Spain: a Nation in Turbulence

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, save for a couple of decades from the mid-1870s, Spain was riven by political and social turmoil. The War of Independence (the Peninsular War) that had driven Joseph Bonaparte from the throne was followed by the 1812 Constitution of Cadiz; but its attempts to establish a more liberal system of centralized government by a monarch acting through responsible ministers, and to reduce the feudal stranglehold of the church and nobility, were nullified two years later on the return from exile of Ferdinand VII, a harshly repressive absolutist who ruthlessly persecuted his opponents and plunged the country into instability and bankruptcy. From then on, Spain, complicated as were the convolutions of its history, could basically be likened by the essayist Larra to ‘a new Penelope alternately weaving and unpicking her tapestry’. There was a constant seesaw between reactionary forces and reformist, anti-clerical elements, accompanied by revolutions, invasions, conspiracies, civil wars provoked by Ferdinand’s brother Don Carlos (not to be confused with Verdi’s hero), military uprisings, extremist factions and political assassinations.