altered by the federal republicans themselves. They had understood the proclamation of the Republic as a new revolution and had seized power by force in many places, where they had formed "revolutionary juntas" that did not recognize the Government of Figueras, because it was a coalition government with the old monarchists, and branded the "Republicans of Madrid" as lukewarm.
In many Andalusian towns, the Republic was something so identified with the distribution of land that the peasants demanded that the municipalities immediately parcel out the most significant farms in the town, some of which had formed part of communal property before the confiscation. In almost all places, the Republic was also identified with the abolition of the hated villas, a promise that the Revolution of 1868 had not fulfilled, as a copla that was sung in Cartagena recalled:
If the Republic comes,
There will be no fifths in Spain,
That's why here to Our Lady,
He becomes a Republican.
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That was what the radical deputy José Echegaray threw in the face of the Republican leaders: that his followers understood federalism as
[...] here a cortijo that divides, a mountain that spreads, there a menimum of wages, farther the colonists converted into owners, is perhaps in another province an ariete that opens gap in the legal forces so that the smuggling passes, the poor against the rich, the distribution of the property, the taxpayer against the Fisco...
The one in charge of the task of restoring order was the Minister of the Interior, Francisco Pi y Margall, paradoxically the main defender of the bottom-up federalism that the juntas were putting into practice. Pi achieved the dissolution of the boards and the reinstatement of the town councils that had been forcibly suspended in "clear proof of their determination to respect the law even against the wishes of their own supporters". of Volunteers of the Republic, which opposed the Security Corps and the Volunteers for Freedom, the monarchist militia founded in the reign of Amadeo I. In the Cortes, the conservative deputy Romero Ortiz asked what parts of the Constitution were in force, to which President Figueras replied that only Title I, which was where individual rights were recognized.
The Figueras Government solemnly signed the cessation of compulsory military service, and created voluntary service. Each soldier would earn one peseta a day and a joke. For their part, the members of the Volunteers of the Republic militia received a salary of 50 pesetas when they enlisted, plus 2 pesetas and a joke a day.
Only thirteen days after it was formed, the new government found itself blocked by the differences that existed between the radical ministers and the republicans, for which reason President Figueras submitted his resignation to the Cortes on February 24. This situation was taken advantage of by the leader of the radicals and president of the National Assembly, Cristino Martos, to attempt a coup that would evict the federal republicans from the government and allow him to form one exclusive to his party, which would give way to a republic. conservative liberal. Martos, in agreement with the civil governor of Madrid, ordered the Civil Guard to occupy the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance, and to surround the Palace of the Congress of Deputies, where he was elected by his fellow party members as the new president. of the Executive Branch. But this maneuver was unsuccessful, thanks to the quick action of the Minister of the Interior, Pi y Margall, who mobilized the Madrid garrison and the Volunteers of the Republic, who managed to counter the coup. This is how the second Government of Figueras was formed, from which the radical ministers left, taking their place Juan Tutau y Verges in Finance, Eduardo Chao in Development, José Cristóbal Sorní y Grau in Overseas and the military Juan Acosta Muñoz and Jacobo Oreyro y Villavicencio. in War and Navy, respectively. In addition, it was agreed to dissolve the National Assembly, where the radicals enjoyed an absolute majority.
On March 8, when the National Assembly was going to discuss the proposal for its dissolution, Cristino Martos attempted a new coup d'état with the same objective of forming an exclusively radical government, this time presided over by his fellow party member Nicolás María Rivero, and who had the support of General Serrano, leader of the monarchist constitutional party. But, at the last moment, the radical deputies who followed Rivero, fearful that the formation of a radical government would provoke an uprising of the "intransigent" republicans, did not support Martos's initiative and voted in favor of dissolving the Assembly. Martos resigned from his position as president of the Assembly three days later. However, in the Permanent Commission formed on March 22, which would assume the functions of oversight of the Government until the new Constituent Cortes met, the radicals maintained their absolute majority, although divided between the "martistas", who had eight representatives, and the "riveristas", who had four, compared to five federal republicans, plus two alfonsinos and one constitutional.
On March 9, the day after the attempted coup d'état took place in Madrid, the Barcelona Provincial Council, dominated by the "intransigent" federal republicans, once again tried to proclaim the Catalan state, as it had already done February 12; and, as on that occasion, only the telegrams that Pi y Margall sent them from Madrid made them give up. Three days later, on March 12, the president of the Executive Branch of the Republic, Estanislao Figueras, arrived in Barcelona to make them give up definitively.
After overcoming the differences that separated "martistas" from "riveristas", the radicals attempted a third coup d'état on April 23, with the same objective as the previous two. This time they had the support of conservative soldiers, such as General Pavía, Captain General of Madrid, Admiral Topete or, once again, General Serrano; and with civilians from the constitutional party, headed by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, who also wanted to avoid the proclamation of the Federal Republic, because it was expected that the Government, thanks to its "moral influence", would obtain the necessary majority in the elections to the Constituent Cortes that they were summoned for the following month.
Once again, the determined action of the Minister of the Interior, Pi y Margall, who knew about the coup plotters' plans, thwarted the attempt. First, he replaced General Pavía at the head of the General Captaincy of Madrid with General Gentleman; then he ordered the civil guard and the militia of the volunteers of the Republic to attack the bullring, where the coup leaders had concentrated the freedom volunteers, who laid down their arms after a few shots. Then, armed federal groups surrounded the Palace of Congress, where the Permanent Commission that planned to dismiss the Government and gather the National Assembly to appoint General Serrano as President of the Executive Branch was meeting. The members of the Commission only managed to leave Congress thanks to the protection provided by Republican deputies and members of the Government, among whom were Emilio Castelar and Nicolás Salmerón —whose brother Francisco Salmerón, from the Radical Party, was a member of the Commission—. Most of those involved in the frustrated coup left the country, some of them disguised so as not to be recognized, such as General Serrano, General Caballero de Rodas or Cristino Martos. The next day, a decree from the Executive Power, signed by Pi y Margall, dissolved the Permanent Commission.
The decision of Pi y Margall to dissolve the Permanent Commission —which Jorge Vilches describes as a "coup d'état"— was questioned by the "moderate" federal republicans, headed at that time by Emilio Castelar and Nicolás Salmerón; because they were aware that it was going to result in the withdrawal of the rest of the parties in the elections, which would reduce the legitimacy of the Constituent Cortes that would come out of them. "The fear of loneliness was such that Castelar and Figueras negotiated with the radicals and the conservatives to give them parliamentary representation," but both groups rejected the proposal and reaffirmed the option of withdrawal, arguing the illegality of the dissolution of the Permanent Commission. Thus, in the elections there was no electoral struggle, since the Carlists, who were up in arms, and the Alfonsinos, who did not recognize the Republic, opted for withdrawal, in addition to being radical and constitutional. In the few districts that were contested, it was between federal Republican candidates from the "moderate" or "hardcore" camp.
