Juan Alvarez Mendizabal
Juan de Dios Álvarez Méndez, Mendizábal (Cádiz, February 25, 1790-Madrid, November 3, 1853) was a liberal politician and businessman Spanish. Of relatively humble origin, he became the main protagonist of the Spanish liberal Revolution.
Biography
Origin and change of second surname
The son of Rafael Álvarez Montañés, a merchant, and Margarita Méndez, he learned modern languages and received business training in his father's business. During the War of Independence, he served in the Army of the Center and, having been captured twice, managed to escape on both occasions. On February 21, 1812, he married Teresa Alfaro, and since then he decided to change his second surname, Méndez, to Mendizábal, to hide the apparently Jewish origin of the Méndez family, according to the most general opinion, even though, in 1811, being Minister of Finance of the Army of the Center, he already signed his documents as Mendizábal, as can be found in the Provincial Historical Archive of Albacete, for which reason his name as "Mendizábal" preceded him before getting married.
The Méndez house, dedicated to the rag business, to which his mother belonged, was known in Cádiz as a family of New Christians of Jewish origin. That would explain, according to the historian Juan Pan-Montojo, his decision to “change his second surname to that of Mendizábal, with which a Basque origin was granted, a guarantee in itself of purity of blood. The new identity was all the more useful to build his image, since Miguel Mendizábal's business house was one of the most important in eighteenth-century Cádiz ». In addition, in the marriage certificate he stated that he was from Bilbao. The nickname "Jew" to refer to Mendizábal when he came to power was frequently used in the anti-liberal press of his time and in some cases he was even represented with a tail, an additive that was supposed to belong to the Jews —and the devil—, reason why they also used the nickname of "dark-winged Juanón" - in addition to "rabbi Juanón".
Mendizábal highlighted the fact that he did not come from one of the great aristocratic or bourgeois lineages on various occasions, such as in the speech of April 6, 1836 that he gave as president of the Government before the Cortes of the Royal Statute, in which he said that his education had been "literary", because he had been "always applied to work to acquire a fortune", or when shortly after in another speech he called himself "son of the people", who "will never be seen with good In my eyes, the nation owes me a good government that will provide it with prosperity in the future". times his fortune, a figure that must be increased because he died in poverty."
Social and political rise (1817-1834)
During the war, he was in charge of supplying the army, through which he came into contact with the Valencian Bertrán de Lis family, dedicated to supplying the troops and whose patriarch was Vicente Bertrán de Lis, of whom at After the war, he accepted a job. In 1817, Mendizábal and his wife moved to Madrid and his first child was born there, whose patrons were Vicente and Luis Bertrán de Lis. That same year he became a partner in the house, taking charge of the supplies for the troops in Lower Andalusia, together with the son of his boss, also called Vicente. The latter was the one who put him in contact with the group of Liberals with whom the Bertrán de Lis family was related—the patriarch Vicente Bertrán de Lis was an important Liberal leader in Valencia and for this reason he was imprisoned for some time after the restoration of absolutism in 1814 by Ferdinand VII; a son of that one, Félix Bertrán de Lis, was executed in Valencia in January 1819 for having participated in an allegedly Masonic military conspiracy against the absolute Monarchy.
Thus, in the autumn of 1819 Mendizábal was already part of the liberal conspiracy, in which Francisco Javier Istúriz and Antonio Alcalá Galiano participated among others, which would culminate in the pronouncement of Rafael del Riego at the beginning of the following year. Likewise, he joined the Masonic lodge that organized the conspiracy in Cádiz, according to the testimony of Alcalá Galiano, although according to Juan Pan-Montojo, this source is not entirely reliable, so Mendizábal's status as a Freemason is not clear. It is believed that he was a Freemason of the "Sublime Workshop" of Cádiz together with Francisco Istúriz and Antonio Alcalá Galiano.
He played a very active role in the organization and development of the Riego pronouncement initiated in Cabezas de San Juan on January 1, 1820 and was part of its governing board together with Riego himself, Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel, Fernando Miranda and others. His main role was to finance the uprising, as stated in a testimony written by Riego at the request of Mendizábal himself:
This citizen did not take any danger from him, he attended how many actions were in that middle... that did not save his particular interests, despite the critical of those circumstances, he constantly encouraged the soldier, already facilitating four reals per square, already two real ones, and a wine quartz, without counting that he was already gratifying some, already others, and particularly those who distinguished himself in some actions.
