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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: A New History of Modern Europe (NWME)
- Sprache: Englisch
Modern Spain: 1808 to the Present is a comprehensive overview of Spanish history from the Napoleonic era to the present day.
- Places a large emphasis on Spain's place within broader European and global history
- The chronological political narrative is enriched by separate chapters on long term economic, social and cultural developments
- This presentation of modern Spanish history incorporates the latest thinking on key issues of modernity, social movements, nationalism, democratization and democracy
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Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
LIST OF MAPS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS
POLITICAL CHRONOLOGY OF SPANISH HISTORY, 1808–2016
PART I: 1808–1868: THE ERA OF THE LIBERAL REVOLUTION
1 SPAIN IN THE “AGE OF REVOLUTIONS”
Spain in Europe and the World, 1780s–1820
A Snapshot of the Economy: Gradual Growth
Uneven Regional Development: Center/Periphery Divide
Demography: A Growth Pattern
Characteristics of the Population: Occupation and Social Structure
Culture and Community
Political Crisis, 1808–1814
Conclusion
2 POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION
Introduction: The Liberal Revolution in Comparative Context
The Major Players
Chronology: From the Restoration of Absolutism to the Construction and Crisis of the Liberal State, 1814–1868
Conclusion: Achievements and Limits of the Liberal Political Transformation
PART II: 1868–1923: THE EMERGENCE OF MASS POLITICS
3 POLITICS ON THE MARGINS OF THE LIBERAL STATE
Introduction: Mid‐Nineteenth‐century Popular Politics in Comparative Perspective
The Major Players
The First Democracy: The Sexenio, 1868–1874
Conclusion
4 A NEW ERA OF LIBERAL POLITICS
The Restoration in Comparative Context: State, Nation, Empire and Democracy
The Multiple Faces of the Restoration Regime
Evaluating the Constraints and Opportunities of Restoration Politics
The “Disaster” of 1898: The Start of a New Era?
5 RESTORATION POLITICS
Introduction: Early Twentieth‐Century Spanish Politics in Comparative Context
1898–1914: Efforts to Reform the Regime “From Above”
The Conservative Party and Antonio Maura
The Liberal Party and José Canalejas
1914–23: From Elite Reform to Mass Mobilization: Alternative Political Projects
Turning Points in the Crisis of the Restoration, 1917–23
A Last Effort at Reform “From Above,” 1920–23?
Conclusion
PART III: The Long View: SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CHANGE, 1830–1930
6 ECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION
Spain in the World Economy, 1830–1930
General Economic and Population Trends: Gradual Growth and Structural Evolution
The Agricultural Sector
The Industrial Sector
Uneven Regional Development: Center/Periphery Divide
Conclusion: Missed Opportunities or Inherent Constraints?
7 CULTURE AND SOCIETY, 1830–1930
Introduction: Social and Cultural Evolution in Comparative Perspective
The Social Order: Evolution and Diversity
Sociability and Identity: A Diverse and Evolving Cultural Landscape
Conclusion
PART IV: DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY, 1923–PRESENT
8 THE FIRST DICTATORSHIP
Introduction: The Primo Regime in Comparative Perspective
From Coup to “Temporary” Dictatorship, 1923–1925
Elements of a New Kind of Dictatorship: The Civil Directory, 1925–1929
End of the Dictatorship, 1929–1930
Political Transition to a Republic, 1930–1931
Conclusion
9 THE SECOND REPUBLIC
The Second Republic in Comparative Perspective
Periodization: The Shifting Majority Coalitions of the Second Republic
The First Biennium (1931–1933): Pursuing a Center/Left Majority Coalition
What Went Wrong with the First Biennium?
The Second Biennium, 1933–1935: Pursuing a Center/Right Majority Coalition
What Went Wrong with the Second Biennium?
The Popular Front, February–July 1936
Conclusion
10 THE CIVIL WAR
The Civil War in Comparative Perspective
From Military Coup to Civil War: The Summer of 1936
Organizing for the Long War: The Republicans
Organizing for the Long War: The Nationalists
The Military Stages of the War
Conclusion
11 THE SECOND DICTATORSHIP
The Franco Regime in Comparative Perspective
Periodization: The Stages of the Franco Dictatorship
Phase One, 1936–1945: Militarization, Fascist Influence and Extreme Repression
Phase II, 1945–1957: National Catholicism, Monarchist Restoration and International Integration
Phase III, 1957–1969: Authoritarian Development and Institutionalization
Phase IV, 1969–1975: Collapse of the Coalition and Death of the Dictator
Conclusion
12 ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION, 1930s–1970s
Economy, Society and Culture in Comparative Perspective
Economic and Demographic Trends
Social and Cultural Trends
Conclusion
13 THE LAST DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION
The Transition to Democracy in Comparative Perspective
Origins of the Transition: Favorable Factors vs. the 1930s
The Institutional Transition: July 1976–December 1978
From Transition to Consolidation, 1978–1982
Conclusion
14 DEMOCRATIC STATE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION, 1982–2016
The Democratic Era in Comparative Perspective
Democratic government under PSOE leadership: 1982–1996
From Consolidation to
Crispación
: PP and PSOE alternation from 1996 to 2011
2008–2016: Crisis and Uncertainty
Conclusion
WORKS CITED
INDEX
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
List of Illustrations
Chapter 01
Map I The Spanish Empire, 1800
Map II Terrain and Regions, 1800
Chapter 10
Map III‐1 Stages of the Civil War 1936–39: July 1936
Map III‐2 Stages of the Civil War 1936–39: March 1937
Map III‐3 Stages of the Civil War 1936–39: March‐April 1938
Map III‐4 Stages of the Civil War 1936–39: February 1939
Chapter 14
Map IV The State of the Autonomous Communities
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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A NEW HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE
This series provides stimulating, interpretive histories of particular nations of modern Europe. Assuming no prior knowledge, authors describe the development of a country through its emergence as a modern state up to the present day. They also introduce readers to the latest historical scholarship, encouraging critical engagement with comparative questions about the nature of nationhood in the modern era. Looking beyond the immediate political boundaries of a given country, authors examine the interplay between the local, national, and international, setting the story of each nation within the context of the wider world.
