Contemporary history of Spain

Despite the defeat, the linking of Godoy's position to subordination to the emperor (who had won decisive victories in land campaigns in central Europe) led to the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1807, that foresaw the joint invasion of Portugal (weak point in the continental blockade against England) and that in fact served for several French army corps to occupy strategic areas of Spain.Who is offended and harmed?

The scandalous behavior of the court, the royal family and the high officials of the bureaucracy and the army before the French military occupation and the political maneuvers of Napoleon led to a social outburst whose documentary expression was fixed in the Bando of the mayors of Móstoles after the uprising of May 2, 1808 in Madrid.

During the Triennium the Patriotic Societies and the press sought the extension of liberal concepts; while the Cortes, elected by the system of indirect universal suffrage, reinstated the Cádiz legislation (abolition of lordships and entailed estates, confiscation, closure of convents, suppression of half of the tithe), and exercised the key role given to them by the Constitution of 1812 in the name of national sovereignty, without taking into account the will of a king from whom they could not expect any institutional collaboration.

[25]The hostility of politicians and military men (Manuel Cortina, Joaquín María López, General Juan Prim), who rejected his expeditious way of resolving not only this conflict but all political life (he had dissolved the Cortes and governed in a practically dictatorial manner) left him increasingly isolated.

General Ramón Narváez was left as leader of the moderate party and assumed the presidency of the Council of Ministers (May 3, 1844), beginning an era of political stability in which the progressives were relegated to the opposition with no possibility of gaining access to the positions of power that were negotiated in the palace camarillas.

The capitalist relations of production, both in the urban and rural areas, began to generate social conflicts of a new nature (the class struggle), and in the few industrial centers it was expressed in a nascent workers' movement that became aware of its opposition of interests with the owners of capital (mobilizations of 1855 in Barcelona[30] and Valladolid[31]); while in the countryside it manifested itself in a similar way between the great mass of dispossessed day laborers and the new oligarchy of landowners.

Discarded, for obvious ideological reasons, the Carlist pretender (Carlos VII, who was weighing his options of reaching the throne by peaceful means or by an armed uprising, which would finally take place in 1872 —the Third Carlist War—), several names were considered; such as Espartero himself (the last of the Ayacuchos, already 72 years old, but who would still live 11 more), the Duke of Montpensier (brother-in-law of Isabella II) and a select group of European pretenders, among which were Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (father of the king of Portugal —the union between Portugal and Spain was promoted by the Iberian movement—) and Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (supported by Otto von Bismarck —chancellor of Wilhelm of Prussia— and rejected by Napoleon III of France, whose confrontation for this cause was among those that led to the Franco-Prussian War —telegram of Ems, July 13, 1870—).

The control of the elections through the Ministry of the Interior (encasillado of the candidates) became the key point of a system that was based on the so-called caciquismo: the local predominance of personalities of great social prestige and economic position, establishing clientelistic networks and manipulating the results (pucherazo).The talk at the back of an apothecary's shop: —I don't know, Don José, how the liberals are so doggish, so immoral.

That was what allowed the nascent Catalanist movement (around Enric Prat de la Riba — Unió Catalanista, 1891, Bases de Manresa, 1892) to reach the Parliament (Liga Regionalista, 1901); while the Basque Nationalist Party of Sabino Arana, much more radical, took several years longer.The labor movement was reorganized with the creation of parties and unions of Marxist ideology (PSOE (1879) and UGT (1888), under the leadership of Pablo Iglesias, who opted for electoral participation, with greater implantation in Madrid and the Basque Country) or anarchist (Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (1881) who opted for non-intervention in the political system, with a greater implantation in Catalonia and Andalusia).

A confusing network of anarchist groups and individuals developed practices of the so-called direct action, which included, along with peaceful measures, other violent ones (propaganda of the deed) with terrorist attacks in some cases very spectacular (bombing of the Liceo de Barcelona (1893), assassination of Cánovas in 1897), and in other cases manipulated by the authorities themselves (La Mano Negra, 1882–1884).The so-called university question was the main conflict of intellectual life and one of the most defining political issues of the new system: the Circular de Orovio of 1875 (by the Marquess of Orovio, Minister of Public Works) substantially limited academic freedom by obliging to maintain teaching in terms that did not affect Catholicism and the monarchy.

The promise of self-government and the application of Moret's anti-slavery law (delayed until 1886) did not materialize in sufficient reforms to avoid the dissatisfaction of the Cuban independence fighters and the frustration of the expectations of the autonomists, which, twenty years later ended up leading to a new war, this time with the decisive intervention of the United States, the so-called disaster of '98.