He advanced money for Rafael del Riego's conspiracy and joined his troops from January 27 to March 4, 1820. At that time he dedicated himself to importing tortoiseshell from Birmingham to make combs.
During the Liberal Triennium he did not obtain any public office despite his close relationship with Rafael del Riego and, although he did not abandon political activity, he dedicated himself to business on his own account or for the company of the Bertrán de Lis, of the one who was a partner, and among those who continued to be the supply contracts to the army. There were those who accused him that his enrichment during those years was due to his contacts with the political class to carry out big business. When the invasion of the One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, sent by the Holy Alliance to restore the absolute power of King Ferdinand VII, took place, Mendizábal and the Bertrán de Lis house financed the transfer of the court and the Cortes from Madrid to Cádiz and to the army that resisted the siege of the French troops. He also participated in organizing their defenses. When the plaza finally surrendered, Mendizábal went into exile to escape a death sentence handed down against him. On September 30, 1823, he escaped to Gibraltar and from there he went to London.
In the British capital, unlike most of the Spanish liberals who were there in exile dedicated to conspiratorial meetings and political activities, Mendizábal turned to business, thanks to his contacts with representatives of commercial houses of Cádiz, especially those dedicated to the export of Jerez wines that were increasingly in demand in Great Britain. The Mendizábal family itself ended up founding its own company under the name Antonio Álvarez y Cía. However, his dedication to business —which he extended to the financial world and the London Stock Exchange— did not separate him from political life and he continued in close contact with other exiled liberal politicians such as Espoz y Mina, José Canga Argüelles or José Maria Torrijos.
In London, he was imprisoned for debts, although he soon managed to get out by negotiating the import of Spanish wines. There he consolidated a large network of friends and associates who would be very useful to him in the future. His business took him to France in at least 1828 and 1830.
In 1830, after the triumph of the July Revolution in France, he traveled to Paris with other Spanish liberals —among them Vicente Bertrán de Lis— to organize and finance the uprising headed by Espoz y Mina that same year. "He himself approached Bayonne, from where he continued the liberal incursion into Navarre and Guipúzcoa." Apparently, Ardouin and other financiers participated in this expedition by Vera.
After the failure of this rebellion, Mendizábal launched into a new political and financial enterprise: to intervene in the Portuguese civil war by supporting the exiled Portuguese liberals who were led by Don Pedro who had returned from Brazil to return the Portuguese crown to his daughter María da Glória who had lost her in favor of the absolutist Miguel I of Portugal, Don Pedro's brother, all as a prelude to the Iberian union of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal under the same crown. Thus Mendizábal obtained in September 1831 a loan from several bankers with which he acquired two frigates with their crews commanded by English officers. This allowed Don Pedro's supporters to land in Porto in June 1832, although the city was surrounded by the "Miguelistas", until Mendizábal, together with the moderate Portuguese liberal Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Duke of Palmela, organized a second fleet with English troops who raised the siege a year later. An expedition left from there that landed in the Algarve in southern Portugal and shortly after, on July 24, 1833, the "pedrista" troops entered Lisbon and on September 22 Queen María da Glória landed in the capital —a trip that organized by Mendizábal—who received the title of Maria II of Portugal.
Liberal Revolution (1835-1837)
After the liberal triumph in Portugal, Mendizábal reached a key position in that country, among other reasons because he became the kingdom's financial agent in London. This was how he strengthened his broad credit in the British financial world —and also French— which would be very important on his return to Spain in September 1835, two years after the death of King Ferdinand VII and the assumption of the regency by his widow. María Cristina de Borbón on behalf of her daughter, the future Isabel II, which had triggered a succession lawsuit that had become a civil war similar to the Portuguese one, pitting the "Elizabethans" or "Christians", mostly liberals, against the "Carlists" who defended the rights to the throne of Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, brother of the deceased king, and who supported absolutism.
In Spain, the Government, headed by the moderate liberal Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, appointed by the Regent in June 1834, found that it had no resources to pay the Elizabethan Army, which was fighting in the First Carlist War, Therefore, from London Mendizábal offered himself to the Minister of Finance, the Count of Toreno, to make arrangements with the British and French bankers and with their respective governments so that they would grant a loan to the kingdom of Spain. Thus, when the Count of Toreno replaced Martínez de la Rosa as head of the government in July 1835, he appointed Mendizábal Minister of Finance despite the fact that he was an exalted liberal who did not like "the people at court", according to Espoz y Mina..