Published
Modern Greece: A History since 1821John S. Koliopoulos & Thanos M. Veremis
Modern Spain: 1808 to the PresentPamela Beth Radcliff
MODERN SPAIN
1808 to the Present
PAMELA BETH RADCLIFF
University of California, San DiegoLaJolla, CA, U.S
This edition first published 2017© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Pamela Beth Radcliff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Name: Radcliff, Pamela Beth, author.Title: Modern Spain, 1808 to the present / Pamela Beth Radcliff.Description: First edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2017. | Series: A new history of modern Europe ; 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016051172 | ISBN 9781405186797 (hardback) | ISBN 9781405186803 (paper) | ISBN 9781119369936 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119369929 (ePUB)Subjects: LCSH: Spain–History–19th century. | Spain–History–20th century. | Spain–History–21st century. | BISAC: HISTORY / Modern / General.Classification: LCC DP203 .R28 2017 | DDC 946/.07–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051172
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © nicolamargaret/Gettyimages
LIST OF MAPS
Map I
:
The Spanish Empire, 1800
Map II
:
Terrain and Regions, 1800
Map III‐1
–
4
:
Stages of the Civil War, 1936–39
Map IV
:
The State of the Autonomous Communities
PREFACE
Writing the history of modern Spain has been a thorny endeavor since the first “national” histories appeared in the mid‐nineteenth century. Battling “national biographies” articulated two versions of Spain’s identity, one rooted in Catholicism and heroic religious conquest and the other drawing on secular liberties as encapsulated in the 1812 Constitution of C`ádiz. The image of “two Spains” at war with each other seemed to be confirmed by an apparently unending series of civil wars, beginning with the First Carlist War in the 1830s and culminating with the apotheosis of the more infamous Civil War of the 1930s. During the long dictatorship that followed the Civil War (1939–1975), the victorious Francoists proclaimed the triumph of traditional Catholic Spain while the defeated liberals and socialists reluctantly acceded to this interpretation and vainly tried to understand why modernizing forces had failed to lift Spain out of the dark ages.
From outside of Spain, the failure motif dominated as well, although sometimes with a tinge of romantic admiration of the feisty Spaniards and their colorful if chaotic history. In the Anglo‐American historical tradition, a deeply ingrained anti‐Catholicism helped create a long pattern of hostility towards Spanish history. Spain was considered the country of the intolerant Inquisition, the empire that raped the Americas, the model for Old World tyranny, as against the liberties of the Anglo‐Saxon political tradition. This hostility led to the so‐called “black legend,” which was the dominant view of early modern Spain until quite recently.1 French Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu shared this vision of a country held back by religious fanaticism. The flip side of the “black legend” was a romantic vision, beginning with Lord Byron’s celebration of the brave Spaniards fighting the invaders during the Napoleonic occupation. This romanticism was popularized through Bizet’s 1875 opera, Carmen, but continued in one form or another in twentieth‐century Anglo‐American observers from Ernest Hemingway to George Orwell. Whether positive or negative, both of these perspectives viewed Spaniards as somehow different, out of step with “normal” modern European history.2
Adding to Spain’s marginalization in the English‐language historiography is the historically weak presence of Spanish history in US universities. In 1970, only 13 of the 135 universities with graduate programs had a Spanish historian who could train students. By 2000 the number had risen to 37, but that still only represents one‐fourth of the total. More broadly, only about 11 percent of US undergraduate institutions have courses dedicated to Spanish history in their history department.3 Thus, most students in the United States still learn what little they do about Spain from survey courses, whose textbooks either ignore or employ negative stereotypes in their treatment of Spain.
Inside Spain, the question of why Spain had failed to follow a “normal” path to modernity dominated Spanish historiography in the 1960s and 1970s. There were two versions of the “normal” path in social science literature at the time, the liberal and the Marxist. The liberal “modernization theory” scripted a uniform process of becoming modern with the industrialization, democratization and technological development of the most “advanced” countries as the yardstick.4 Marxists scripted an equally uniform process in which this transformation was spearheaded by an emerging bourgeois class, whose job was to prepare the ground for the future working‐class‐led socialist revolution. Liberal Spanish historians viewed Spain as failing to develop a stable liberal political system, while for Marxist historians it was the failure of a bourgeois revolution. Both could agree that the core of the problem lay in economic backwardness, as embodied in the title of a classic study, The Failure of the Industrial Revolution in Spain, 1814–1913.5
This pessimistic framework of modern Spanish history began to change after the successful transition to democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. For historians of Spain, this reference point opened a new set of “origin” questions, but now ones that culminated in “success” instead of “failure.” If Spain had been “backward” and “different” for almost 200 years, how had it so quickly “normalized” into European patterns? This apparent paradox helped generate a revisionist historiography and a new narrative of Spain’s modern history. Instead of failure, the revisionists argued that Spain had followed the same basic path of modernity as other European states, albeit at a different pace. From an economic perspective, David Ringrose argued that Spain experienced a steady trajectory of economic development that was within the range of general European trends.6 From a political perspective, Isabel Burdiel argued that Spain had indeed experienced a liberal political and juridical revolution in the early nineteenth century.7
Contemporaneous developments in the broader European historiography supported this revisionist perspective. The notion of a uniform path to modernity whose deviations had to be explained was also being challenged from other national historiographies. Most famously, David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley argued that German historians had to stop framing their search for origins around the apparent paradox between a successful bourgeois revolution and the failure of a liberal revolution. Instead of automatic links between the stock elements of “modernity,” each nation followed its “peculiar” path.8 Adrian Shubert first incorporated this insight into Spanish history, embracing the idea of “peculiar” paths instead of a ranked hierarchy of most advanced or most backward European countries.9
What linked all these peculiar paths together was the broad arc of transformations that defined Europe since 1800. Spain, like the others, went from an agricultural to an industrial country. Like the others, it went from an absolutist to a liberal state in the nineteenth century and from a liberal state to a democratic one in the twentieth century. Again, it was transformed from a rural society to a largely urban society. And finally, Spain experienced the same kinds of political conflicts and tensions that these transformations produced in other countries. Revisionists acknowledged that there were specific elements to the Spanish story, like the prominent place of the Catholic Church, the uneven impact of industrialization, the role of the military in politics, and the specific constellation of political forces, but they insisted that the general framework was a “western European” one.
