The Loja Revolution

Abstract

In early June 1861, in response to ‘infinite number of complaints’ of judicial harassment from members, some 40 ‘notable and influential’ affiliates of La Venta Nacional, representing the provinces of Granada, Málaga and Jaén, met in Granada’s Calle de San Anton. A majority decided against a summer insurrection of the kind attempted by Sixto Cámara in 1857 and 1859. Rafael Pérez del Pérez, representing Loja’s Democrats, also voted against an armed uprising, later recalling that two factors deterred his confrères from embarking upon a military adventure. The first was ‘the situation of the progresista party, which was dispersed, disorganised, without chiefs of the fighting kind, and, furthermore, distant from us’. The second was the strength of the regime, ‘we saw O’Donnell with the brilliant halo of the war of Africa … and we were aware of the respectable forces which the Government could count on in Andalucía’.²

I now come to this inexplicable event. You will have already noticed the imponderable magnitude which it has attained, not only in Loja, but also in many other towns and some large capital cities, whether it be the initiation of great disturbances or the approach of large crowds from the mountains, recalling those savage cavalry raids (algaradas) and those barbaric morisco attacks of the middle ages and for some centuries after, until the total expulsion of the moors from Spain. This recent democratic revolution has no example in our history, apart perhaps from bearing some resemblance to what happened back in uncivilised times, and seems to us like a fable from our ancient chronicles. But the sudden disappearance of these hordes of men in their thousands does not even seem to come from the chronicles but rather from the magic tales of the fantastic. (6 July 1861, José Gutiérrez de la Vega, Seville, to Ramón María Narváez, Paris)¹