Restoration Crisis in Spain

The period of the Bourbon Restoration ended in April 1931, when the Second Republic was proclaimed and the king had to flee Spain.

The reign of Alfonso XIII (1902-1931)

The reign of Alfonso XIII began in 1902, when he was crowned king at the age of sixteen. Until 1923 He reigned according to the Constitution of 1876, but in 1923 he supported the coup d'état of Miguel Primo de Rivera and remained on the throne during the dictatorship.

After the resignation of Primo de Rivera in 1930, Alfonso XIII tried to continue his reign with the reestablishment of the Constitution of 1876, but a few months later, in April 1931, He left the country due to the proclamation of the Second Republic.

Between 1902 and 1923, Spain went through a permanent political crisis. Several factors explain this situation:

• He political interventionism of Alfonso XIII, who did not play the role of referee but rather supported the most conservative sectors of the army. The king ended up supporting the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and this fact was key in the discredit of the monarchy.
• The division of the parties of the system of change (which had previously guaranteed bipartisan alternation). This was caused by the death of historical leaders and internal dissensions in the parties.
• The weakening of despotism. This phenomenon was parallel to the urban development of the country, since caciquismo functioned in the agricultural sector.
• The development of the political and social opposition to the Restoration regime. This included republicans, nationalists, socialists and anarchists.

Unlike the previous system of alternation between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, coalition governments have followed one another since 1917, subject to alliances and continuous changes. Neither liberals nor conservatives achieved sufficient majorities to form solid cabinets.

In this context of political instability, the country experienced important social problems:

• The intensification of social struggles. The positions of employers and workers increasingly clashed.
• The “religious question”. Protests against the power of the Church increased, especially in education. Anticlericalism spread throughout a large part of the urban population and the popular classes.
• The “military question”. The army, defeated in the Spanish-American War in 1898, received growing criticism from opposition sectors (Republicans, socialists and nationalists).
• The consolidation of the nationalist movement in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The parties in power did not open any negotiations.
• The “Morocco problem”. At the Algeciras Conference (1906) the division of Moroccan territory between France and Spain was agreed. The northern strip corresponded to Spain. Since 1909, a war began (the Moroccan War), which was very unpopular in Spain and widened the gap between the army and public opinion.

The crisis of the Restoration in Spain

The facts of the Cu-Cut and the Law of Jurisdictions (1905-1906)

In 1905 a crisis broke out in Catalonia. The satirical comments against the army that appeared in the Barcelona newspaper Cu-Cut! led to three hundred officers attacking and burning the printing presses.

The reaction of the Spanish government was to give in to the army: in 1906 The Law of Jurisdictions was approved, which identified criticism of the army as offenses against the country and provided that they should be tried by military jurisdiction.

The public reaction was immediate. A new coalition of Catalan parties, called Catalan Solidarityachieved an electoral victory in 1907 and drastically reduced the representation of conservatives and liberals in Catalonia.

The Tragic Week of Barcelona (1909)

At the beginning of the 20th century, Barcelona was the center of Spanish industrialization. At this time, worker mobilizations grew and Solidaridad Obrera was created in 1907, an anarchist union organization that was born as a response to the bourgeois and nationalist coalition. Catalan Solidarity.

The Radical Republican Party was also born in Barcelona in 1908, founded by Alejandro Lerroux, which had a republican and anticlerical program.

The Jurisdictions Law of 1906, promoted by the Spanish government, subjected any statement that was interpreted as an offense against the country or the army to military jurisdiction. This caused an increase in antimilitarism in the cityexacerbated by the authoritarian policy of the government of Antonio Maura (leader of the Conservative Party) between 1907 and 1909.

However, it wasthe Moroccan war the one that determined the outbreak of the Tragic Week. The attacks by the inhabitants of the Rif against the Spanish workers of a mining company led the government to mobilize reservists (men who had completed their military service, led a civilian life and were the economic breadwinners of their families, mainly from the working classes). . Soon workers protests emerged in Barcelona and Madrid against the mobilization.

On July 26, 1909, the general strike began in Barcelona, ​​called by Solidaridad Obrera and the General Union of Workers (UGT). Three days of protests, burning of convents and clashes with the army began. The repression was very harsh and culminated in the unfair trial and execution of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, anarchist pedagogue. The Tragic Week had a human cost of a hundred dead and a large number of injured.

The Tragic Week accentuated discontent with Maura's government and his reformist program (inspired by the regenerationism of Joaquín Costa). Maura resigned, while the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) got its candidate Pablo Iglesias elected deputy in 1910.

The liberal José Canalejas became president of the Council of Ministers and carried out the last attempt at regenerationist reform within the Restoration regime. However, he was assassinated by an anarchist in 1912, which accentuated the crisis.

Subsequently, The First World War (1914-1918) divided the country between allies (liberals and leftist sectors) and germanophiles (sectors of the conservative right), but it also led to a period of economic prosperity, since Spain remained neutral and was a supplier of many products for the opposing countries.

The Spanish crisis of 1917

He boom economic development made possible by Spanish exports during the First World War generated an unequal distribution of benefits. Added to this was the growing inflation that led to a deep crisis in 1917.

The crisis occurred in various aspects:

• Military crisis. Discontent among the peninsula's officers at the rapid promotions of “Africanist” officers (those who participated in North African activities) culminated in the creation of the Defense Juntas, which aspired to greater intervention by the army in politics. Eduardo Dato's conservative cabinet accepted and legalized the meetings.
• Parliamentary crisis. Seventy deputies and senators, both from the Lliga Regionalista (a Catalan party) and Republicans, Socialists and even some members of the Liberal Party, constituted a Assembly of Parliamentarians that demanded a change of government and the convening of Constituent Cortes to, among other things, reform the Constitution.
• Social crisis. In August 1917, a general strike took place in Spain called by the UGT (socialist union organization) and the CNT (anarchist union organization). It had an impact on many cities and caused clashes with the army and police that left a hundred dead and thousands arrested.