The elections to the Constituent Cortes, which were to meet on June 1 in Madrid, had been called by a law of March 11, 1873. The elections took place on May 10, 11, 12 and 13, obtaining the federal republicans 343 seats, and the rest of the political forces, 31. Thus, the representativeness resulting from these elections was very limited due to the withdrawal of all the political opposition forces —radical, constitutional, Carlist (at war since 1872), Alfonsino monarchists from Cánovas del Castillo, unitary republicans and even the incipient labor organizations attached to the International. With 60% abstention, they were the elections with the lowest participation in the history of Spain. In Catalonia, only 25% of the electorate voted; in Madrid, 28%. And that was because the minimum voting age had been reduced from 25 to 21 years, "thinking that young people would vote for the federals". As Nicolás Estévanez pointed out, "Spain was far from being republican".
The Federal Republic
Proclamation of the Federal Republic and flight of Estanislao Figueras
On June 1, 1873, the first session of the Constituent Courts was opened under the presidency of veteran Republican José María Orense, and the presentation of proposals began. On June 7, the first one was debated, signed by seven deputies, which read:
Single article. The form of government of the Spanish Nation is the federal democratic republic.
The president, enforcing what was ordered by the Regulations of the Courts for the final approval of bills, arranged to hold a nominal vote the following day. On June 8, the proposal was approved with the favorable vote of 218 deputies and only 2 against, proclaiming that day the Federal Republic.
Although federal Republicans enjoyed an overwhelming majority in the Constituent Courts, they were actually divided into three groups:
- The "intransigents", with some 60 deputies, formed the left of the House and advocated that the Courts declare themselves in Convention, assuming all the powers of the State—the legislature, the executive and the judiciary—to build the Federal Republic from below, from the municipality to the cantons or states and from them to the federal power. They also advocated the introduction of social reforms that improve the living conditions of the fourth state. This section of the federal republicans did not have a clear leader, although they recognized as their "patriarch" José María Orense, the old Marquis of Albaida. Nicolas Estévanez, Francisco Díaz Quintero, generals Juan Contreras Román and Blas Pierrad, or writers Roque Barcia and Manuel Fernández Herrero
- The “centrists”, led by Pi and Margall, coincided with the intransigents that the objective was to build a federal republic, but from top to bottom; that is, the federal Constitution had to be first developed and then proceed to the formation of the cantons or federated states. The number of deputies counting on this sector was not very broad and on many occasions acted divided in the ballots, although they tended to be inclined by the proposals of the intransigents.
- The “moderates” constituted the right of the House and were led by Emilio Castelar and Nicolás Salmerón; among them were Eleuterio Maisonnave and Buenaventura Abárzuza Ferrer. They defended the formation of a democratic Republic that accommodated all the liberal options, and therefore rejected the conversion of the Courts into a revolutionary power, as advocated by the intransigents, and agreed with the Pymargalians that the priority of the Courts was to adopt the new Constitution. They constituted the largest group in the House, although there were certain differences between the followers of Castelar, supporters of conciliation with the radicals and with the constitutional ones to include them in the new regime, and the followers of Salmeron, who argued that the Republic should only be based on the alliance of the "old" republicans. His model was the French Republic, while for the intransigent and pimargalian centrists it was Switzerland and the United States, two republics of federal structure.
This is how Benito Pérez Galdós narrated the parliamentary climate of the Republic:
The sessions of the Constituents attracted me, and later in the evenings I spent them in the press gallery, entertained with the show of indescribable confusion given by the parents of the Homeland. Individualism without brake, the flow and flow of opinions, from the most biased to the most extravagant, and the dreadful spontaneity of so many speakers, drove the viewer away and prevented the historical functions. Days and nights passed without the Courts clarifying how the Ministry was to be appointed: whether ministers should be elected separately by the vote of each deputy, or whether it was more appropriate to authorize Figueras or Pi to present the list of the new Government. All systems were agreed and disposed of. It was a puerile game, which would cause laughter if it didn't move us to great sorrow.
Presiding over a Council of Ministers, fed up with sterile debates, Estanislao Figueras arrived to shout in Catalan: «Gentlemen, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to be frank: I'm fed up with all of us!"
As soon as the Constituent Cortes met, Estanislao Figueras returned his powers to the Chamber and proposed that his Minister of the Interior, Francisco Pi y Margall, be appointed as the new president of the Executive Power; but the intransigents opposed it and managed to get Pi to give up his attempt to form a government, so Figueras was in charge of forming it. Then, Figueras learned that the intransigent generals Contreras and Pierrad were preparing a coup d'état to start the federal Republic outside the Government and the Cortes; which made him fear for his life, especially after Pi y Margall was not very willing to enter his Government. On June 10, Figueras, seized with panic, fled to France: he secretly left his resignation in his office in the Presidency, went for a walk in the Retiro park and, without saying a word to anyone, took the first train that left the Atocha station. He didn't get off until he got to Paris.
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The next day there was a new coup attempt, when a mass of federal republicans instigated by the intransigents surrounded the building of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, while General Contreras, in command of the volunteer militia of the Republic, took over the Ministry of War. Then, the moderates Castelar and Salmerón proposed that Pi y Margall occupy the vacant presidency of the Executive Branch, since he was the most prestigious leader within the Republican party. «Castelar and Salmerón believed that Pi y Margall, close to the intransigents, the one who had given them their ideological base and their organization, could control and satisfy the parliamentary left through a conciliation Cabinet». Finally, the intransigents accepted the proposal, although under the condition that the Cortes be the ones to choose the members of the Government that Pi y Margall was going to preside over.
According to other unverified versions, the accession of Pi y Margall to the presidency of the Executive Branch was the result of the actions of a Colonel of the Civil Guard, José de la Iglesia, who, faced with the power vacuum created by the Figueras fleeing and faced with the threat of a coup d'état, he appeared with a picket at the Congress building and announced to the deputies that no one would leave there until a new president was elected.[citation required]. However, José Bárcena Guzmán affirms: "he mentions that this influence for the appointment occurred in a longer time through the exchange of letters."
Government of Francisco Pi y Margall
The federal republic for Pi and Margall: The procedure (there is no reason to hide it), was openly contrary to the previous one: the result could be the same. The provinces had to be represented in the new Courts, and if they had any idea of the limits on which the powers of future States would be turned, the Courts could take it and in the Courts hold it. As determining the sphere of action of the provinces it would have been determined by the other procedure that of the State, now determining that of the central power, it was determined, whether or not, that of the provinces. One and another procedure could, without hesitation, have produced the same constitution and would not have been, in my view, neither patriotism nor politically hindering, by not transigiting by this point, the proclamation of the Republic. If the procedure below was not more logical and more suited to the idea of the Federation, it was, instead, that of top-down more proper of a nationality already formed as ours, and in its application far less dangerous. It was not for him a solution of continuity in power; the life of the nation was not suspended for a single moment; it was not to fear that serious conflicts would arise between the provinces; it was the easiest, faster, less exposed to setbacks and voids... —Francisco Pi and Margall |
The government program that Pi y Margall presented to the Cortes was based on the need to end the Carlist war, the separation of Church and State, the abolition of slavery and reforms in favor of women and the working children. On this last point, the Cortes approved on July 24, 1873 a law that regulated "the work of the workshops and the instruction in the schools of the working children of both sexes". the towns of communal property through a law that modified the confiscation of Madoz, but the law was never approved. Another one that had as its object the lifetime cession of land to tenants in exchange for the payment of a census was not approved either. The one that was approved was a law of August 20 that dictated rules "to redeem income and pensions known with the names of forums, subforums and others of the same nature". Finally, the program included as a priority the preparation of the new Constitution and the promotion of compulsory and free education.