By looking at the picture this way, we not only transform our perspective on Spain, but on Europe. Instead of seeing the “European model” as equated with Britain or France, we recognize that there was no single path to modernity but “multiple modernities,” none of which constituted the “normal” or the “failed” route.10 The result is a more complex history of Europe in the modern period and one which gives us a better idea of the diversity of experiences. Instead of a single British “model” with a host of “exceptions,” including Spain helps us recast Britain as the exception within Europe rather than the rule.
While the revisionist narrative has been a welcome corrective to the “failure” paradigm, we need to add another layer of complexity to complete Spain’s integration into a broader European and global framework in the twenty‐first century. Thus, just at the moment when Spanish historians were celebrating Spain’s normalization in modern European development, that “normal” path has been subjected to increasing criticism. In the revisionist narrative, the replacement of “failure” with “success” implicitly aligned it with a positive vision of modernity from which Spain was no longer excluded.
But that positive vision of modernity has been increasingly challenged. Within European history, most historians of Nazi Germany finally gave up the effort to explain how Nazism was a product of some deviation from “normal” development and accepted that Nazism and fascism were modern regimes produced by modern forces.11 From a different perspective, revisionist French historians have argued that the celebrated birth of modern political culture in the French Revolution produced not only democracy but totalitarianism, while Foucault linked the rise of the modern state with new and more repressive forms of surveillance and discipline.12 From the post‐colonial perspective, Europe’s claim to modernity was used as an implement of domination, relegating colonial peoples to permanent backwardness and justifying their subjugation.13 The “modernity” that has emerged from all of these trends is at once more diverse and plural and more ambivalent in its achievements.
It is within this more ambivalent trajectory that Spain’s modern history can and should be fully integrated. Thus, rather than a long struggle between “two Spains,” one “modern” and the other “traditional,” the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were a period in which Spain constructed its own unscripted path to modernity, with all the “normal” achievements, contradictions and dark consequences. From the official “birth” of modern Spain in the “age of revolutions,” the task of this book is to chart the complex interaction of local, regional, national, European and international developments that produced Spain’s specific version of modern history. In contrast to the often insular narrative of Spain’s modern history, this book foregrounds a comparative perspective that has become an indispensable feature of national histories in a global age.
The other major task of the book is to tell this story from multiple perspectives without abandoning the coherence of a narrative arc. To some degree, this is the challenge of all interpretive synthetic histories, which have to balance a political narrative of chronological events with social, cultural and economic developments that often follow a different rhythm. It is also the challenge of national histories, which carry the risk of folding a multitude of local and regional or global stories into a narrative in which the emergence and coalescence of the nation‐state was the predetermined outcome.
Without aiming for an impossible and unwieldy “total” history, this book will aim to incorporate historical developments from the local to the regional, national and global while making the case that these perspectives add up to the history of modern Spain. Likewise, without claiming to integrate all of the sub‐disciplines of history, it will focus on four important areas and how they interacted with each other: politics, economics, society and culture. As many historians now acknowledge, no one realm of historical activity was the driving force or prime motor of history. Instead, the focus is on complex interactive models, in which different forces could be prime motors at different points, and the balance of elements could change from one society to another. Economic, social and cultural developments are deliberately separated from the political narrative (Chapters 6, 7 and 12) because they can best be viewed from a longer‐term perspective.
A final aim of the book is to communicate on different levels so as to reach various audiences: from the undergraduate student, to graduate students and other specialists seeking information on the latest debates and scholarship, and finally as a tool for non‐Spanish historians to integrate Spain into a more complex European and global history narrative. Specialists can delve into the endnotes for historiography, non‐Spanish historians can focus on the comparative section that introduces each chapter, and undergraduates can choose to read only the political narrative or also the chapters dedicated to social, economic and cultural history, each with plentiful sub‐headings to guide the way. The hope is that the book should not only help construct a new history of modern Spain, but contribute to the ongoing efforts to reframe the whole process of social, political and economic transformation that defines modern European and global history.
Notes
1
Richard Kagan, “Prescott’s paradigm: American historical scholarship and the decline of Spain,”
AHR
C1(1996), pp. 423–46. The “black legend” of a ruthless and intolerant Spanish empire was popularized in Julián Juderías,
La leyenda negra y la verdad histórica: contribución al estudio del concepto de España en Europa, de las causas de este concepto y de la tolerancia política y religiosa en los países civilizados
(Madrid, Tip. de la Revista de Archivos, 1914).
2
Jose Alvarez Junco, “The formation of Spanish identity and its adaptation to the age of nations,”
History and Memory
14(1–2) 2002, pp. 13–36.
3
Adrian Shubert, “Spanish historians and English‐speaking scholarship,”
Social History
29, 2004.
4
Michael Latham, “Modernization,” in
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
(Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008, 2nd edition).
5
Jordi Nadal,
El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España, 1814–1913
(Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1984. Spanish edition 1975).
6
Spain, Europe and the Spanish Miracle, 1700–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7
“Myths of failure, myths of success: new perspectives on nineteenth century Spanish liberalism,”
JMH
LXX (1998), 892–912.
8
The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Politics and Society in 19th Century German History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
9
A Social History of Modern Spain
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
10
Bjorn Wittrock, “One, none or many? European origins and modernity as a global condition,” in
Daedalus
129(1), 2004, special issue on multiple modernities.
11
Zygmunt Bauman,
Modernity and the Holocaust
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
12
Furet,
The Passing of an Illusion: the Idea of Communism in the 20th Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Foucault,
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
(NY: Pantheon Books, 1977)
.
