[1808 - 1931] 19th Century Turmoil and Crisis of the Restoration
The year is 1808. The old world is cracking apart. Across the Pyrenees, Napoleon Bonaparte, master of Europe, casts his covetous gaze upon Spain. Under the guise of an alliance, his armies march into the country, not as friends, but as conquerors. He places his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne, a move of such breathtaking arrogance it would ignite a firestorm. On the second of May in Madrid, the people, armed with little more than kitchen knives and farming tools, rise up against the elite French Mamluk cavalry. The crack of muskets echoes through the Puerta del Sol. It is a slaughter, immortalized in the visceral, nightmarish paintings of Francisco de Goya, but it is also a beginning. The Spanish War of Independence, or the Peninsular War as the British would call it, had begun.
This was not a war of gentlemen standing in neat lines. This was a new kind of war, a total war. From the arid plains of Extremadura to the green mountains of Asturias, the Spanish people resisted with a ferocity that stunned the French Grande Armée. They invented a new word for their struggle: 'guerrilla', the ‘little war’. Small bands of irregular fighters would strike at supply lines, ambush patrols, and then melt back into the populace. Priests, peasants, and nobles fought side-by-side, united by a hatred for the invader. The French controlled the cities and the major roads, but the countryside, the heart of Spain, bled and fought and refused to submit for six long, brutal years.
While the land burned, something extraordinary was happening in the south. In the besieged port city of Cádiz, crammed with refugees and liberal thinkers, with French cannonballs occasionally splashing into its harbour, a parliament, the 'Cortes', gathered. Breathing the salt air of the Atlantic, a bastion of freedom on the edge of a conquered continent, they drafted one of the most progressive documents of its age: the Constitution of 1812. Known affectionately as 'La Pepa', it declared sovereignty of the nation, established a constitutional monarchy, abolished feudalism, and granted universal male suffrage. It was a beacon, a promise of a modern, free Spain to be born from the ashes of war.
But that promise was swiftly, cruelly extinguished. In 1814, with Napoleon defeated, the restored Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII, returned to Spain. He was hailed as 'El Deseado', ‘The Desired One’, the symbol of the nation’s resistance. His first major act? He tore up the Constitution of 1812, arrested the liberals who had written it, and reinstated absolute monarchy with the full backing of the church and conservative nobility. The hope of Cádiz curdled into the bitter repression of the ‘Ominous Decade’. It was a profound betrayal, a schism in the Spanish soul between liberalism and absolutism that would bleed through the next hundred years.
Ferdinand’s reactionary reign coincided with another, equally devastating blow. While Spain was consumed by its European war, its vast American empire, which had funnelled silver and gold into royal coffers for three centuries, was slipping away. One by one, from Argentina to Mexico, the colonies rose up and declared independence. By the time of Ferdinand's death in 1833, only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines remained of a once-mighty global empire. The loss was not just economic; it was a deep psychological wound, a demotion from world power to a second-rate European nation struggling with its own identity.
Ferdinand’s final gift to his nation was a civil war. Having no male heir, he altered the law of succession so his infant daughter, Isabella, could take the throne, bypassing his arch-conservative brother, Don Carlos. The moment Ferdinand died, Carlos declared himself the legitimate king, and the country split in two. The First Carlist War erupted, a savage conflict pitting the liberal supporters of Queen Isabella against the absolutist, staunchly Catholic Carlists, whose cry was ‘God, Country, and King’. It was a war of the cities against the countryside, of the emerging modern world against a deeply traditional, rural past. For seven years, Spain tore itself apart.
Queen Isabella II’s subsequent reign was a whirlwind of instability. Military coups, called 'pronunciamientos', became the primary method of changing governments. Generals like Espartero and O'Donnell became the nation's political arbiters. Yet, beneath the political chaos, change was slowly churning. The first railways began to snake out from Madrid, their iron tracks a symbol of a modernity that was arriving painfully late. In Catalonia and the Basque Country, factories belched smoke, creating a new industrial working class whose lives were a grim cycle of long hours and low pay. For a factory worker in Barcelona, life was a cramped, unsanitary apartment and a 12-hour shift. For a landless peasant in Andalusia, whose population share was immense, life was beholden to the local landowner, a near-feudal existence. Meanwhile, in Madrid, a new bourgeoisie flaunted its wealth in grand new apartments in the Salamanca district, enjoying operas and dressing in Parisian fashions.
By 1868, the chaos and cronyism of Isabella’s court had become too much. A liberal revolution, dubbed ‘The Glorious One’, sent the queen into exile. This began the 'Sexenio Democrático', six chaotic years where Spain desperately searched for a new way forward. They imported a new king, the Italian Amadeo of Savoy, who lasted just two years before abdicating in frustration. They then declared the First Spanish Republic, which collapsed in less than a year, beset by Carlist uprisings and radical cantonal revolts. The experiment in democracy had failed.
Weary of the chaos, the political elite opted for stability—at any cost. In 1874, they restored the monarchy, placing Isabella’s son, Alfonso XII, on the throne. The architect of this new era was the shrewd, cynical Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. He created a system of managed politics called the 'turno pacífico', the 'peaceful turn'. His Conservative party and the opposing Liberal party would simply take turns in power, the results of elections being predetermined in backroom deals. It provided decades of surface-level calm and allowed for some economic growth, but it was a deeply undemocratic system built on corruption and voter apathy. It papered over the deep cracks in Spanish society: the rise of powerful anarchist and socialist movements among the oppressed workers, and the burgeoning strength of regional nationalism in Catalonia and the Basque Country, which felt ignored by the centralized state in Madrid.
The facade of the Restoration was shattered in 1898. A rebellion in Cuba, the ‘Pearl of the Antilles’, drew in the United States. The ensuing Spanish-American War was a swift, humiliating catastrophe. The antiquated Spanish fleet was obliterated in Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. In a few short months, Spain lost its last significant colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The ‘Disaster of '98’ was more than a military defeat; it was a moment of profound national trauma. A generation of intellectuals, the ‘Generation of '98’, emerged to dissect what was wrong with Spain, to pick at the scabs of a nation that had lost its empire and, it seemed, its purpose.
The 20th century began under the reign of the new king, Alfonso XIII, but the Cánovas system was crumbling. The social questions could no longer be ignored. A general strike in Barcelona in 1909, the ‘Tragic Week’, was brutally suppressed by the army, exposing the raw class tensions. A costly and bloody colonial war in Morocco drained the treasury and claimed thousands of lives, further radicalizing the public against the political establishment.
In 1923, with the country seemingly on the brink of collapse, General Miguel Primo de Rivera launched a coup with the king’s blessing. He established a military dictatorship that would last for seven years, suspending the constitution, banning political parties, and imposing strict censorship in an attempt to force order and modernity onto the nation. He built roads and dams, but he could not solve the fundamental social and political divisions.
By 1930, his dictatorship had run out of steam, and he resigned. King Alfonso XIII tried to return to the old ways, but it was too late. In the municipal elections of April 1931, republican parties won a landslide victory in all the major cities. The results were not a vote for mayors; they were a referendum on the monarchy itself. Seeing the crowds celebrating in the streets of Madrid, King Alfonso XIII chose not to provoke a civil war. He quietly packed his bags, went into exile, and never returned. On April 14th, 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. A century of turmoil that began with the roar of French cannons ended not with a bang, but with the closing of a palace door, opening a new chapter of hope and, ultimately, tragedy for Spain.