The conservative government of Eduardo Dato responded with repression, sending to prison or exile the leaders of the protests (the socialists Francisco Largo Caballero, Julián Besteiro, Indalecio Prieto, Andrés Saborit and Daniel Anguiano or the republican Marcelino Domingo —all of them with a great political future—).

The poor management of the monetary policy prevented the development of the public works program, and the economic difficulties added to the loss of popularity of the dictator, increasingly criticized by a growing opposition, especially among the university youth, intellectuals and the workers' movement; while a political conspiracy was being forged between the Republican and Socialist parties.

On June 28, 1931, elections to the constituent Parliament resulted in a chamber dominated by left-wing Republican parties, together with the PSOE, which imposed a secularist and socially advanced orientation, leading to the resignation of Alcalá Zamora and the formation of a new government presided over by Manuel Azaña (October 14, 1931).

By subordinating private property to the interests of the national economy, it responded to the need for an agrarian reform (substantiated in the Law of September 9, 1932) which provided for the expropriation with compensation of farms considered not to be exploited with sufficient social profitability (such as most of the large estates in southern Spain), for the benefit of landless day laborers.

Serious confrontations took place, such as the events of Gilena, Castilblanco, Arnedo and Casas Viejas;[59] whose management would undermine the social-anarchist government to the point of forcing the dissolution of the chamber and the calling of the elections of November 1933, in which the anarchists showed their indifference to the republican regime by abstaining.

From October 1, 1936, the rebel side was placed under the sole command of General Franco, whose prestige had been increased by the hard campaign that connected the southern and northern zones (capture of Badajoz, August 14, 1936), prolonged with the episode of the rescue of the besieged in the Alcazar of Toledo (September 27, 1936).

The consequences of the Civil War have greatly marked the subsequent history of Spain, because of their exceptionally dramatic and long-lasting nature: both demographic, which marked the population pyramid for generations (increased mortality from direct violence —175,000 dead at the front, 60,000 from repression in the national rearguard and 30,000 in the republican rearguard— and from the deterioration of living conditions and food; the destruction of the cities, of the economic structure —50% of the railway structure and more than a third of the merchant navy and livestock—,[64] of the artistic heritag —despite attempts to protect it, such as the one that led to the evacuation to Switzerland of the main collections of the Museo del Prado to avoid the bombing of Madrid, but that were unfeasible to generalize, given the dispersion of religious art—, the repression in the rearguard of both zones —maintained by the victors with greater or lesser intensity throughout the Franco regime, some 50,000 executions— and the exile of the losers), which were perpetuated well beyond the prolonged postwar period, including the geopolitical exceptionality of maintaining Franco's regime until 1975.After the Victory, an extraordinarily harsh repression spread over time (the State of War was not lifted until 1948) and was focused on the social groups identified as Anti-Spain: trade unions and Republican, leftist and peripheral nationalist parties, whose assets were confiscated.

Particular attention was paid to Freemasonry (the special object of a personal obsession of Franco's —the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy—) and a thorough purge of the Magisterium was carried out, to prevent the continuity of a body identified with republican values; as well as of all public officials, who were required to swear an oath of adherence to the principles of the National Movement.

In the context of the Yalta and Potdsdam conferences, the geostrategic calculations of Churchill and Truman considered it preferable to keep Franco in Spain (as well as Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, who was decidedly Anglophile), rather than risk an increase of Soviet influence in Western Europe just when a new alignment of blocs on both sides of the Iron Curtain was taking place at the beginning of the period known as the Cold War.

Public works policies were initiated, focused on the construction of reservoirs and other agricultural improvements such as the expansion of irrigation systems, land consolidation and the so-called colonization (Instituto Nacional de Colonización, Badajoz Plan), as alternatives to the Republican agrarian reform.

After the Second Vatican Council the distancing between the Catholic Church and the regime became evident, personalized in figures such as Father Llanos, who shared the working class life in the suburbs of Madrid, and bishops such as Vicente Enrique y Tarancon and Antonio Añoveros Ataún (who was the protagonist of a notorious scandal).

The Christian Democrat or Liberal leaders who months before had seemed predestined to occupy the government (José María de Areilza or Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez) had no success, being skillfully overshadowed by Suárez's maneuvers prior to the elections, and who had the support of the team of political confidence formed around the king.

The Andalusian referendum (February 28, 1980), regardless of its confusing result, implied a defeat for the government and the evidence that it would not be possible to prevent the generalization of the maximum competencies to the communities that so determined, whether or not they had some kind of differential fact of historical or any other nature (what Minister Manuel Clavero Arévalo, who resigned because of this issue, called "coffee for all").