13
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I first agreed to take on the ambitious task of writing a general history of modern Spain, I only dimly understood what I was getting myself into. After completing two monographic books and teaching for more than 20 years, I was attracted by the thought of stepping back and putting together my version of the “big picture.” Although there was a rich corpus of specialized scholarship, I was dissatisfied with the existing interpretive frameworks and thought it was time for a fresh perspective. It turned out to be a lot more difficult to define my own framework than I had thought, but it finally crystallized in one productive weekend when I sat down and wrote the first draft of the preface. With that overarching trajectory in place, I could dedicate myself to the monumental task of mastering the existing historiography on each of the discrete periods and themes, and mapping the smaller and larger debates that shape scholarly conversations. It is to all the scholars who have participated in this process that I owe the greatest debt. Although it is impossible to thank them all by name, no book like this could be written without relying on the expertise of hundreds of historians who have enriched the historical study of Spain over the previous decades. I have cited some of them in the endnotes of the text, as a guide for specialists who want to dig deeper into particular topics, but they represent only a drop in the bucket of all the books and articles that informed my thinking.
I am particularly indebted to the scholars who generously agreed to read one or more draft chapters on the areas of their expertise: Juan Pro Ruíz, Scott Eastman, Eric Van Young, Chris Schmidt‐Nowara, Inmaculada Blasco, Isabel Burdiel, Adrian Shubert, Ferrán Archilés, Florencia Peyrou, Javier Moreno, Julio de la Cueva, David Ortiz, Foster Chamberlin, Nigel Townson, Nick Saenz, Andrea Davis, José Alvarez Junco, Fernando del Rey, Stephen Jacobson, Tim Rees, Carolyn Boyd, Julián Casanova, Sandie Holguin, Sasha Pack, Antonio Cazorla, Juan Pan Montojo, Ismael Saz and Jesus Cruz. I decided to send each chapter to at least two experts, to make sure I had included all the important recent scholarship and hopefully to spot any errors or oversights. Their feedback was invaluable and unquestionably made this a better book. Of course, any remaining errors or oversights are my own responsibility.
More broadly, I want to thank my students, both undergraduate and graduate, who have kept me reading, discussing and rethinking my narrative of Spanish history over the last 25 years. In the summer of 2015, my undergraduate Global Seminar students in Madrid agreed to be guinea pigs by reading the first draft of the book for our History of Modern Spain course, and their responses were very helpful in making final revisions. The Ph.D. students who have worked with me over the years have taught me as much as I taught them, educating me about new areas of research, challenging old assumptions and keeping me engaged in the field.
My colleagues in the UCSD History department have always been supportive and encouraging, making it possible to write this book while serving as department chair. Outside the department, members of the Southwestern Symposium of Spanish history and the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies have provided helpful feedback and a community of scholars for those of us dedicated to Spanish history in the US. It saddens me deeply that three of our community’s most eminent scholars, who were also dear colleagues and friends, Carolyn Boyd, Chris Schmidt‐Nowara and my Ph.D. adviser, Edward Malefakis, have left us in the last year.
I am grateful to Wiley Blackwell and the series of editors who have kept my book moving along, despite changes and consolidations at the press, particularly Tessa Harvey, who recruited me and gave useful feedback on the first chapters, and Haze Humbert, who is carrying it to completion.
My final debt is to my children, Olivia and Lucas. My first book was finished the week Olivia was born, and the second book required bringing both kids to Spain for a year to complete the research. For this book, it is appropriate but bitter‐sweet that I finished this project and packed them off to college all at once. Through it all, they have kept me balanced and grounded in the real world as they grew up into wonderful young adults.
ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS
AAVV
Asociaciones de Vecinos:
Neighborhood Associations
ACF
Asociaciones de Cabezas de Familia:
Head of Household Associations, 1960s
AC
Acción Católica:
Catholic Action
ACM
Acción Católica de la Mujer:
Catholic Action for Women
AAC
Asociaciones de Amas de Casa:
Homemaker Associations
ACNP
Asociacion Católica Nacional de Propagandistas:
organization of Catholic intellectuals
afrancesados
supporters of Napoleon’s rule in Spain
africanista
officer in the Army of Africa
aliadófilos
supporters of the Allies in the First World War
AMA
Asociación de Mujeres Antifascistas
AP
Alianza Popular: Conservative party, 1977–1989
AR
Alianza Republicana (1926):
Republican Alliance, led by Manuel Azaña
ateneo
cultural center
ateneo libertario
anarchist cultural center
bienio
two‐year period, especially the first and second periods of the Second Republic
braceros
landless laborers
caciques
local political bosses
caciquismo
network of political bosses to control elections
casa del pueblo
Socialist workers’ center
Caudillo
supreme leader, Franco
CEDA
Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas:
Confederation of the Spanish Right, Second Republic
Cenetista
member of the CNT
CCOO
Comisiones Obreras:
workers’ commissions
CiU
Convergència I Unió
Catalan nationalist coalition founded 1978
CNT
Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores:
anarcho‐syndicalist trade union movement
Confederación Católica de Padres de Familia y Padres de Alumnos:
Catholic federation of parents
consumos
tax on food/basic items
Coordinación Democrática
united opposition coalition (March 1976)
Cortes
parliament
crispación
tension or conflict
curas obreros
worker priests
DLR
Derecha Liberal Republicana:
Conservative Republican party, Second Republic
EC
Estat Català