Immediately, the government of Pi y Margall found himself opposed by the intransigents, because some of the historical demands of the feds had not been included in their program, such as the abolition of the tobacconist's shop, the lottery, judicial fees and consumer fees replenished in 1870 due to lack of resources. The ineffectiveness of the Government due to the blockade work carried out by the intransigent ministers led to a proposal being presented in Parliament to grant the president of the Executive Branch the power to freely appoint and dismiss his ministers. Its approval would allow Pi to replace the intransigent ministers with others from the moderate sector, thus creating a coalition government between the centrists of Pimargal and the moderates of Castelar and Salmerón. The response of the intransigents was to demand that the Courts, while the new federal Republican Constitution was being drafted and approved, constituted a Convention, from which a Board of Public Health would emanate that would hold the executive power. The proposal was rejected by the majority of deputies who supported the Government and, then, on June 27, the intransigents presented a vote of no confidence against the Government, which included the paradoxical request that its president Pi y Margall go over to his rows. The crisis was resolved the following day, as the intransigents feared, with the entry into the Government of the moderates Eleuterio Maisonnave in State, Joaquín Gil Berges in Grace and Justice and José Carvajal Hué in Finance; in addition to reinforcing the presence of the Pimargalians with Francisco Suñer in Overseas and Ramón Pérez Costales in Fomento. The program of the new Government was summed up in the motto "order and progress".
On June 30, Pi y Margall asked the Cortes for extraordinary powers to end the Carlist war, although limited to the Basque Country and Catalonia. The intransigents fiercely opposed the proposal because they understood it as the imposition of "tyranny" and the loss of democracy, although the Government assured them that it would only apply to the Carlists, and not to the federal republicans. Once the proposal was approved by the Cortes, the Government published a manifesto in which, after justifying the extraordinary powers it had received, it announced the call to the Army of the fifths and the reserve, because "the country demands the sacrifice of all its children, and it will not be a liberal or a Spaniard who does not do it to the best of his ability».
Federal Constitution Project
In the government program that Pi y Margall presented to the Cortes, the rapid approval of the Constitution of the Republic was indicated as one of its priorities, for which reason a commission of twenty-five members was immediately elected in charge of drafting the project. One of its members, the moderate Emilio Castelar, wrote in twenty-four hours what would be assumed by the commission as a whole and presented to the Cortes for debate. The project did not satisfy either the radicals, the constitutionalists, or the the diehard federal Republicans, who would end up introducing another constitutional bill.
In the Draft Federal Constitution of 1873 drafted by Emilio Castelar, he reflected his conception of the Republic as the most appropriate form of government for all liberal options to enter into it; because, in his opinion, democracy could not be reconciled with the monarchy, as the experience of the "democratic monarchy" of Amadeo I had shown. For the Republic to be acceptable to the conservative and middle classes, it was necessary to put an end to what Castelar called "red demagoguery", which confused the republic with socialism. Hence, the project of the federal Constitution that he presented before the Cortes was, in his opinion, a continuation of the principles established in the Constitution of 1869 —in fact, it maintained its Title I—. Likewise, his project was based on a rigid separation of powers, all elective. Thus, the President of the Republic was not elected by the Cortes, but by electoral boards voted in each regional state; they would cast their vote, and the candidate who obtained the absolute majority would be proclaimed by the Cortes —in the event that neither obtained an absolute majority, he would be chosen by the deputies between the two candidates with the highest number of votes. His function was to exercise the so-called "relationship power" between the different institutions. The deputies and senators, for their part, could not be part of the Government, nor could it attend the meetings of the Chambers. As for the judiciary, the jury was established for all kinds of crimes. And, as regards the federal structure, each State would enjoy “all the political autonomy compatible with the existence of the nation”, could have its own Constitution —as long as it was not contrary to the federal one— and have its own Legislative Assembly. Finally, the municipalities would elect their councilors, mayor, and judges by universal suffrage.
The draft Constitution was “preceded by a preamble in which the demands to which its articles try to respond are explained”. First, that of "consolidating the freedom and democracy conquered by the Glorious Revolution of September." Later, that of "indicating a territorial division, which based on history, would ensure the Federation and with it national unity." And, finally, "to dilute the public powers so that they could not be confused, much less facilitate the advent of the dictatorship." After the preamble came the 117 articles of which it consisted, organized into 17 titles.
Its most controversial article, to which most of the amendments that were debated referred, was the first, where the territorial division of the Republic was established, and in which Cuba and Puerto Rico were included as a form of resolve the colonial problem —adding later that special laws would regulate the situation of the other overseas provinces—:
Componen la Nación Española los Estados de Andalucía Alta, Andalucía Baja, Aragón, Asturias, Baleares, Canarias, Castilla la Nueva, Castilla la Vieja, Cataluña, Cuba, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia, Navarra, Puerto Rico, Valencia, Regions Vascongadas. States may retain or modify the existing provinces, depending on their territorial needs.
These states would have “complete economic-administrative autonomy and all the political autonomy compatible with the existence of the Nation”, as well as “the power to give themselves a political Constitution” (articles 92 and 93).
The draft Constitution provided in its Title IV, in addition to the classic legislative, executive and judicial powers, a fourth relationship power that would be exercised by the President of the Republic. Legislative power would be in the hands of the federal courts, made up of Congress and the Senate, Congress being a chamber of proportional representation, with one deputy "for every 50,000 souls" who would be renewed every two years; and the Senate, a chamber of territorial representation, with four senators being elected by the Cortes of each of the states. The executive power would be exercised by the Council of Ministers, whose president would be chosen by the President of the Republic. The judicial power would reside in the Federal Supreme Court, which would be made up "of three magistrates for each State of the Federation" (article 73) who would never be elected by the executive or legislative power. In addition, it established that all the courts would be collegiate and imposed the institution of the jury for all kinds of crimes. Finally, the power of relationship would be exercised by the President of the Federal Republic, whose mandate would last "four years, not being immediately re-eligible", as stated in article 81 of the project.
Article 40 of the project provided: «In the political organization of the Spanish Nation, everything individual is of the pure competence of the individual; everything municipal belongs to the Municipality; everything regional belongs to the State, and everything national belongs to the Federation”. The next article declared: "All powers are elective, removable and responsible." And article 42: «Sovereignty resides in all citizens, and is exercised on their behalf by the political organisms of the Republic, constituted by means of universal suffrage»; It must be taken into account that with "universal suffrage", at that time, they were referring to male suffrage, since women did not have the right to vote.
Regarding rights and freedoms, the project was a continuation of Title I of the Spanish Constitution of 1869, although it introduced «some significant innovations, such as the definitive separation of Church and State and the express prohibition of subsidizing any cult. It also demanded the civil sanction of marriages, births, and deaths, and titles of nobility were declared abolished. The right of association was established and regulated quite extensively [...]».
