Sons and Heirs by Frank Lorenz Müller & Heidi Mehrkens

Author:Frank Lorenz Müller & Heidi Mehrkens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137454973
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

The Succession of an Unborn King: Constitutional Politics in Spain after the Death of Alfonso XII

Carmina López Sánchez

Spain’s Glorious Revolution of 1868 brought the reign of Isabel II and the Bourbon dynasty to an end. The heir to the throne, Isabel’s son Alfonso, was a child of 11 years when the Spanish royal family was forced into exile. Their departure on 30 September 1868 marked the beginning of the so-called Democratic Sexennium (1868–74), during which Spaniards first established the parliamentary monarchy of Amadeo de Savoy and then proclaimed Spain’s First Republic. On 29 December 1874, however, the last successful pronunciamiento of nineteenth-century Spain occurred.1 The aim of this military coup was to reinstate the Bourbon dynasty by placing Alfonso XII on the throne. The public face of the pronunciamiento was General Arsenio Martínez Campos, but as he himself pointed out, the coup had been orchestrated by Spain’s captain general in Cuba, a widely revered military hero. In fact, Martínez Campos would later inform the king ‘that the only person I have obeyed is the Conde de Valmaseda, crowned by so many laurels in Cuba: he, and he alone was the initiator, I confined myself to implementing his wishes and his commands’.2

There was more than just direct military action, though. The return of Alfonso XII to the throne was being plotted from the very moment Isabel II went into exile. A variety of forces contributed to the Alfonsine movement, but the real ideologue and promoter of the restoration of the Spanish monarchy was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (1828–97), the leader of the conservative minority caucus in the Spanish parliament, the Cortes. Cánovas emerged as head of the Alfonsine cause in August 1873. From then on he pursued an energetic campaign in favour of Isabel’s son, particularly in military, bourgeois and aristocratic circles, and not only in Spain, but also in the Spanish colonies in America. It has long been maintained that Cánovas del Castillo opposed military force as a means of restoring the Spanish monarchy. Yet even though he was not the prime mover behind the Martínez Campos pronunciamiento, he certainly took full advantage of its political consequences which accelerated his plans for a restoration.3

The reign of Alfonso XII effectively began in January 1875, but Cánovas’s plans went much further than merely installing the prince on the throne. Appointed president of the council of ministers by the new king, he worked tirelessly for the promulgation of a new constitution. On 30 June 1876 what is still Spain’s longest lasting constitution was proclaimed. It made the Crown the political backbone of the country and arranged for power to be shared between parliament and the king.4 Cánovas was intent on ensuring that the Crown’s position was ironclad. On the one hand, he would establish turnismo, a practice of two-party rotation which worked on the basis of a restricted system of managing the vote.5 Known as caciquism, this electoral arrangement actively involved regional and provincial notables in the political sphere. It was they who

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