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Riot, regeneration and reaction: Spain in the aftermath of the 1898 Disaster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Sebastian Balfour
Sebastian Balfour
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
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Abstract

The crisis of legitimacy following Spain's loss of empire in 1898 combined with the effects of a longer-term crisis of modernization to undermine efforts to reform the political system and regenerate the social and economic life of Spain. Rising social agitation, middle-class movements for national regeneration, Catalan bourgeois nationalism and military reaction all interacted to block the development of a modernizing alternative to the Restoration regime. As a result, the gap between the established order and society grew wider and the potential for peaceful change diminished. Events in the first decade of the century thus established the pattern of conflict that was to dominate Spanish politics until the Civil War.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 405 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 The disaster engendered a huge bibliography of a varied kind: military and eye-witness accounts, polemical books about the wider causes of the War, and programmes for the regeneration of Spain. For contemporary accounts of causes written from different standpoints see: Casanova, Enrique Reig y, Sacrilegios y traidores, o la masonería contra la Iglesia y contra España (Madrid, 1910)Google Scholar. (This diatribe against the freemasons was preceded by a pastoral letter of the archbishop of Seville blaming them for the diaster (quoted in El Imparcial, 7 Aug. 1898)); Martínez, J. Rodríguez, Los desastres y la regeneración de España. Relatos e impresiones (La Coruña, 1899)Google Scholar; Luis, Morote, La moral de la derrota (Madrid, 1900)Google Scholar; Vital, Fité, Las desdichas de la patria (Madrid, 1899)Google Scholar; Ramiro de, Maeztu, Hacia otra España (Madrid, 1899)Google Scholar; Damián, Isern, Del desastre national y sus causas (Madrid, 1899)Google Scholar; DrMadrazo, , ¿El pueblo español ha muerto? Impresiones sobre elestado actual de la sociedad española (Santander, 1903)Google Scholar; Cortés, César Silió y, Problemas del día (Madrid, 1900)Google Scholar; Picavea, Ricardo Macías, El problema nacional. Hechos, causas, remedios (Madrid, 1899)Google Scholar. The bibliography of more recent analyses can be found in the endnotes that follow.

2 Pabón, Jesús, ‘El 98, acontecimiento international’ in Días de ayer. Histories e historiadores contemporáneas (Barcelona, 1963)Google Scholar; Zamora, J. M. Jover, 1898. Teoréa y práctica de la redistributión colonial (Madrid, 1979).Google Scholar

3 Carlos, Serrano, Final del imperio. España 1895–1898 (Madrid, 1984), p. 46.Google Scholar

4 El Imparcial and La Epoca, Apr. 1898.

5 Palau, Victor M. Concas y, La Escuadra del Almirante Cervera (Madrid, 19900, 2nd edn)Google Scholar; Topete, Pascual Cervera y, Guerra hispano-americana. Colección de documentos referentes a la escuadra de operaciones de las Antillas (El Ferrol, 1899)Google Scholar. Count Romanones also describes a meeting of generals and admirals held in the royal palace in which, he claims, the feeling was unanimous that war was ‘the only honourable means by which Spain could lose what still remained of her immense colonial Empire’: Conde de, Romanones, Las responsabilidades del Antiguo Régimen (Madrid, n.d.), p. 33Google Scholar; see also Serrano, , Final, pp. 41–7Google Scholar and Conde de, Romanones, Doña María Cristina de Hapsburgo y Lorena (Buenos Aires, 1947), p. 98.Google Scholar

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10 Serrano, , Le Tour, pp. 12–40Google Scholar. According to La Voz de Galicia, half of the men due to be called up in some Galician towns emigrated beforehand (quoted in ‘Emigración de Quintos’, El Imparcial 3 Aug. 1896). El Imparcial (17 Jan. 1901) reports after the wars that up to 16,000 deserters were living in southern France.