The start of the cantonal rebellion and the resignation of Pi y Margall
The response of the intransigents to the "order and progress" policy of the Pi y Margall government was to leave the Cortes on July 1, alleging as an immediate reason an edict from the civil governor of Madrid limiting the guarantees of individual rights. Only deputy José de Navarrete remained in the Cortes, who the next day explained the reasons for the withdrawal, accusing the Government of Pi y Margal of lack of energy and of having temporized and even given in to the enemies of the Federal Republic. Pi y Margall answered him in that same session on July 2:
What the Mr is trying to do. Navarrete and his epigones is that the government should have been a revolutionary government, that a certain dictatorship should have been overthrown, leaving the Constituent Courts. [...] If the Republic had come from the bottom-up, the cantons would have been formed, but the period would have been long, labory and full of conflicts, as now, through the Constituents, we bring the Federal Republic, without great disturbances, without trial and without blood.
After the abandonment of the Cortes, they called for the immediate and direct formation of cantons, which would initiate the cantonal rebellion. A Public Safety Committee was formed in Madrid to direct it, although, according to López-Cordón, "what prevailed was the initiative of the local federals, who took control of the situation in their respective cities." Despite the fact that there were cases like the one in Malaga, in which the local authorities were the ones who led the uprising, in most of them revolutionary juntas were formed. In a few days, the revolt was a fact in Andalusia, Valencia and Murcia.
Pi y Margall recognized that what the intransigents were doing was putting their theory of bottom-up federalism into practice; but he condemned the insurrection, because that theory was designed to seize power "by means of an armed revolution", not for a "Republic [that] has come by the agreement of an Assembly, in a legal and peaceful manner".
On June 30, the city council of Seville agreed to transform itself into a Social Republic. A week later, on July 9, Alcoy declared itself independent: since July 7, a wave of murders and settling of scores had been taking place under the cover of a revolutionary strike (the so-called "Oil Revolution", led by elements premises of the Spanish section of the AIT).
According to Jorge Vilches, «common points in the cantonal declarations were the abolition of unpopular taxes, such as consumption and the tobacco and salt store, the secularization of clergy property, the establishment of measures favorable to workers, the pardon to prisoners for crimes against the State, the replacement of the Army by the militia and the formation of public health committees or boards".
The country's federal foci did not break out in the form of autonomous states, but as a constellation of independent cantons. The uprisings occurred mainly in various locations in Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia. However, the paradigmatic experience of the period, the Canton of Cartagena, really responded to an attempt to set up a Murcian Canton, where its promoters were divided between those who wanted it to be of a regional type and those who aspired to a provincial type.. Others at the provincial level were those of Valencia and Malaga. Others affected municipalities such as Alcoy, Algeciras, Almansa, Andújar, Bailén, Cádiz, Castellón, Granada, Motril, Salamanca, Seville, Tarifa and Torrevieja. Finally, there were others that affected small towns such as the Manchego town of Camuñas or the Murcian town of Jumilla, although there is no record of the latter in the municipal archive of any canton proclamation.
The most durable and active of all the cantons was that of Cartagena, which was proclaimed on July 12 at that military and naval base, under the inspiration of Murcian federal deputy Antonio Gálvez Arce, known as Antonete. The Cartagena cantonalists took the castle of Galeras. They raised a red flag and fired a cannon shot as a previously agreed signal, to indicate to the frigate Almansa that they had taken the defenses and could rise up together with the rest of the squadron. In fact, in the absence of a flag completely red, a Turkish flag was hoisted. The flag was immediately removed and, in the absence of red paint, and to avoid confusion that might lead one to think that they had lost control of the castle, a rebel voluntarily cut his arm and, with his blood, dyed the crescent moon and the star. The captain general, upon learning of what had happened, sent a telegram to Madrid: "The castle of Galeras has raised the Turkish flag." Antonio Gálvez Arce captivated the sailors with his inflamed oratory and seized the squadron anchored in the port, which at that time was made up of the best of the Navy. With the fleet in his power, he sowed terror on the nearby Mediterranean coast, and was declared a "pirate and good prey" by decree of the Republican Government. Once on land, he led a march on Madrid that was disrupted in Chinchilla. The Canton of Cartagena minted its own currency, the "cantonal duro", and withstood six months of siege.
Two cantonal frigates, the screw frigate Almansa and the armored frigate Vitoria, left Cartagena for Almería to raise funds. When the city refused to pay, it was bombarded and taken over by the cantonalists, who collected the tribute themselves. General Contreras, in command of the fleet, had himself honored upon disembarking, curiously to the sound of the Royal March. They then repeated their feat in Alicante and, back in Cartagena, they were captured as pirates by the British and German armored frigates HMS Swiftsure and SMS Friedrich Carl respectively.
The government of Pi y Margall was overwhelmed by the cantonal rebellion and by the march of the third Carlist war: supporters of Don Carlos campaigned for their respects with total freedom in the Basque Country, Navarre and Catalonia —except in the capitals —, and they extended their action to the whole country through games. The pretender Carlos VII had formed a government in Estella with its own ministries, which was even beginning to coin money; while the connivance of France allowed them to receive foreign aid.
To put an end to the cantonal rebellion, Pi y Margall refused to apply the emergency measures proposed by the moderate sector of his party, which included the suspension of the sessions of the Cortes, because he was confident that the rapid approval of the federal Constitution —which did not happen— and the path of dialogue —the "telegraphic war" that already worked for him when the Barcelona Provincial Council proclaimed the Catalan State— would make the rebels see reason. However, he did not hesitate to repress to the rebels, as evidenced by the telegram that the Minister of the Interior sent to all the civil governors on July 13, as soon as he learned of the proclamation of the Murcian Canton the day before:
[...] Obre V. S. in that province energetically. Surrender of all the forces available, mainly those of volunteers and hold the order to all trances. [...] The insurrections today lack every reason to be since there is a sovereign Assembly, the product of universal suffrage and all citizens can freely issue their ideas, meet and associate. They must be brought to justice. V. S. can work without hesitation and with perfect conscience
Pi y Margall's policy of combining persuasion and repression to put an end to the cantonal rebellion can be seen very well in the instructions he gave to the republican general Ripoll, in his task of putting an end to the cantonal rebellion in Andalusia at the head of the Army of operations based in Córdoba, made up of 1,677 infantry, 357 horses and 16 artillery pieces:
I trust both in the prudence of you and in your soul. Do not enter Andalusia in war. Make you understand the peoples that are not formed by an army but to guarantee the right of all citizens and to enforce the agreements of the Assembly. Calm the timids, moderate the impatients; show them that with their eternal conspiracies and frequent disorders they are killing the Republic. Always hold your authority high. It appeals, first of all, to persuasion and to the council. When they don't get enough, don't hesitate to fall with energy on the rebels. The Assembly is today the sovereign power
As Pi y Margall's policy failed to stop the cantonal rebellion, the moderate sector withdrew its support on July 17, and proposed Nicolás Salmerón to replace him. The next day, Pi y Margall resigned, after 37 days in office.This is how he described the disappointments that politics had given him:
It has been so many my bitterness in power that I cannot covet it. I have lost in the government my tranquility, my rest, my illusions, my trust in men, which constituted the bottom of my character. For every grateful man, a hundred ingrates; for every disinterested and patriotic man, hundreds who did not seek in politics but the satisfaction of their appetites. I've received bad for good...