: Catalan State, left wing Catalan nationalist party, 1923
encasillado
official list of candidates
ensanche
planned urban extension
ERC
Esquerra Repúblicana de Catalunia:
left wing Catalan nationalist party (1931–)
Estatuto Real
1834 Moderate Charter
ETA
“Basque Country and Freedom”: armed Basque group (1959–2012)
exaltados
radical liberals in the 1820s
EC
European Community (1958–1993)
FAI
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
(1927–): purist anarchist organization
Falange Española y de las Jons
Fascist party, 1933–37
FNTT
Federación Nacional da Trabajadores de la Tierra
, 1930s, Socialist rural workers’ union
FRE
Spanish Regional Federation of the First International (1870–1881)
Fuero de los Españoles
Francoist regime “Bill of Rights,” 1945
Fuero de Trabajo
Labor Charter, 1938
fueros
special rights/privileges
Generalitat
Catalan governing body (1932–39, 1978–)
germanófilo
supporters of the Central Powers in the First World War
hidalgos
lesser nobility
HB
Herri Batasuna:
Basque nationalist party affiliated with ETA (1978–2001)
HOAC
Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica
: Catholic Action Workers’ Guild
Indignados/15–M
social movement for the 99 percent
IR
Izquierda Republicana:
Republican Left, Second Republic
IU
Izquierda Unida:
left–wing coalition of several groups, including PCE (1986–)
JDE
Junta Democrática de España: PCE–led opposition coalition (1974)
JOC
Juventud Obrera Católica: Catholic Workers’ Youth Organization
Junta
council or governing body
juntas de defensa
councils of junior officers post‐First World War
juntismo
forming political action groups
latifundia
large estate
liceo
literary cultural center
Lliga Regionalista
Catalanist party (1901–1936)
Mancomunidad
Catalan administrative institution (1913)
Mauristas
supporters of Antonio Maura’s sector of the Conservative party
minifundia
tiny plots of land
ML
Mujeres Libres:
anarchist women’s organization
Movimiento
the unified political organization of the Nationalists formed in 1937
ORT
Organización Revolucionaria de Trabajadores:
Revolutionary Organization of Workers
OSE
Organización Sindical Española:
Francoist “vertical” trade union organization
PCE
Partido Comunista de España:
Spanish Communist Party
Platajunta
Unified democratic opposition, March 1976
PCD
Plataforma de Convergencia Democrática:
PSOE‐led opposition coalition (1975)
PNV
Partido Nacional Vasco:
Basque Nationalist party (1895–)
POUM
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista:
dissident communist party 1930s
PP
Partido Popular:
the renamed AP after 1989
PRRS
Partido Republicana Radical Socialista:
Radical Socialist Party, Second Republic
pistolerismo
street gun‐battles, especially post‐First World War
pueblo
the “people”
pronunciamiento
military‐led change of government
PSOE
Partido Socialista de Obreros Españoles:
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (1879–)
PSUC
Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya: Communist party of Catalonia
(1936–1997)
PTE
Partido de Trabajadores Españoles:
Spanish Workers’ Party
Regulares
Moroccan troops on the Nationalist side
renaixenca
Catalan cultural renaissance, nineteenth century
reparto
redistribution of land
Requetés
Carlist militia, Civil War
señorio
feudal fief
Sexenio
six‐year period, 1868–1874
SEU
Sindicato de Estudiantes Españoles:
Francoist Student association
SF
Sección Femenina:
Female Section of the
Movimiento
Somatén
employer‐funded paramilitary units, supported by Primo regime
tertulia
discussion group
turno pacifico
peaceful alternation of Liberal and Conservative parties, 1876–1923
trienio
three‐year period, especially the liberal period, 1820–1823
UCD
Unión del Centro Democrático:
party of Adolfo Suarez, 1977–83
UGT
Unión General de Trabajadores:
Trade union movement linked to the PSOE
UP
Unión Patriótica:
Primo regime official party
UR
Unión Republicana:
Republican Union, Second Republic
vecinos
residents linked by ties of geography and neighborliness
zarzuela
Spanish musical theater
POLITICAL CHRONOLOGY OF SPANISH HISTORY, 1808–2016
1808–1814:
Peninsular war and Constitution of 1812
1814–1833:
Restoration of Absolutist Monarchy under Ferdinand VII
1820–1823:
Liberal
Trienio
and Constitution of 1812
1823–1833:
Restoration of Absolutism
1824:
Latin American independence finalized
1833–1868:
Liberal Constitutional Monarchy of Isabel II
1833–1839:
First Carlist War
1833–1840:
Regency of Maria Cristina
1844–1854:
Moderate governments
1840–1843, 1854–1856:
Progressive governments
1868–1874:
the
Sexenio
1869–1873:
Democratic monarchy (Amadeo I, 1870–73)
1873–1874:
First Republic
1868–1878:
Ten Years’ War with Cuba
1873–1876:
Second (major) Carlist War
1874–1923:
Restoration of Constitutional Monarchy
1875–1885:
King Alfonso XII
1885–1902:
Regency of Maria Cristina
1895–1898:
Cuban rebellion and independence
1898:
War with US
1902–1931:
King Alfonso XIII
1923–1929:
Primo de Rivera dictatorship
1929–1931:
End of monarchy
1931–1936:
Second Republic
1931–1933:
First
Bienio
1933–1936:
Second
Bienio
1936:
Popular Front
1936–1939:
Civil War
1939–1976:
Franco dictatorship
1975:
death of Franco
1976–1978:
Transition to Democracy
1977:
first elections
1978:
Constitution
1978–:
Democratic monarchy under Juan Carlos I
February 1981:
Attempted coup
1982–1996:
the PSOE era
1986:
Joined EC
1996–2004:
PP government
2004–2011:
PSOE government
2014:
Coronation of King Felipe
PART I1808–1868: THE ERA OF THE LIBERAL REVOLUTION
1SPAIN IN THE “AGE OF REVOLUTIONS”
To begin the history of modern Spain in 1808 is, as is always the case in periodization, a somewhat arbitrary decision. In the traditional “failure” model of modern Spain, 1808 marked the moment when the tottering old regime, including its vast but poorly managed empire, was delivered the death blow by the invasion of Napoleon’s armies. In this version, because liberal ideas were imported and imposed from the outside, the revolutionary era was more ephemeral in its long‐term impact, the opening act in an ongoing struggle between “two Spains,” in which the “modern” sector was always the weaker. In the revisionist version, 1808 was still a crucial turning point, the beginning of a liberal and national revolution that opened Spain’s modern era and demonstrated parity with what was happening in the rest of western Europe.