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During his return trip to Spain—via Paris, Bordeaux, and Lisbon, to arrange business matters and enlist the support of the French and Portuguese governments—liberal uprisings broke out in Spain contrary to the narrow political framework established by the Royal Statute, a kind of granted letter promulgated by the regent María Cristina that did not recognize the principle of national sovereignty. So when he arrived in Spain on September 1, Mendizábal published a manifesto in which he contested the authority of the Count of Toreno, he ended up giving in to pressure and on September 14 Mendizábal became president of the government, accompanied only by two ministers, which "underlined the exceptional and personal nature" of his management.
He immediately set about "directing" the "junta revolution" of the summer by taking a series of measures that responded to his aspirations but at the same time restoring the authority of the government. Some of the decisions were of a symbolic nature, trying to identify the government with the Liberal Triennium, such as the rehabilitation of the memory of Riego, the transformation of the urban Militia into a National Guard or the replacement of the liberal clergy in their parishes. He then brought together the Cortes of the Royal Statute, suspended during the Toreno government, before which he presented his program which, in summary, sought to bring the Spanish political system closer to the parliamentarianism of the British monarchy (extension of suffrage, freedom of the press, responsibility of the government before the Cortes), in addition to announcing the suppression of the religious orders and the confiscation of their assets, thus legalizing the initiatives of the revolutionary juntas that had already initiated the process on their own —something that the Count of Toreno had also done when he suppressed convents with less than twelve professed. And the ultimate goal of all this was to win the war "which can only be done quickly and happily with men and money in abundance".
To get the men, he recruited the "fifth of the hundred thousand", which also helped him to obtain money because the exemption from conscription could be bought, which on the other hand freed wealthy families from sending their children to war —the redemption of fifths was a step backwards in liberal thought because it was contrary to the principle of equality. Regarding the financing of the war, he obtained full powers from the Cortes by the Vote of Confidence Law approved on January 16, 1836, which allowed him to carry out various financial operations and contract loans, and in February 1836, with the Cortes dissolved., approved a royal decree for the sale of the assets of the religious orders extinguished by the Toreno government and by the "revolutionary juntas" —which on March 8 was extended to all religious orders— thus achieving the reduction of the medium-term debt and the rise in its short-term price, since in the auctions payment with debt securities was allowed at their nominal value.
Contrary to what had been argued, Mendizábal himself did buy land in his confiscation, although it was not very important and he had to sell it, probably to pay off his debts.
The purpose of the confiscation decrees of February 19 and March 8, 1836, which constituted the so-called Confiscation of Mendizábal, was also that the unproductive properties and properties held by the church and the orders religious, passed to a middle class or bourgeoisie that really enriched the country. The procedure followed to prevent the properties from passing to the people was to auction the properties in large blocks that the small owners could not afford, although the most decisive thing was that the payment of the final price of the auctions was allowed with debt titles for their nominal value, well below its real value in the market.
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Because of the opposition of the Cortes to the new Electoral Law, Mendizábal got the regent to dissolve them and call new elections that were won in the Chamber of Attorneys by government supporters —the soon-to-be exalted former liberals. so-called progressive liberals—while those who opposed him were moderate liberals, who had one of their main supporters at court. As exposed by the liberal newspaper El Eco del Comercio on February 18, 1836, the government majority was made up of:
those who wish to end all privileges, those who ask for reforms without contemplation, those who work because we have a constitutional letter that marks the authority of the Crown and the rights of the Nation, those who condemned and condemned the Martinist system and longed for the implementation of the Mendizábal programme.
However, the majority obtained in the Chamber of Attorneys did not prevent the Regent from replacing him with Istúriz as head of government on May 15, 1836. But he did not abandon the political struggle for that reason, but rather increased his presence in the press and supported the secret societies that were preparing a revolutionary movement like the one in the summer of the previous year. Thus, in July and August 1836, the "revolutionary juntas" returned, openly defending the restoration of the Constitution of 1812, which they achieved when there was a mutiny by the sergeants of La Granja that forced the regent María Cristina to promulgate it. Subsequently, on August 14, 1836, a new progressive liberal government was formed, chaired by José María Calatrava and in which Mendizábal, a true strong man of the same, held the Treasury portfolio. During the year that the Calatrava-Mendizábal government was in power, the Spanish Liberal Revolution culminated by reinstating all the revolutionary legislation of the Cortes of Cádiz and the Liberal Triennium, which put an end to the Old Regime in Spain.