The government of Nicolás Salmerón and the repression of the cantonal rebellion
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Nicolás Salmerón, elected president of the Executive Power with 119 votes in favor and 93 votes against, was a moderate federalist who defended the need to reach an understanding with conservative groups and a slow transition towards a federal republic. According to Jorge Vilches, "his parliamentary interventions, excessively academic and arrogant, in the last two legislatures of the reign of Amadeo I, made him popular among the Republicans" and "in the Constituent Courts of the Spanish Republic he led a fraction of the Republican right, something logical not only because of his conservative ideas, but also because of the lack of talented men, experience in political life, and constitutional or legal knowledge among the Republican deputies of that Assembly." His devastating oratory continued in the Restoration Courts. Francisco Silvela said that Salmerón, in his speeches, only used one weapon: artillery. Antonio Maura characterized Don Nicolás's professorial tone by saying that "he always seems to be addressing the metaphysicians of Albacete."
During his time as Minister of Grace and Justice in the Government of Estanislao Figueras, he promoted the abolition of the death penalty, as well as the independence of the judiciary from the political. His arrival at the presidency of the Executive Power produced an intensification of the cantonalist movement, because the intransigents thought that with Salmerón it would be impossible to even reach the Federal Republic from above, as Pi y Margall had assured them. Thus, the same day Salmerón was appointed, a Public Health Committee was formed in Madrid, which would coordinate with the provinces, and a War Commission chaired by General Contreras to organize the cantonal revolt. Finally, on July 30 they formed a "Provisional Government of the Spanish Federation", led by Roque Barcia. At that time, between Carlists and cantonals, thirty-two provinces were up in arms.
The motto of the Salmerón government was the "rule of law", which meant that, in order to save the Republic and the liberal institutions, it was necessary to put an end to the Carlists and cantonals. To put down the cantonal rebellion, he took harsh measures, such as dismissing the civil governors, mayors and soldiers who had supported the cantonalists in some way; Next, he appointed generals opposed to the Federal Republic such as Manuel Pavía or Arsenio Martínez Campos —which did not matter to him, since the priority was to restore order— to send the military expeditions to Andalusia and Valencia, respectively. In addition, he mobilized the reservists, increased the Civil Guard with 30,000 men and appointed government delegates in the provinces with the same powers as the Executive. He authorized the Provincial Councils to impose war contributions and to organize provincial armed forces, and decreed that the ships in the hands of the people of Cartagena would be considered pirates —which meant that any vessel could shoot them down, whether it was in Spanish waters or not. Thanks to these measures, the different cantons were submitted one after the other, except Cartagena, which would resist until January 12, 1874.
In the session of the Cortes on September 6, Pi y Margall made a harsh criticism of the way in which the cantonal rebellion had been suppressed:
The government has defeated the insurgents, but what I feared has happened: the Republicans have been defeated. Was it the Carlists? No. Interín gained vitality at midday, the Carlists won it in the north. [...] I would not have appealed to your media, declaring pirates to the ships that the feds were seized; I would not have allowed that foreign nations, who have not even recognized us, come to intervene in our very discord. I wouldn't have bombed Valencia. I tell you that, in the way that you follow, it is impossible to save the Republic, because you distrust the masses of people and without having confidence in them, it is impossible for you to face the Carlists.
As the frequent indiscipline of the troops still persisted —which in some cases resulted in the assassination of the commanding officer—, the generals requested the complete reinstatement of the Spanish military Ordinances, which included the death penalty for soldiers who violate certain articles. The proposal was approved in the Cortes, with the opposition of Salmerón, who was absolutely against the death penalty. Thus, when on September 5 the application of a death sentence for eight soldiers who had gone over to the Carlist side in Barcelona was presented to him for signature, Salmerón preferred to resign rather than stain his conscience and presented his irrevocable resignation to the presidency of Power Executive, despite the fact that the president of the Cortes at that time, Emilio Castelar, tried to convince him not to do it - all he managed to do was postpone it for a single day. When Salmerón died, many years later, it was engraved in stone in his mausoleum: "he left power for not signing a death sentence."
In the decision of Nicolás Salmerón to resign, General Pavía's conduct of continuous defiance of his authority could also weigh. Manuel Pavía, named by Salmerón at the head of the Army of Andalusia, wanted to take the canton of Málaga at all costs, the last Andalusian insurgent redoubt; but the Government had sealed an unwritten pact with the civil governor of Málaga allowing its de facto semi-independence —which included that there would be no Army forces in the Málaga capital—, in exchange for that fully recognize the authority of the Government of Madrid. Pavía presented his resignation twice, which was not accepted, as he did later with the new president of the Executive Power, Emilio Castelar, who continued to resist Pavía's pressure. The problem was resolved with the departure from Málaga of the cantonalists headed by the civil governor, being arrested in Boadilla by the forces of Pavía, who finally achieved what he proposed: entering Málaga at the head of the government troops and ending the canton..
Government of Emilio Castelar
The following day, September 7, Emilio Castelar, a supporter of the unitary republic, a professor of History and an outstanding speaker, was elected to the Presidency of the Executive Power by 133 votes in favor compared to the 67 obtained by Pi and Margall. During his previous stage as Minister of State in the Government of Estanislao Figueras, he promoted and got the approval of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, although not in Cuba, due to the war situation he was experiencing.
In the presentation speech of the new Government before the Cortes, Castelar said that his ministry represented "freedom, democracy, the Republic... but we are also the federation without breaking the unity of the homeland". This way summed up his conception of the Republic as the form of government in which all liberal options should fit, including conservative ones.
Emilio Castelar had been deeply impressed by the disorder caused by the cantonal rebellion, which, when he assumed the presidency of the Executive Branch, was practically over, with the exception of the last redoubt in the Canton of Cartagena. This is how he later assessed what the cantonal rebellion had meant for the country, according to him:
There were days of that summer when we believed our Spain completely dissolved. The idea of legality had been lost in such terms that any war employee assumed all powers and notified the Courts; and those responsible for giving and enforcing the laws disobeyed them by uplifting or taunting against legality. It was not there, as on other occasions, to replace a ministry to the existing ministry, nor a form of government to the admitted form; to try to divide into a thousand portions our homeland, similar to those that followed the fall of the caliphate of Cordoba. From the provinces the strangest ideas and the most unsuccessful principles came. Some said they were going to resurrect the old crown of Aragon, as if the formulas of modern law were conjures from the Middle Ages. Others said they would constitute an independent Galicia under the protectorate of England. Jaén was eager for a war with Granada. Salamanca trembled at the closing of its glorious University and the eclipse of its scientific predominance [...] The uprising came against the most federal of all possible ministries, and at the very moment that the Assembly was in a hurry drawing up a draft Constitution, whose greatest defects came from the lack of time in the commission and the excess of impatience in the government.