The general strike had immediate consequences. Faced with the threat of a workers' revolution, the Defense Juntas They abandoned their requests to the government and They supported the repression against the strikers.

On the other hand, The events of the strike and the social conflict motivated the resignation of Eduardo Dato and the formation of a coalition government with the participation of the Regionalist Leaguea, which meant the immediate dissolution of the Assembly of Parliamentarians.

The class struggle in Barcelona (1919-1921)

The end of the First World War caused an economic crisis that triggered great social conflict in Barcelona between 1919 and 1921.

Strikes and protests promoted by anarchists were harshly repressed by the Spanish government, which had the support of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

To counteract the “direct action” of the anarchists, the toughest sector of the business community created the so-called Free Union, an organization which had a group of gunmen dedicated to attacking union leaders and that he acted with police support. The conflict increased with the application of the “Ley de Fugas”, a mechanism to facilitate the execution of detainees without trial.

The anarchist response came in 1921 with the assassination of Eduardo Dato, president of the government. Two years later, The anarchist leader Salvador Seguí was also murdered.

The social conflict in the country and the failures in the Moroccan war marked the path to military intervention, which took place in 1923 with the coup d'état of the captain general of Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera.

The Moroccan war

In 1906, the great powers of the world met at the Algeciras Conference to resolve a conflict over the colonial distribution of Morocco, in North Africa. Over there It was agreed that France would keep most of Morocco's territory, while Spain would be responsible for the northern mountainous strip, known as the Rif..

Coming soon conflicts arose with indigenous populations. The Kabyles (tribes) of the Rif were grouped under the leadership of Abd el-Krim. The Spanish army, poorly equipped and led, suffered significant defeats from the beginning. An example was the “Barranco del Lobo disaster”, near Melilla, in 1909.

In the summer of 1921, Spanish troops embarked on a poorly planned action, led by General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. This episode, known as Annual Disaster, It cost the lives of more than thirteen thousand combatantsamong them General Fernández Silvestre.

The Annual Disaster caused an impression against the war in Spanish public opinion. There were large protests in Spain and the republicans and socialists demanded the abandonment of Morocco.

Pressure from public opinion led to the formation of a military commission that was to investigate responsibilities for the Spanish defeat. The resulting report, known as the Picasso File, revealed irregularities, corruption and inefficiency in the Spanish army.

However, before a ruling could be issued, General Miguel Primo de Rivera carried out a coup d'état in September 1923 and established a military dictatorship.

The economy during the reign of Alfonso XIII (1902-1931)

industrial development

In 1900, Spain was still a largely agrarian country. This situation did not change much throughout the first decades of the century.

However, there were some significant changes in the industrial sector: mining and steel production grew, especially in the Basque Country, and new sectors were developed, such as electrical and chemical.

Various factors hindered greater industrial growth: the excessive geographical concentration of the industry in Catalonia and the Basque Country, dependence on foreign technology and the weakness of the internal market.

The Treasury and the banking sector

In the early years of the 20th century, The Restoration governments carried out a policy of sounding public finances. The reduction of debt interest, the control of State expenses and the increase in taxes led to a nine-year cycle of surpluses (1900-1909).

A law of 1899 transformed the Bank of Spain (the state bank), which began to control the issuance of banknotes. This allowed limit inflation and achieve stabilization of the pesetaa basic condition to promote foreign trade.

In these years, other banks were also founded, such as those of Bilbao, Vizcaya, Mercantil de Santander, Hispanoamericano (founded with capital repatriated from Cuba) or Español de Crédito.

Economic consequences of the First World War

The First World War (1914-1918) caused a boom economic in Spain. Spanish neutrality allowed considerable growth in production and exports of raw materials, coal and manufacturing. The disappearance of competition foreign trade from the belligerent countries and the enormous demand from these countries for their supply explain Spain's economic boom.

However, The end of the war and the lawsuit triggered a crisis. The domestic market was not able to replace exports. Many companies had to close. The working classes, which had suffered a significant inflationary process during the war, They were the most affected by the new situation.

Not all economic sectors were equally affected by the First World War: the steel and chemical industries were modernized, the railroads and mining passed into national hands (when foreign capital withdraws), and sectors such as textiles or agriculture went through difficulties because they were not modernized.

From the crisis to the euphoria of the 1920s

European economic difficulties caused the crisis to last until 1924. Primo de Rivera's coup d'état was carried out in a context of economic difficulties. However, As in the rest of Europe, The second half of the 1920s was a period of economic growth.

The economic recovery allowed The Primo de Rivera dictatorship will carry out a policy of investment in infrastructure. In those years, Hydrographic Basins were created for the development of irrigation, investment was made in the railway network through the nationalization of the lines and the state monopoly of the oil industry (CAMPSA) and the Telephone Company was established.

The counterpart of this investment policy was a new indebtedness of the Spanish State. This circumstance had a negative impact when the Second Republic had to face the repercussions of the 1929 crisis.

References

• Carr, R. et al. (2022). Spain. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Casanova, J. & Gil, C. (2012). Brief history of Spain in the 20th century. Ariel.
• Moreno Luzón, J. (ed.) (2003). Alfonso XIII. A politician on the throne. Marcial Pons.
• Suárez Cortina, M. (2006). Liberal Spain (1868-1917). Politics and society. Synthesis.