The year of 1808 serves both narratives because it symbolizes the inauguration of the “triple crisis” of the old regime, including the dynastic crisis sparked by the abdication of the Bourbon king and his heir, the sovereign crisis generated by the invasion of French troops and the constitutional crisis produced by the weakened legitimacy of the Spanish monarchy.1 The resistance against the French, which led to the convocation in 1810 of a constitutional parliament, or Cortes, that claimed its legitimacy from the sovereignty of the nation, unleashed Spain’s version of the political revolution that came to define the period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even though the “age of revolutions” was followed by an absolutist restoration in 1814, whose founding principle was to return to the status quo ante “as if such things had never happened,” in the words of the new King Ferdinand VII’s decree, there was no going back to the eighteenth‐century Spanish monarchy. Thus, the issues raised in this period opened a new political era that defined the parameters of debate and struggle for the next century and a half.
While 1808 marks a convenient opening act of the “modern” era in Spain (similar to 1789 for France), this political turning point was embedded in a longer transitional period, from the 1780s to the 1820s, marked by long‐term structural changes and short‐term economic crisis. At the global level, this transition culminated in radical changes in forms of government and regulation of the economy, as well as dramatic shifts in the global distribution of power. At the same time, there were significant continuities across an old regime that was more dynamic than once believed, and an emerging liberal order that took root slowly and unevenly.2
In the failure narrative, Spain was thought to be left behind during this era of global transformation, but the revisionist scholarship has painted a more dynamic portrait of an economy and society that embarked on a trajectory of gradual growth and change in the late eighteenth century that continued into the twentieth century.3
As a jumping‐off point for a book on modern Spain, this chapter will provide a snapshot of the early nineteenth century, from Spain’s position in the global order to its economic and social structure, and ending with the political crisis of 1808–1814 that marked the, admittedly porous, boundary between eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The metaphor of a “snapshot” taken from a moving train communicates better than a more static word like “baseline” a non‐linear transition from the old regime to the modern era.
Spain in Europe and the World, 1780s–1820
At the European center of the transitional and tumultuous period of the “age of revolutions” were the major empires of the era, especially the Spanish, French and British, which came into intensifying conflict around an increasingly global network of trade, commerce and consumption.4 (See Map I.) All the imperial governments responded to this competition with reforms aimed to better capture and channel profits and revenues for their benefit.5 The need for larger and more secure income streams was in turn driven by the increased military expenditure of overseas empires engaged in global warfare. But such reforms also generated colonial revolts, particularly in the Atlantic empires, which required yet more military expenditure to suppress. The fiscal crisis that afflicted all the major empires also encouraged risky political reforms, most famously the French monarch’s summoning of the representative institution, the Estates General, which launched the iconic French revolution.
Map I The Spanish Empire, 1800
In contrast to the classic Marxist narrative that interpreted this economic and political crisis as the result of an industrial and bourgeois class revolution that set in motion the unraveling of old‐regime Europe in the late eighteenth century, recent scholarship downplays the impact of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth‐century political crisis. Scholars now accept that the picture of a European industrial transformation as well under way by the early nineteenth century was greatly exaggerated. Thus, in 1840, 45 percent of the world’s industrial production came from Britain, with a second industrial node emerging in Belgium only after the 1830s.6 From this perspective, there is no failed industrial or bourgeois revolution to explain for the Spanish case.
Apart from the British exception, industrialization trajectories in the rest of Europe only began to diverge dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. Even then, national industrialization statistics would still be misleading. That is, most of the nineteenth century continental industrialization would be concentrated in a core area of central Europe that encompassed regions of various countries, including northern Italy and northern France, western Germany and Belgium, all of which shared the favorable conditions of rich coal deposits, navigable rivers, dense population and fertile land. Furthermore, industrialization was not the only path to economic growth and greater prosperity. Thus, some of the most “successful” European economies based their growth on agriculture and commerce well into the twentieth century, as was the case with the Netherlands and the rest of France. Even in England, the majority of adult workers in the mid‐nineteenth century still worked in the agricultural sector, while less than 5 percent worked in factories.
Like industrialization, urbanization also proceeded gradually, at least until the 1870s. Thus, the basic patterns of spatial organization of cities had not changed much from the outset of the sixteenth‐century expansion to the 1780s. During this period, the global urban population grew slowly, from 9 percent in 1600 to 12 percent in 1800, a percentage that did not increase significantly until after the 1870s. While capital cities like London, Paris and Berlin doubled in size in the first half of the century, most continental Europeans, including Spaniards, lived in small towns and villages.7 The point is that the impact of urbanization, like industrialization, was both uneven and fairly limited in scope outside of England in the early nineteenth century.
If most Europeans lived and worked in an agrarian economy and society in the early nineteenth century, there was also tremendous variety within this sector. One model was France, with a majority of commercial family farms and a prosperous peasant class. Another structure dominated in the eastern European countries like Poland and Russia, in which most farmland was divided into huge aristocratic estates worked by serf labor, often with low productivity. A third agrarian reality was small subsistence farming, in which poor peasants still operated on the margins of the commercial economy. In many of the European countries, but especially Spain, this variety of agrarian structures co‐existed within their national borders, shaped by landowning patterns, connection to markets, soil fertility and topography, and population density. Thus, just as there was no monolithic transformation to an industrial and urban society, there was no uniform “traditional” agrarian society waiting to be transformed.