On September 9, only two days after being sworn in as President of the Executive Branch, Castelar obtained from the Cortes, thanks to the withdrawal of the intransigent, the granting of extraordinary powers, equal to those requested by Pi y Margall to combat the the Carlists in the Basque Country, Navarra and Catalonia, but now extended to all of Spain to also put an end to the cantonal rebellion. The next step was to propose the suspension of the sessions of the Cortes, which, among other consequences, would mean paralyzing the discussion and the approval of the federal Constitution project. The parliamentary session took place on September 18 and gave rise to a very bitter debate between two sides: on the one hand, the intransigents —who had returned to the Chamber— and the centrists of Pi y Margall, who were radically opposed to the proposal; and, on the other, the moderates, who supported Castelar. Pi y Margall intervened to demand that the sessions continue until the Constitution was approved; He alleged that the "interim periods are dangerous and cause turbulence and disorder", in addition to affirming that the claim to incorporate the constitutionalists and the radicals into the Republic was an "illusion", because the "parties in Spain will always be parties, and they will always tend to achieve power by whatever means they can." He also accused Castelar of breaking the law, to which he replied that it had been Pi who had broken it at the time, when he dissolved the Permanent Commission on April 23, which he opposed. Ultimately, the proposal passed with votes from moderate federal Republicans and opposition from centrists and hardliners. Thus, the Cortes were suspended from September 20, 1873 until January 2, 1874.
From then on, Castelar ruled by decree. On September 21, he published a series of them in which he suspended constitutional guarantees, established press censorship and reorganized the artillery corps, dissolved by Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla during the last presidency of the reign of Amadeo I. These were followed by others such as the call to the reservists and the call for a new levy —with which he achieved an army of 200,000 men—, and the launching of a loan of 100 million pesetas to cover war expenses. With all these measures, he proposed to comply with the program that he had presented to the Cortes to put an end to the cantonal rebellion and the Carlist war: "to sustain this form of government I need a lot of infantry, a lot of cavalry, a lot of artillery, a lot of Civil Guards and many police officers". Likewise, the Spanish military Ordinances were restored, which would allow the application of the death sentences that had caused the resignation of his predecessor, Nicolás Salmerón, and all those issued by the war councils.
After the suspension of the Cortes, the president began his project of rapprochement with the conservative classes, without whose support —according to Castelar— the Republic could not last, or even achieve political stability to be able to face the three civil wars in which it was involved —that of Cuba, the Carlist and the cantonal—. On September 29, the board of directors of the Constitutional Party, meeting in Madrid, approved the proposal of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, Admiral Topete and Manuel Alonso Martínez to give their unconditional support to the Castelar government. This caused Francisco Romero Robledo, Adelardo López de Ayala and Cristóbal Martín de Herrera to leave the party to join the Alfonso circle in Madrid. In exchange, Castelar was willing to grant the 86 seats vacant to the constitutionalists and radicals that had been left vacant by the intransigent deputies who had revolted, and to propose the constitutionalist Antonio de los Ríos Rosas as the new president of the Republic. He even went so far as to offer Antonio Cánovas del Castillo a seat and six more for his followers. But on November 3, the death of Ríos Rosas, Castelar's contact with the Constitutionalists, cut short the project.
Meanwhile, in Biarritz, Bayonne, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz—French towns close to the Spanish border—constitutional and radical politicians who had settled there after escaping from Spain following the failed coup on April 23 they met to also give their support to the Castelar government and prevent the triumph of the intransigent federal republicans.
The Pavia coup (January 3, 1874)
Castelar's policy of rapprochement with the constitutionalists and the radicals found opposition from the moderate Nicolás Salmerón and his followers —who until then had supported the Government—, because they believed that the Republic should be built by authentic republicans, not by the new arrivals. This opposition increased when Castelar appointed generals of dubious affection for the Republic to the most important posts, and when he filled the vacant posts of three archbishoprics in mid-December; Such a gesture indicated that he had entered into negotiations with the Holy See and de facto reestablished relations with it, which was opposed to the separation of Church and State that the Republicans advocated.
The first sign that Salmerón had stopped supporting Castelar's government occurred around the same time, when, in the Permanent Delegation of Parliament, his supporters voted alongside Pimargallians and intransigents against Castelar de Castelar's proposal that elections be held to fill the vacant seats, so it was rejected.
Following Castelar's parliamentary defeat, Cristino Martos, leader of the Radical Democrats, and General Serrano, leader of the Constitutionalists, who until then had been preparing for the partial elections that were no longer going to be held, agreed carry out a coup to prevent Castelar from being replaced as head of the Executive Power by a vote of no confidence that Pi y Margall and Salmerón were expected to present as soon as the Cortes reopened on January 2, 1874.
When, on December 20, Emilio Castelar learned of the coup that was being prepared, he called the captain general of Madrid, General Pavía, to his office on the 24th to try to convince him to stick to the law and not participate in the attempt At that meeting, as Pavía later recounted, he asked Castelar to promulgate a decree ordering that the Cortes continue to be suspended and that "I would have fixed the Puerta del Sol with four bayonets"; to which Castelar flatly refused, who told him that he would not deviate one iota from legality. However, Castelar did not dismiss Pavía.
Castelar found out that Salmerón was going to join the vote of no confidence when on December 30 (or December 26, according to other sources) he had an interview with him. In it, Castelar did not accept the conditions that Salmerón had set for him to continue giving him his support: replace the generals that Castelar had appointed with others addicted to federalism; revoke the appointment of archbishops; dismiss the most conservative ministers and give entry to the Government to followers of Salmerón; and immediately discuss and approve the federal Constitution. The following day, December 31, Pi y Margall, Estanislao Figueras and Salmerón met to agree to present a vote of no confidence on January 2 against Castelar, although they did not decide who would replace him. When the Cortes reopened, at two in the afternoon on January 2, 1874, the captain general of Madrid, Manuel Pavía, had his troops ready in case Castelar lost the parliamentary vote. On the opposite side, battalions of Republic volunteers were prepared to act if Castelar won —in fact, according to Jorge Vilches, "the Cartagena cantonals had received the password to resist until January 3, the day the Castelar government was defeated." an intransigent one would be formed that would "legalize" his situation and "cantonalize" Spain"; although, according to other authors, there is no documentary evidence of this. At the opening of the session, Nicolás Salmerón intervened to announce that he was withdrawing his support for Castelar, who responded by calling for the establishment of a "possible Republic" with all the liberals, including conservatives, and abandoning "demagogy".
After midnight, the vote on the question of confidence took place, in which the Government was defeated by 100 votes in favor and 120 against, which forced Castelar to present his resignation. Next, a recess was held so that the parties agreed on the candidate that would replace Castelar as head of the Executive Power of the Republic. At that time, the constitutional deputy Fernando León y Castillo had already sent the adverse result to Castelar to General Pavía. He then gave the order to leave for the Congress of Deputies to the committed regiments, and he personally stood at the square in front of the building. The civil guard, who was guarding the Congress, placed himself under his orders.It was the early morning of January 3, when the vote was taking place to elect the federal candidate Eduardo Palanca Asensi.
Salmerón, upon receiving the order from the captain general in a note delivered by one of his assistants in which he said "Evacuate the premises", suspended the vote and communicated what was happening. Several deputies then intervened to protest the action in Pavía, but then forces from the Civil Guard and the Army entered the Congress building firing shots into the air through the corridors, and the deputies quickly left.
As soon as he vacated the Congress, Pavía sent a telegram to the military chiefs of all Spain asking for their support for the coup, which the general called "my patriotic mission", "preserving order at all costs". In the telegram he thus justified what he would later call "the act of January 3":
The ministry of Castelar [...] was to be replaced by those who base their policy on the disorganization of the army and the destruction of the homeland. On behalf of the salvation of the army, of liberty and of the homeland, I have occupied the Congress by calling on the representatives of all parties, except the cantonals and the Carlists to form a national government that saves so expensive goals.
