[1874 - 1931] The Restoration

We are in the year 1874. Spain is exhausted. The nation has just endured six years of what can only be described as a political whirlwind—a deposed queen, a foreign king who abdicated in frustration, and a chaotic, short-lived First Republic that saw four different presidents in just eleven months. The country is fractured, teetering on the edge of collapse, bleeding from civil wars. It craves one thing above all else: order. Stability. A return to something predictable. And so, the military and the political elite turn to a familiar solution. They call for a king. In the final days of 1874, a general’s proclamation brings the monarchy back, and with it, the young, handsome, and charismatic Prince Alfonso, who becomes King Alfonso XII. He arrives not as a conqueror, but as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. His return ushers in the era we call the Restoration, a period that promises to heal a wounded nation. The architect of this new age is not the king, but a man of formidable intellect and political cunning: Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. A conservative historian and statesman, Cánovas designs a system meant to be unshakable. He envisions a constitutional monarchy, inspired by the British model, but with a uniquely Spanish twist. He creates a new constitution in 1876, one that establishes Catholicism as the state religion but allows for private tolerance of other faiths, and which enshrines shared power between the King and the Cortes, the Spanish parliament. But the real genius—or perhaps, the fatal flaw—of Cánovas’s system is the *turno pacífico*, the "peaceful turn." He convinces his great political rival, the liberal Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, to join him in a pact. Their two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, will simply take turns in power. When one government grows tired or faces a crisis, the king will dismiss it and invite the opposition to form a new one. They will then call an election, which, miraculously, they will always win. How? This is where the polished veneer of Madrid politics meets the gritty reality of rural Spain. The system runs on a vast, intricate network of corruption known as *caciquismo*. In every town and village, a local political boss, the *cacique*, holds immense power. He is the man who can get you a job, solve a legal problem, or make your life impossible. Before an election, the Ministry of the Interior in Madrid sends the list of "approved" candidates down to the provincial governors, who pass it to the *caciques*. They, in turn, ensure the correct result, using every tool at their disposal: intimidation, bribery, and even resurrecting the dead to cast votes. The will of the people is a fiction; power is a pre-arranged deal made in a smoke-filled room. For a time, it works. The constant military coups and revolutions cease. A fragile peace settles over the land. In the cities, particularly Madrid, Barcelona, and the Basque Country, a new Spain is being born. Factories spring up, belching smoke into the sky. Railways stitch the country together, shrinking vast distances. The grand boulevards of the cities, like Madrid’s nascent Gran Vía, are lined with ornate new buildings in the Belle Époque style, their stone facades and elegant ironwork a testament to the wealth of a growing industrial and financial bourgeoisie. The well-to-do fill the new cafés, theaters, and opera houses. Men in sharp suits and bowler hats discuss business, while women, constrained by tight-laced corsets and elaborate dresses, manage sprawling households. The first telephones begin to ring, electric lights flicker to life, replacing the soft glow of gas lamps in wealthy homes and on city streets. It is an age of progress, but only for a few. Step away from these islands of modernity, and you find a different Spain, one that has barely changed in centuries. At the dawn of the Restoration, over 60% of the population is illiterate. In the great estates of Andalusia in the south, landless peasants (*jornaleros*) toil from sunup to sundown for pitiful wages, living in conditions of near-servitude. In the north, smallholding farmers eke out a meager existence on tiny plots of land. For these millions, the political debates in Madrid are a distant, meaningless hum. Their reality is the harvest, the Church, and the local *cacique*. This deep social chasm breeds resentment. In the industrializing cities, a new class of urban workers faces grueling hours, dangerous conditions, and squalid housing. They find their voice not in the rigged political system, but in new, radical ideologies. Anarchism, with its promise of a stateless, egalitarian society, takes powerful root, especially in Catalonia and Andalusia. Socialists organize unions and call for revolution. The state responds with brutal repression, creating a vicious cycle of bombings, assassinations, and executions. Then comes the moment of national trauma. By the 1890s, all that remains of Spain's once-mighty global empire are Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and a few scattered islands. Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," is in open rebellion. The United States, a rising power with its own imperial ambitions, watches with interest. In 1898, the American battleship USS Maine explodes in Havana harbor. Blaming Spain, Washington declares war. The Spanish-American War is a swift, humiliating catastrophe. The aging Spanish fleet, hopelessly outmatched, is annihilated in battles in Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. In just a few months, it is all over. Spain loses the last significant remnants of its empire. The year 1898 becomes known simply as "the Disaster." It is more than a military defeat; it is a profound psychological wound. The nation is forced to confront its own decay, its fall from a great world power to a second-rate European nation. A generation of intellectuals, the "Generation of '98," grapples with the question: "What is wrong with Spain?" The shock of '98 destabilizes Cánovas's carefully constructed system, which he himself would not see, having been assassinated by an anarchist the year before. The *turno pacífico* continues, but it is now a ghost, a mechanism unable to address the country’s real problems. Regional nationalism in Catalonia and the Basque Country grows stronger, demanding autonomy. Labor unrest becomes more violent, culminating in Barcelona’s "Tragic Week" of 1909, an anti-war protest that explodes into a week of church-burning and street fighting, savagely crushed by the army. King Alfonso XIII, who came to the throne in 1902, lacks his father's peacemaking touch. He is an interventionist, a man who enjoys the swagger of military life and who meddles constantly in politics, further weakening the constitutional framework. The final crisis comes from North Africa. Spain’s colonial war in Morocco is a costly, bloody drain on the nation. In 1921, at the Battle of Annual, Spanish forces suffer a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Moroccan rebels, with casualties estimated at over 10,000. The disaster sparks outrage at home and a parliamentary inquiry that threatens to implicate high-ranking officials, perhaps even the king himself. To prevent the system from collapsing and to save himself from the inquiry, Alfonso XIII makes a fateful gamble. In 1923, he supports a military coup led by General Miguel Primo de Rivera. The constitution is suspended, parliament is dissolved, and a dictatorship is established. The Restoration, born from a military proclamation, now dies by one. Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship brings order for a few years, but it is the order of the barracks. When the global economic crash of 1929 hits, his regime crumbles. In 1930, he resigns and flees, leaving the king exposed and utterly discredited for having supported him. In April 1931, municipal elections are held across Spain. The vote is meant to be about local councils, but everyone understands it is a referendum on the monarchy itself. The results are an earthquake. While monarchist parties win in the rural areas controlled by the *caciques*, republican parties sweep the cities in a landslide. A vast, jubilant crowd gathers in Madrid. The king, seeing that the army and even his own ministers will not support him, accepts the verdict. On the 14th of April, 1931, Alfonso XIII quietly slips out of his palace and into exile, without a single shot being fired. The long, fragile era of the Restoration is over. As the sun rises, it illuminates the purple, yellow, and red flags of a new Spanish Republic.