[75] The resignation of Adolfo Suárez, who had lost the confidence of most of the leaders of his own party, precipitated preparations for a coup d'état, and during the investiture session of his replacement, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo (February 23, 1981), a detachment of civil guards led by Antonio Tejero occupied the Congress and kidnapped the deputies and the entire government.

The negative effects on employment of industrial reconversion and restructuring, added to other liberalizing measures, such as the flexibilization of the labor market or of business hours, provoked the radical opposition of the UGT and CCOO unions, which called the general strike of December 14, 1988, which paralyzed the country.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made a significant statement on the second day of his term of office with a decision of great international impact: the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, in fulfillment of his electoral promise, although surprising for its immediacy, communicated even before the formation of his government.

The pressure of the debt markets on the peripheral countries of the European Union (known as PIGS) and the demanding attitude of German chancellor Angela Merkel even imposed a constitutional reform which was urgently carried out on August 23, 2011, by consensus of the two main Spanish parties (PP and PSOE), when Prime Minister Zapatero had already communicated his intention to dissolve the Parliament and call an early general election.In the Catalan autonomous elections (November 28, 2010), Convergencia i Unió won a victory without an absolute majority, which was enough for Artur Mas to be appointed president of the Generalitat, displacing the previous left-wing tripartite government.

After the sentence of the National Court on the Gürtel case in which it condemned the Popular Party for being a "system of institutional corruption", the secretary general of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, announced that his parliamentary group would carry out the fourth motion of censure of the democratic stage and the second against Rajoy.

On June 1, this motion of censure triumphed with the support of the PSOE, Unidos Podemos, ERC, PDeCAT, Compromís, Nueva Canarias, EH Bildu and the PNV, and Pedro Sánchez was invested that day as the seventh president of the Spanish democratic government.