11 A typical example was the image in a weekly magazine, after the Spanish fleet was sunk in the first engagement of the war, of ‘the healthy, greasy pig trampling on the wounded lion’: La Ilustración Española y Americana, 8 May 1898. For a typically racist view: Cortijo, Vicente de, Apuntes para la historia de la pérdida de nuestras colonias por un testigo presencial (Madrid, 1899), p. 4Google Scholar. The portrayal of the war in popular songs has been studied by Carlos García, Barrón, Cancionero del 98 (Madrid, 1974).Google Scholar

12 The most complete accounts can be found in El Imparcial 1, 2, 16 and 20 Sept. 1898; also 23 Mar. and 11 Apr. 1899. Canalejas made an impassioned speech in parliament against the Silvela government in which he criticized the absence of measures to help the veterans: an extract is quoted in La Vanguardia 6 Jul. 1899. See also Rubén, Darío, ‘Madrid’ in España Contemporánea (Barcelona, 1987), p. 43.Google Scholar

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16 The Imparcial editorial is ‘La mejor defensa’, 4 Jul. For Paraíso's comments, ‘Temores’, El Imparcial, 1 Jul. 1899.

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20 These included the workers’ compensation act; a law regulating the work of women and children; a third prohibiting work on Sundays; and yet another creating the Instituto de Reformas Sociales to collect data about working and living conditions among working-class families.

21 Silvela quote in Borja de, Riquer, Lliga Regionalista: La burguesia catalana i el nacionalisme (1898–1904) (Barcelona, 1977), p. 140Google Scholar; for the Polavieja programme, see his Manifesto in García Nieto, María Carmen et al. , Bases documentales de la España contemporánea (Madrid, 1972), V, 41–9.Google Scholar

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24 This movement had its origins before 1895 in the shape of the agrarian leagues in Castilla and Aragon whose main demand, though couched in the language of national regeneration, was state aid for local agrarian interests. Pirala, España, II, 26–35, 66–9, 169–70; Serrano, , Le tour, pp. 238–9Google Scholar; Varela, Ortega, Los amigos, pp. 269–71.Google Scholar

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26 Despite its later appropriation by the military, Costa's notion had more to do with nineteenth-century praetorian liberalism than with twentieth-century dictatorship: Maura, Joaquín Romero, ‘Il Novantotto Spagnolo. Note sulle ripercussioni ideologiche di disastro coloniale’, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXXIV (1972), 32–52.Google Scholar

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28 For example, Basilio Paraíso's statement to El Español quoted in La Vanguardia on 13 Aug. 1899, ‘Not only should the habits of the Government be regenerated but also those of the people’.

29 Diario de Barcelona, 28 Jun. 1899 (morning edition).

30 El Imparcial, 13 Mar. 1899.

31 For example Paraíso's speech to the Valladolid assembly, quoted in El Imparcial, 15 Jan. 1900.

32 Serrano, Le Tour, 266.

33 For a discussion of Costa's ‘populism’ see Jacques, Maurice and Carlos, Serrano, J. Costa: crisis de la Restauración y populismo (1875–1911) (Madrid, 1977).Google Scholar

34 One of the earliest exponents of this anti-modernizing reaction was Angel Ganivet: see his Idearium español (Madrid, 1897)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive author of medieval nostalgia is José Martínez Ruiz, Azorín, from his novel La Voluntad (Madrid, 1902)Google Scholar onwards. A general discussion of these issues can be found in Aguinaga, Carlos Blanco, Juventud del 98 (Barcelona, 1970)Google Scholar and Lily, Litvak, Transformatión industrial y literatura en España (1895–1905) (Madrid, 1980).Google Scholar

35 For example, Leopoldo, Alas, ‘El Jornalero’, in Narraciones Breves (Barcelona, 1989), pp. 173–82.Google Scholar

36 The writer Emilia Pardo Bazán wrote of how she envied the French intellectuals their Dreyfus affair: Fox, E. Inman, ‘El año de 1898 y el origen de los “intelectuales”’, J. L. Abellán et al., La crisis de fin de siglo (Barcelona, 1975), p. 27.Google Scholar