In this second period in government, he was not so successful in financial matters, so the Public Treasury had to suspend the payment of interest on the debt that was due on November 1, 1836, and this "lack of resources it would be a reason for constant complaint by the liberal generals". On the political level, in addition to the laws and decrees that put an end to the Old Regime, the Constituent Cortes undertook the reform of the Constitution of 1812 that resulted in a new Constitution, which was intended to be a consensus between the two great currents of Spanish liberalism, moderates and progressives. After the promulgation of the new Constitution of 1837, a plot by the moderates with the support of certain military sectors overthrew the Calatrava-Mendizábal government on August 18 and the following month they called new elections that provided them with a sufficient majority to be able to govern during the three following years - from 1837 to 1840 -.
The Decline (1837-1853)
During the Moderate Triennium (1837-1840) he ceased to be the undisputed leader of the progressive liberals, although he continued to exercise great influence over them. After the return to power of the progressives at the end of 1840 with the first government of the regency of Espartero, Mendizábal did not enter it but he placed several of his collaborators in it, although his political weight decreased in the two following years. In January 1843 he was appointed mayor of Madrid and between the end of May and the end of July of that same year he returned to occupy the Treasury portfolio. But with the return to power of the moderates that ended the regency of Espartero, Mendizábal had to go into exile.
During this second exile, he settled in Paris where his business did not go well which led him to bankruptcy. Thanks to a partial amnesty, he was able to return to Madrid in October 1846 and stand in the elections held two months later, in which he was elected deputy. Since then, he headed the most conservative sector of progressive liberalism, which had no chance of returning to power because of the Crown's exclusive link with the Moderate Party.He died in 1853 leaving many debts.
In 1835 Mendizábal had already been elected attorney for Gerona, but in 1836 he was elected attorney for Barcelona, Granada, Pontevedra, Málaga, Cádiz and Madrid (he chose Cádiz), which gives an idea of his power. Again in 1836-1837 and in 1838-1839 he was deputy for Madrid. In 1839, elected deputy for Madrid, Albacete and Murcia, he opted for Murcia. He went to Madrid in 1840; in 1841 he was also elected, although he was also elected by Albacete, Ávila, Murcia, Cádiz and Toledo. When the regency was debated due to the minority of Isabel II, he declared himself in favor of the triple regency against Espartero, that is, he was a member of the side of the "Trinidadians". He represented Madrid in the first legislature of 1843 and that year he was Minister of Finance again, but the counterrevolution made him flee to France and he did not return until 1846. He was still a deputy for Madrid between 1846 and 1850.
Historical memory
«Mendizábal became a true political myth from the moment of his death [in 1853]. His burial constituted an authentic manifestation of progressivism". thus in the personal triad of reference of the progressive liberals and of the Spanish liberal revolution. The erection of a statue already cast in his honor had to wait ten years because the government prevented it through a legal trick—since the authorization for the erection of the statue had already been granted, it had the Cortes approve a law that prevented the placement of statues in public places before 50 years have elapsed since the death of the honorees. Finally, in the Democratic Six-year period the monument could be placed in the Plaza del Progreso in Madrid, which, by the way, had been configured after the demolition of a Mercedarian convent disentailed.
This is how the myth of the revolutionary and statesman Mendizábal was born, who died in poverty, and who would be picked up by the men of the Six-year term and who would be exalted by historians and liberal writers, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, who dedicated one of his National episodes. But at the same time the negative myth of Mendizábal was born, which was as strong as the positive one, and which portrayed him as the highest representative of anti-clericalism, as the disentailer who had seized the Church's assets for the benefit of his speculator friends, stockbrokers and holders of public debt.
As Julio Caro Baroja recalled in his pioneering book on anti-clericalism in Spain, «when the triumphant forces of General Franco entered Madrid [on March 29, 1939], one of the first symbolic acts they carried out was to demolish the statue of Mendizábal and change the name of the Plaza del Progreso, where it stood. The good thing was that the name and statue were replaced by those of a friar, who did not shine due to the austerity of his ideas: I am referring to the master Tirso de Molina, creator of Don Juan, Don Gil of the green leggings and other figures of our theater, not very holy in general". The statue was then destroyed and the Madrid street that bore his name was renamed Víctor Pradera, a Carlist traditionalist.
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