General Pavía tried to have a "national government" formed, presided over by Emilio Castelar, but to the meeting of the constitutional, radical, Alfonsino, and unitary republican political leaders that Pavía convened for that purpose —the federal republicans of Salmerón and of Pi and Margall, and the hardliners were obviously excluded—Castelar refused to attend, not wanting to stay in power through undemocratic means. At the meeting, Pavía defended the conservative republic, and for this reason he imposed the unitary republican Eugenio García Ruiz as Minister of the Interior, and General Serrano was appointed head of the new Government.
These events meant the de facto end of the First Republic, although officially it would continue for almost another year, with General Serrano at the helm; "Nominally the Republic continued but completely denatured", affirms José Barón Fernández. As María Victoria López-Cordón has pointed out, "the ease and little resistance with which Pavía ended the federal Republic, breaking into Congress with its troops, is the best example of the fragility of a regime that barely had a basis to sustain itself." The leader of the Alfonsino party Antonio Cánovas del Castillo told the exiled queen Isabel II that "democratic principles are mortally wounded" and that only it is a matter of "calm, serenity, patience, as well as perseverance and energy" to achieve the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy.
The unitary Republic: the Serrano dictatorship
General Francisco Serrano, recently returned from his exile in Biarritz for his involvement in the coup attempt on April 23 of the previous year, formed a concentration government that brought together constitutionalists, radicals, and unitary republicans, and from which he excluded Federal Republicans. The radicals Cristino Martos, José Echegaray and Tomás Mosquera occupied the ministries of Grace and Justice, Finance and Development; while the constitutional Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, Admiral Topete and Víctor Balaguer, held the posts of State, Navy and Overseas. The unitary republican Eugenio García Ruiz, as General Pavía had imposed, occupied the Ministry of the Interior, and General Juan Zavala de la Puente, the Ministry of War.
Francisco Serrano, Duke of la Torre, 63 years old and a former collaborator of Isabel II, had already served twice as head of state during the Democratic Six-year term. Then, upon assuming the presidency of the Executive Power of the Republic and the presidency of the Government, he set himself the objective of ending the cantonal rebellion and the Carlist war, to later convene a Parliament that would decide the form of government. In the manifesto that he made public on January 8, he justified the Pavía coup by stating that the government that was going to replace Castelar's would have meant the dismemberment of Spain or the triumph of Carlist absolutism. Next, he announced, leaving open all the possibilities regarding the Republic or hereditary or elective Monarchy, that ordinary Courts would be convened that would designate "the form and manner in which they have to choose the Supreme Magistrate of the Nation, marking their powers, and choosing the first that he should occupy such a high position".
The Serrano dictatorship was thus established, since there was no Parliament to control the action of the Government, since the Republican Cortes had been dissolved, nor a supreme law that delimited the functions of the Executive Branch, because the Constitution of 1869 was restored, but It was then put on hold "until the normality of political life was assured." The establishment of the dictatorship hardly met popular resistance, except in Barcelona, where barricades were erected on the 7th and 8th and a general strike was declared. In the clashes with the army there were a dozen victims, and the most serious events occurred in Sarriá, because of an uprising led by the "Xich de les Barraquetes", commanded by about eight hundred men.
The manifesto of January 8th defined the dictatorship as the "hard crucible" and "strong mold" that would make the "nobility and the wealthy classes" see, as well as the Church, that order was possible with freedom and democracy defined in the revolution of 1868 and the Constitution of 1869. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo identified Serrano's project, and he made it known to Isabel II and Prince Alfonso, with the regime of General Mac Mahon, who had become with power in France after the fall of Napoleon III, the defeat of the Paris Commune and the impossibility of restoring the Bourbon monarchy with the Count of Chambord —because he did not accept the republican tricolor flag—, and that he was supported so much by monarchists as well as republicans. According to Jorge Vilches, "General Serrano, defined as a "soldier of fortune" Because of Cánovas, he doubted between his personal power with the dictatorship and the protagonism that he could obtain if he set himself up as Alfonso's restorer, with the approval that he knew he would count on from Isabel II ». On the other hand, the other leader of the constitutional party, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, "worked openly for the constitutional monarchy with the legitimate dynasty —the Bourbons— as the only way to avoid the complete collapse of the 1868 revolution."
The new government had just been formed, putting an end to the cantonal rebellion with the entry into Cartagena on January 12 of General José López Domínguez, substitute for Martínez Campos; while Antonete Gálvez, with more than a thousand men, managed to avoid the siege aboard the frigate Numancia and set course for Orán. The end of the cantonal experience was paid for by Gálvez with exile, but the Restoration allowed him, through amnesty, to return to his native Torreagüera. At this time he would establish a strange and endearing friendship with Cánovas del Castillo, head of the Restoration, who considered Gálvez a sincere, honest and courageous man, although with exaggerated political ideas.
The first measures taken by the Serrano government revealed its conservative nature. Thanks to the fact that the Constitution of 1869 was suspended, he ordered the immediate dissolution of the Spanish section of the International Workers' Association (AIT), for attacking "property, the family and other social bases." On January 7, he promulgated a mobilization decree, confirmed by the extraordinary appeal of July 18, in which he returned to the old system of the fifths, with lottery and cash redemption. The suppression of consumption —the third popular demand of the Revolution of 1868, together with the recognition of the right of association and the abolition of the fifths— was not respected by the Serrano dictatorship either, which on June 26 reinstated this tax on "drink, eat and burn" articles, plus another on salt and an extraordinary one on cereals. As María Victoria López-Cordón has pointed out, "the pressure of the war, the economic demands of the ruling groups and the chronic deficit of the Treasury combined to put an end to the revolutionary cycle".
The cantonal rebellion over, Serrano marched north on February 26 to personally take charge of operations against the Carlists. In Madrid he left General Juan de Zavala y de la Puente at the head of the Government, and he remained as President of the Executive Power of the Republic.
After his success in lifting the siege of Bilbao, Serrano reinforced his position in the Government with the appointment in May of Sagasta to head the Ministry of the Interior, which led to the departure of the three radical ministers and the only republican minister, the unitarian García Ruiz. Thus, an exclusively constitutional government was formed, which continued to be chaired by General Zavala, who was replaced on September 3 by Sagasta, after preventing Zavala from trying to get the Republicans back into government, since at that time the constitutionalists advocated the "parliamentary" Restoration. and democratic» of Prince Alfonso. Serrano appointed Andrés Borrego to negotiate with the Alfonsinos of Cánovas, but he rejected the proposals of the constitutionalists, because it meant recognizing Serrano's Headquarters of State until the Carlists were defeated and accepting that the Bourbon restoration would come through the convocation of some extraordinary General Courts —former Queen Elizabeth II wrote to her son, Prince Alfonso: "Serrano continues to be committed to his purpose of being President of the Republic for 10 years with 4 million reales per year"—.
In that month of September when Sagasta replaced General Zavala as head of the Government, the Republic achieved the long-awaited international recognition and, one after another, the different States reestablished diplomatic relations with Spain.