What was happening across the globe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a series of “industrious revolutions,” powered by rising consumer demand, which reorganized both production and consumption and increased trade as well as specialization, including in the form of the slave plantations of the Caribbean and North America.8 In the Atlantic world of the Spanish, French and British empires, merchants created links between goods and consumers, bringing tea, coffee, sugar and tobacco from the Americas to European households. In Spain, a burgeoning calico industry in Catalonia fed the fashion trends of well‐heeled consumers across the empire.9 These industrious revolutions produced great wealth, but also dramatic inequalities, within societies and between them. On the global level this inequality inaugurated the “great divergence” in wealth, life expectancy and productivity between western Europe and the rest of the world that became one of the defining themes of the nineteenth century.10
At the same time, the hierarchies within Europe, between core and periphery, were also shifting, but in the eighteenth‐century economy Spain’s future as a European power was still hard to predict. Key to Spain’s potential success in the shifting global economy was building a more effective trading and commercial relationship with its American colonies. The successful reconstitution of empires to meet the challenges of the global economy would be a crucial factor in determining which states emerged from the crisis of the late eighteenth century as great powers in the nineteenth century. By 1820, the future trajectory of European imperialism was not yet clear. In some cases, reconstitution involved losing some colonies and gaining others, as with Britain and France, while Spain took the less advantageous route of colonial contraction (between 1810 and 1825 it lost continental America) and reorganization of its remaining colonies in the Antilles and Philippines.11
Still, Spain’s colonial contraction was not an inevitable outcome of the eighteenth‐century crisis. Thus, the eighteenth‐century Spanish monarchy was making a valiant and at least partially successful attempt, with the so‐called “Bourbon reforms,” to transform itself from a “conquest” empire into an effective commercial empire, an effort which was not by any means destined for failure and dissolution.12 Although it was true that Spain’s position as the old empire put it in the defensive position of having to scramble to adapt to the rapidly evolving commercial and imperial dynamics, the image of a sclerotic and desiccated Spanish empire that was waiting for one straw for the entire edifice to come tumbling down has been convincingly challenged. Transatlantic loyalty to the Spanish monarchy remained strong throughout the Napoleonic period, even as creole and metropolitan elites tried to negotiate a common solution to the crisis of imperial sovereignty. The loss of the American colonies emerged from what one scholar calls a “chain of disequilibria,” not the inherent weakness of the empire or the challenge of nationalist movements.13 Scholars disagree as to the point of no return in American independence, but few would identify 1808 as that moment.
Just as important for Spain’s position in the short term was the economic crisis of the Napoleonic era, but the negative effects were also not as uniquely devastating to Spain as once believed. Development was also interrupted in France, and the German lands suffered from French occupation and a dramatic drop in trade. For Spain, the traditional estimate of a 75 percent decline in Spanish trade between 1792 and 1827 has now been revised, leading to a more optimistic reading.14 While it is true that certain sectors declined, the impact was uneven and recovery and adaptation was relatively quick. In particular, the Atlantic port of Cádiz, which had dominated the Indies trade in the eighteenth century, experienced a virtual economic collapse from which it never fully recovered. But in other cases, goods that had been exported to the Indies quickly found other markets, like Castilian wheat and iron, which went to Cuba, and Catalan textiles, which shifted to peninsular markets and then Cuba.15 The bottom line is that existing evidence does not support the claim that the world crisis of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries propelled Spain to permanent periphery status in the nineteenth‐century world.
A Snapshot of the Economy: Gradual Growth
From the perspective of European economic diversity in the early nineteenth century, economic historians have stopped asking the ahistorical question of why Spain failed to follow the English path during this period, and turned their attention to what did happen and why. The most convincing “snapshot” of the Spanish economy in the early nineteenth century paints a picture of gradual economic and social change and sustained growth that began in the latter decades of the eighteenth century and continued through the nineteenth, propelled by demographic growth, growing commercialization and specialization, and regional trading networks. Thus, commercialized agriculture developed in the Mediterranean regions, a textile industry took shape in Catalonia and an emerging real estate market opened up more land for exploitation. At the same time, most of these developments remained local and regional in scope and impact, with a clear contrast between a more dynamic periphery and a slower growing center. The result was an uneven and unintegrated economic landscape that didn’t add up to a dynamic or national “Spanish” economy in the early nineteenth century.
An analysis of the peninsular economy in the 1770s makes clear that the natural conditions for any sort of English‐style agricultural or industrial “take‐off” were highly unfavorable. Without arguing for a geographical determinism that leaves no room for human agency, Spain had fewer of the raw conditions that fueled growth in the more successful economies. First, the peninsula was a large expanse of territory with geographical impediments to easy communication of goods and people. In contrast to the small island nation of England, which was also well‐connected by rivers, Spain had few navigable rivers to connect its hinterland with the coasts, and was divided by forbidding mountainous ranges, including the one that separated the peninsula from the rest of continental Europe. (See Map II.) It was also one of the most sparsely populated of the European countries, making it even more costly to construct market networks. Equally important, Spain had only small amounts of the coal and iron that proliferated in what would be the core industrial area of Europe. The combination of poor‐quality coal and iron and expensive transport meant that, in the early nineteenth century it was cheaper to import British coal to Catalonia than to extract and transport Spanish coal.
Map II Terrain and Regions, 1800
In terms of Spanish agriculture, unfavorable natural conditions deserve much of the blame for yields and productivity that were among the lowest in western Europe. Thus, Spain had the lowest rainfall in western Europe, and generally poor soil which was not well‐suited to growing crops. These conditions also meant that Spanish agriculture could not take advantage of the technological innovations that had been so successful in increasing yields in England, like the ox‐drawn plow.
Beyond natural conditions, there were also historical and political reasons for the unfavorable context for an agricultural revolution. In the English case, the enclosure movement of the late eighteenth century secured a regime of private property at the same time that it freed up a displaced rural workforce for industrialization. In Spain, most land was still tied up in complex ownership relationships that made private investment difficult.16 Thus, two‐thirds of the land surface of Spain was owned either by the Church or held in entail by noble families, which meant that it could not be bought or sold. Furthermore, a good chunk of the rest was common land, owned by the Crown or by cities and towns, either used collectively or leased out to tenants. Even if part of this land was cultivated, tenants had to pay stiff taxes or even seigneurial dues to the owners. Because so much land was tied up in manos muertas, literally dead hands, prices for the remaining land available for sale were driven up by the scarcity. As a result, less than 25 percent of the arable land in Spain was under cultivation in 1815.