The promulgation of the Constitution of 1812 , a work by Salvador Viniegra (Museo de las Cortes de Cádiz).
Charles IV of Spain and His Family , by Goya (1800). In the center, Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa of Parma stand next to the infante Francisco de Paula (whose departure from the Palace will provoke the uprising of May 2, 1808, to the cry of " They are taking him away !"). On the left, just in front of the painter, appears the first-born, future Ferdinand VII , and Carlos María Isidro , the future Carlist pretender.
Manuel Godoy , Duke of Alcudia and Prince of Peace, by Goya (1801).
The Third of May 1808 , by Goya .
The Battle of Ayacucho , December 9, 1824, ended the wars of independence in South America.
Portrait of Ferdinand VII, by Goya, Museo del Prado.
Rafael del Riego
Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga , oil painting by Antonio Gisbert . Museo del Prado .
Isabella II , by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz .
First Carlist war (1833–1840)
Areas of greater Carlist intensity
Areas with Carlist sympathizers.
Main Carlist sieges. Liberal centers of the north. Main Carlist centers. Battles
The painter Antonio María Esquivel portrayed in this 1846 painting a whole generation of Romantic writers, gathered in his studio to listen to a reading by José Zorrilla , in front of the portrait of Espronceda (died in 1842). [ 22 ]
Baldomero Espartero
Ramón María Narváez y Campos, by Vicente López .
Barcelona-Mataró Railroad , 1848.
The battle of Tetuan , by Dionisio Fierros (1894). The battle took place on January 31, 1860.
The stages of the Sexenio , satirical drawing by Tomás Padró for La Flaca (magazine) (1874).
Provisional Government of 1869: Laureano Figuerola , Práxedes Mateo Sagasta , Ruiz Zorrilla , Juan Prim , Francisco Serrano y Domínguez , Topete , Adelardo López de Ayala , Antonio Romero Ortiz and Juan Álvarez de Lorenzana . Photo by J. Laurent .
Amadeo I in front of the coffin of General Prim , by Antonio Gisbert .
Satirical caricature of La Carcajada (new masthead of the magazine La Flaca to avoid administrative suspension) published on April 18, 1872, with the title "Triunfo electoral" (Electoral triumph). It ironizes the fraudulent methods used by the president of the government and Minister of the Interior Práxedes Mateo Sagasta to win the elections of April 1872. Sagasta leads the procession carried on the back of a funnel with the sign " SUFRAGIO UNIVERSAL " ( Universal suffrage ). He is followed by all those who have made possible the "electoral triumph": forces of public order, partidas de la porra , lazaros (so called because they are deceased voters who have "resurrected" incarnated by other people), hit men, trileros, local authorities, imprisoned peasants and workers taken to vote, etc.
Allegory of the First Spanish Republic . The letters "RF" between laurel leaves are the initials of " República Federal " (Federal Republic). Both in that aspect and in many others, the chosen iconography was very similar to that of the French Republic (the Phrygian cap , the female figure —in France called Marianne , and in Spain the Pretty Girl —, [ 39 ] the motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity —in the triangle—, even the rooster). It is complemented by allegories of the different economic activities, sciences and arts (some indicative of progress and modernity, such as telegraphy and photography). The colors of the flag were the same as the flag used by the monarchy (only the royal crown was replaced in the coat of arms by a mural crown ). It was the Second Spanish Republic that introduced a different flag, replacing the red lower stripe with a purple one.
General Francisco Serrano .
Alfonso XII
Regent Maria Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena .
Alfonso XIII of Spain
Barcelona became the burned city during the Tragic Week (1909)
The dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera
The two Spains as defined by the war front in 1936
The symmetrical notch (which affects both sexes equally) is clearly observed in those born between 1936 and 1939, who in the year 1950 were already between 14 and 11 years old; and the asymmetrical notch (which only affects males) in the age groups between 30 and 40 years old, who in the War were between 14 and 11 years younger, that is, they were of military age
The symmetrical notch of the Civil War baby boomers is still observed in the 69-65 age group. The male overmortality of those over 85 explains the disproportion between males and females, but it is only partly due to the war dead.
Franco next to Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS in 1940. On the right is Serrano Suñer , called el cuñadísimo because he was Franco's brother-in-law imitating one of the dictator's titles; the Generalissimo . Franco also called himself the Caudillo .
Valley of the Fallen (1940–1958), a Civil War memorial built as forced labor for Republican prisoners. Franco also conceived it to house his own tomb, next to that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera the absent , whose corpse had been carried on the shoulders of Falangists from Alicante to the pantheon of the kings of Spain in the monastery of El Escorial , a place very close to the one chosen for the Valley .
Clash between the Maquis and the Civil Guard in a forest. The anti-Francoist guerrilla activity had its greatest incidence with the end of the Second World War (1945) and lasted until the beginning of the fifties.
Inauguration of INIA facilities in Puerta de Hierro (Madrid), in 1954. Together with Franco are Eugenio Morales Agacino and Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez .
Franco and U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower in Madrid in 1959.
SEAT 600 , symbol of economic development.
The symbolism of the vertical union and the denomination XXV Years of Peace were used for a group of houses in Malaga (1965)
Franco (right) at a reception in 1972. His advanced age raised doubts about the continuity of the regime after his death.
Constitution of 1978
The King and Queen of Spain received the president of Mexico José López Portillo in October 1977, after the resumption of diplomatic relations, interrupted since 1939. Mexico had stood out as a refuge for Spanish Republican exiles .
Rafael Alberti and Santiago Carrillo in 1978. The prestigious communist poet occupied, together with La Pasionaria , the mesa de edad of the first democratic courts, in spite of the disappointing results of the PCE.
Marcelino Camacho and Nicolás Redondo , union leaders of Comisiones Obreras and UGT and deputies for the PCE and PSOE during the 1970s and 1980s (the photograph is from 2008).
The first president of the Spanish democracy, Adolfo Suárez in the tribune of the Congress of Deputies in 1979.
Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was the shortest-serving prime minister in the democratic era.
Felipe González with the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors , in 1989.
Photo of the socialist government in the V Legislature (July 14, 1993).
The Puerta del Sol in Madrid was the focal point of the protests of the indignados movement.
Melilla border fence . As the external border of the European Union , it is one of the points with the greatest migratory pressure. After the years of economic boom (1997–2008) when millions of immigrants arrived, reaching more than 10% of the population, the economic crisis turned Spain back into a country of emigrants . Most of these were immigrants returning to their countries of origin, although a considerable number were young Spaniards seeking better opportunities in other countries. The projections suggest a compromised future for Spanish demographics , in which only emigration could compensate for negative vegetative growth and aging. [ 91 ]
Mariano Rajoy addresses the convention of the European People's Party on December 8, 2011, after his electoral victory and a few days before being invested president of the government.
Ninot fallero representing the Bárcenas scandal . The obscene gesture was indeed made by Luis Bárcenas before the press after returning from a skiing vacation in Canada, in February 2013. [ 102 ]
Meeting of Felipe VI with U.S. president Barack Obama in 2014.
Pro-independence demonstration on the Diada of 11 September 2013 in the section corresponding to Plaça de Sant Jaume in Barcelona. Among those present was Francesc Homs, Minister of the Presidency, who the following year was among the organisers of the pro-independence referendum, for which he was charged.
Participants in the " debate a cuatro " prior to the December 2015 elections.
Pedro Sánchez in profile and in the center of the photo.