At the initiative of Nicolás María Rivero, the radicals, opposed to the new restorationist course that the government was taking —especially after the arrival of Sagasta to the presidency—, began contacts with Castelar's republicans. In them, the former radical leader Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla was the protagonist, who returned to political life after more than a year away from it —since his presidency ended in February 1873, after Amadeo I abdicated. The objective of the proposal for the union of the two political groups was to prevent the Bourbon restoration through the formation of a conservative Republican party; This would advocate a new Republic based on the Constitution of 1869, reformed by some ordinary Cortes that would begin by changing, in others, article 33: «The form of government of the Spanish Nation is the Monarchy». The initiative was also supported by the constitutionalist Admiral Topete, who, according to Jorge Vilches, did not want "to see the dynasty restored to which he believed he had given the first push for his dethronement." But the republican alliance project finally failed due to the agreement that Ruiz Zorrilla reached with the federal republicans of Salmerón, flatly rejected by Castelar and Rivero.
On December 1, Cánovas del Castillo took the initiative with the publication of the Sandhurst Manifesto, written by him and signed by Prince Alfonso, in which he defined himself "as a truly liberal man of the century" —a statement with the one that sought the reconciliation of the liberals around their monarchy— and in which it united the historical rights of the legitimate dynasty with the representative government and the rights and freedoms that accompany it. It was the culmination of the strategy that Cánovas had designed since he had assumed the leadership of the alfonsino cause on August 22, 1873 —in full cantonal rebellion—; As he had explained to ex-Queen Isabel and Prince Alfonso in letters from January 1874 —after the Pavía coup—, it consisted of creating “much opinion in favor of Alfonso” with “calm, serenity, patience, as well as perseverance and energy".
On December 10, Serrano began the siege of Pamplona, but Sagunto's pronouncement on the 29th interrupted it.
End of the Republic
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In accordance with his strategy, Cánovas did not want the Restoration to be "the work of a party, the Army or a group thereof, or a parliamentary election or military pronouncement". However, on December 29, 1874, General Arsenio Martínez-Campos spoke in Sagunto in favor of the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy to the throne, in the person of Don Alfonso de Borbón, son of Isabel II. Later, Martínez-Campos telegraphed the President of the Government, Sagasta, and the Minister of War, Francisco Serrano Bedoya, who in turn communicated by telegraph with the President of the Executive Power of the Republic, General Serrano, who was in the North fighting against the Carlists. Serrano ordered them not to resist, and the Government accepted the decision without protest, for which reason it did not offer any resistance when the Captain General of Madrid, Fernando Primo de Rivera, implicated in the pronouncement, appeared at the Government headquarters and ordered them to disband..
The only one who took any initiative to oppose the coup was Admiral Topete, who convinced other 1868 revolutionaries such as Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla to form a commission to meet with President Sagasta. He received them at the Ministry of the Interior and seemed to agree to their request that he replace Primo de Rivera in the captaincy general of Madrid with General Lagunero, and that he call the troops from Ávila, commanded by a general familiar with Ruiz Zorrilla.. Sagasta said goodbye to them, telling them that if he needed them, he would call them. He neither called them nor fulfilled what he, it seems, he had promised.
On December 31, 1874, the so-called Ministry-Regency was formed, chaired by Cánovas del Castillo, waiting for Prince Alfonso to return to Spain from England. In that Government were two men from the 1868 revolution and ministers with Amadeo I: Francisco Romero Robledo and Adelardo López de Ayala, who had been the editor of the manifesto "Long live Spain with honor" that had started the revolution.
Myth and reality of the First Republic
Historian José María Jover dedicated his admission speech to the Royal Academy of History to the "Republic of 1873", which was expanded and republished in 1991 under the title Reality and Myth of the First Republic. In this study, he set out to analyze the stereotyped and distorted vision of the First Republic, which he circumscribed to the year 1873. According to Jover, the "intense myth-making activity" of what had happened was started by Emilio Castelar with the speech he delivered in the Cortes on July 30, 1873, just two weeks after Pi y Margall was replaced by Salmerón. In fact, a pamphlet with a circulation of two hundred thousand copies was made of the speech, an extraordinary number for the time. In it, Castelar equated the cantonal rebellion to "socialism" and the "Paris Commune", and described it as a "separatist" movement —"an senseless threat to the integrity of the Homeland, to the future of freedom"—, in addition to contrast the condition of Spanish and the condition of cantonal.
Continuer of Castelar's vision was Manuel de la Revilla, professor of literature at the Central University, who considered federalism as something absurd in "already constituted nations", and who responded to Pi y Margall's book Las nationalities alleging that the implementation of the federal pact would only bring "ruin and shame". However, the person who distinguished himself most in his attack on the (Federal) Republic was Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, who in his History of the Spanish heterodoxos wrote:
There was a kind of republic here... There were times of apocalyptic desolation; each city was constituted in canton; civil war grew with enormous intensity; [...] Andalusia and Catalonia were, in fact, in anarchic independence; the feds of Malaga shattered each other...; in Barcelona the army, undisciplined and beodo, profaned the temples with horrible orgies; the insurrections of Cartagena flying Turkish flag and began to exercise piracy by the indefense ports of the Mediterranean; wherever kings of taifas emerged...
The characteristic features of the image of the "Republic of 73" that these authors bequeathed to posterity, according to Jover, "correspond to many other real aspects of the historical situation of reference, although distorted by an antagonistic vision":
So, the Federalism becomes "separatism" (Castelar, Menéndez Pelayo); religious neutrality of the State is expressed as “irreligion” and as a “rupture of Catholic unity”, although they help to do so the sectarian anticlerical measures, not specific to 73, adopted at certain points of Catalonia and Andalusia (Coloma, Menéndez Pelayo); the predominance of civilian power — especially under the chairmanships of Figueras and Pi — it is translated as “crisis of authority” in relation to the “disorder” existing in the Levantine and southern Spain and that curiously it will seem to deserve more harsh dictionaries than the bloody civil war on the north (Bermejo, Menéndez Pelayo...); the formidable Popular breath of the Sexenio, and specifically of the 73rd, will be a manifestation of "disorder", of "anarchy", of "ineduction", of "tirany of the fold" (Bermejo, Coloma, Pereda); the ethical linkage of political attitudes and behaviour it will be presented, either as an alibi of small ambitions or social resentments (« bastard interests»: Pereda), either as a manifestation of an idealism other than reality and therefore of negative effectiveness; the vigorous utopian projection of the 73 will be assigned by his name, "utopias", without giving this word the vulgar significance of unrealizable dream, without value for the future and alien to reason and common sense (Revilla); the Critical and reformist attitudes In the face of the forms of property established and sacralized after the disastrous process, they will receive, however shy they may be, a single name bearing, which evokes the ghosts of the Paris Commune: "socialism" (Castelar). In short, the same form of State of 73, the republic, will gain a new sense in colloquial language, as if the venerable classic word was forced to collect and symbolize the set of accumulated countervals on the frustrated experience of 73. Indeed, the 1970 edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Academy brings us this seventh disappointment: “place where the disorder reigns for excess freedoms”.
Historical memory
Until 1931, Spanish Republicans celebrated February 11, the anniversary of the First Republic. Subsequently, the commemoration was moved to April 14, the anniversary of the proclamation of the Second Republic, which, moreover, between 1932 and 1938 (since the Spanish Civil War, only in Republican territory) was a national holiday.
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