Adding another layer to the obstacles to agricultural improvement was the seigneurial regime, which divided parts of the kingdom into private fiefdoms, although much more unevenly than in classic feudal societies like France. While seigneurialism was abolished in France during the Revolution, securing property rights for a large number of peasant proprietors, in Spain the seigneurial regime was abolished briefly in 1812–14 and again in 1820, but it was not permanently dismantled until the 1840s. Thus, in 1800, there were over 13,000 intact señoríos in Spain, which covered about two‐thirds of the territory. About half of the farming population were subjected to the jurisdictional rule of a señorío, which in some cases meant that the noble lord had rights to everything from certain services, to taxes and rents, and he served as mayor, judge and local administrator.
One final disincentive to invest in farmland were the traditional privileges maintained by the powerful sheep grazing lobby, the Mesta. From the middle ages, the graziers had maintained the privilege of migrating their sheep from summers in the mountains of Old Castile and León to winters in the plains of Extremadura and Andalucía. In 1800 an estimated five million sheep had rights to pass through any properties in their path on their 550‐ to 900‐kilometer journey, and they regularly disrupted farms and trampled crops.17 The Mesta’s so‐called right of possession had originated when wool was the center of the Castilian economy, but even after agriculture had surpassed it in importance, the lobby remained powerful enough to maintain its privileges until 1836, when it was abolished as part of the liberal reforms to create more secure private property.
Uneven Regional Development: Center/Periphery Divide
While all of these natural and manmade conditions meant that dramatic economic transformation was an unlikely scenario, a more fine‐grained regional analysis reveals an evolving rather than a stagnant economy and society, with dynamic nodes located particularly on the periphery. The divergence between a more dynamic periphery and a more slowly growing center began in the eighteenth century, when almost all of the important early modern cities of the interior, except Madrid and Zaragoza, declined.18 Thus, although the total urban population in Spain remained stable from the mid‐eighteenth to the mid‐nineteenth century, peripheral cities like Barcelona, Málaga, Valencia and Santander were expanding, as was the total percentage of the population living in the periphery.19
The most dynamic region was Catalonia, where commercial activity from the 1730s deepened into regional economic growth from the 1750s, with investment in commercial agriculture and manufacturing, linked to American silver mining and foreign trade.20 At the center of this economy was Barcelona, which grew from 30,000 inhabitants in 1717 to 100,000 in 1800. During this period, Barcelona became the most important Spanish Mediterranean port, second only to Cádiz in the volume and value of trade, which quadrupled between 1760 and 1792. While some of this trade involved re‐exporting European goods, 90 percent of the Barcelona exports in the 1790s were Spanish goods, about half of them manufactures, especially textiles, hats and paper. By this point there were almost 100 textile‐manufacturing enterprises in Barcelona, including spinning factories and calico printing, with mechanization in the spinning sector from the 1790s.21 The rest of the exports came from Catalonia’s commercial agriculture sector, including wine and brandy, as well as its fishing industry.
The Mediterranean Regional Network
But the Catalan economy was also integrated into a broader regional network that encompassed the Mediterranean coast of Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Eastern Andalucía, anchored by the port cities of Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Málaga. This network coalesced in the early eighteenth century and became increasingly vibrant as the century progressed.22 In fact, most of Barcelona’s trade was carried out along this Mediterranean trade route, with a relatively small percentage destined for the Americas. The second important node in this network was Valencia, which developed a thriving commercial agriculture in citrus and rice from the middle of the eighteenth century, as well as a silk textile industry. Further down the coast, Alicante and Cartagena became entrepôt ports for the Madrid market, trading Valencian rice for Castilian wheat, and Málaga produced wine and raisins, doubling its exports between the 1740s and the 1780s. All of these coastal cities also developed inland trading routes, from Valencia to Andalucίa, Málaga to Granada and Alicante to Madrid, which were intensified in response to the Napoleonic blockade and the disruption in the American markets. While pieces of this Mediterranean trading system certainly suffered from these economic crises, by the 1820s, recovery was under way, fueled by the rapidly growing sugar and slave economy in Cuba as well as a reorientation towards the peninsular market.
The agricultural portion of this regional dynamism was at least partly enabled by land tenure arrangements specific to the region. In Catalonia, many prosperous peasant farmers benefitted from a practice of emphyteusis, which gave them inherited rights to farm, even without ownership. And in Valencia, there were fewer forms of interference with private property, especially the rights of the Crown and the towns. While land ownership was not widespread, wealthy farmers who rented land from noble or Church owners had favorable leases that encouraged investment in irrigation and intensive farming for the specialized crops that would define the region’s agriculture. In 1785, the Crown strengthened the leaseholders’ position with a decree that a leaseholder could only be evicted if the owner wanted to farm himself. While old‐regime privileges like entail and tax exemptions still disadvantaged non‐noble farmers, when the liberal land sales began in the 1830s, these farmers had accumulated sufficient capital to buy the land they worked, while few of the noble seigneurs were able to convert their privileges into ownership. The result was a growing culture of “agrarian individualism” even within the old‐regime constraints.23 The commercialized and specialized agriculture that developed in this context illustrates the point about the heterogeneity of the Spanish economy as well as the evolving dynamism of specific sectors.
The North Atlantic Regional Network
The second and smaller peripheral regional network encompassed the northern Atlantic coast from the Basque provinces to Galicia. Although this network did not reach its peak until railways facilitated transport in the second half of the nineteenth century, from the mid‐eighteenth century the pieces of a regional commercial economy founded on small‐scale commercial agriculture and mining began to come together. Until that point, the northern provinces of Galicia, Asturias and Santander had remained fairly isolated behind mountain ranges, with local and mostly self‐sufficient small farms. With a landholding pattern very different from the Mediterranean coast, there were a large number of peasant proprietors but with small plots and less than 25 percent landless laborers. There was still variation within this general framework of small peasant‐owned farms. For example, there was a predominance of even smaller plots, or minifundia, in Galicia, as a result of the inheritance law that required division of the property among all children. In this context, the hand‐made linen industry provided extra income for families whose plots could not sustain a subsistence agriculture. On the other hand, the Basque provinces’ culture of primogeniture kept family farms intact over the generations, while extra employment was available in the iron industry. Nevertheless, the common denominator of small plots meant that the rising population of the eighteenth century pushed the limits of a subsistence economy well before the 1830s.