37 For example, Unamuno's attack on Catalanism in El Mundo quoted in Sabaté, Josep Solé i and Font, Joan Villaroya i, L'Exèrcit i Catalunya (1898–1936) (Barcelona, 1990), pp. 84–6Google Scholar and Emilia Pardo Bazán's vehement rejection of regionalism in La Vida Contemporánea (1896–1915) (Madrid, 1972), pp. 79–81.Google Scholar

38 Rafael Pérez de la, Dehesa, El Pensamiento de Costa y su influencia en el 98 (Madrid, 1966), pp. 187–93Google Scholar; Rosa, Rossi, Da Unamuno a Lorca (Catania, 1967), pp. 25–33.Google Scholar

39 Alvarez, Junco, El Imperador, pp. 173–4.Google Scholar

40 Francisco, Cabrillo, ‘El descanso interrumpido de Azaña’, Cambio 16, 2 11 1992Google Scholar. For Azana's own critical assessment of Costa, see his article, ‘¡Todavía el 98!’ in Plumas y palabras (Barcelona, 1976), pp. 179–95.Google Scholar

41 Enric Prat de la, Riba, La Nacionalitat Catalana (Barcelona, 1987)Google Scholar. The notion of Spain's imperial destiny was widespread amongst Catalan opinion: cf. Joan Maragall in Diario de Barcelona, 16 Jul. 1898.

42 See, for example, the president of the Foment, Albert Rusiñol's letter to Emilio Orellana in Borja, La Lliga, pp. 336–8.

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44 See Albert Rusiñol's instructions to the delegate attending the Valladolid assembly of the chambers of commerce, reproduced in Borja, , La Lliga, pp. 338–9Google Scholar. For the Catalan view of the Lerida Pact: La Veu 25 Oct. 1902 (pm edition), ‘El Pacte de Lleyda’.

45 The main spokesman of the Bilbao chamber of commerce at the meetings leading to the formation of the Unión Nacional, Pablo de Alzola, after having been a candidate of the movement in the elections of 1899, joined the second Silvela government of 1900 in the ministry of another regenerationist, Rafael Gasset. Serrano, , Le Tour, p. 260 and n. 73.Google Scholar

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49 This was indeed the lesson that many officers drew from the Cuban affair; see, for example, comments in La Correspondencia Militar, 25 Jul. 1899. For an analysis of military reaction to Catalanism, see Sabaté, Josep M. Solé i and Font, Joan Villarroya i, L'Exèrcit i Catalunya (1898–1936). La premsa militar espanyola i el fet catalá (Barcelona, 1990).Google Scholar

50 See, for example, ‘El Ejército y el pueblo’, La Correspondencia Militar, 15 May 1899Google Scholar; ‘El Ejército y la política’, ibid. 17 Jan. 1899; ‘La muerte de España’, 20 Sept. 99, El Correo Militar; for the Navy's campaign for a higher budget, see the editorial in El Imparcial (‘El asunto de los marinos’), 24 Oct. 1901.

51 Quoted in Rodríguez, Los desastres, p. 126. See also Cortijo, Apuntes, p. 39.

52 Solé and Villaroya, L'Exèrcit, p. 24.

53 Núñez, Militarismo, passim. For early examples of anti-democratic sentiments among the military see General Cassola's views in 1887 quoted in Pirala, , España y la Regencia, I, 172Google Scholar; also José Gómez de, Arteche, De por qué en España las guerras son tan largos (Barcelona, 1885)Google Scholar. For a similar reaction in the aftermath of the disaster, see General González Parrada's letter in García Nieto et al., Bases, V, 39–40. For military intervention in civilian affairs, see Manuel, Ballbé, Orden político y militarismo en la España constitucional (1812–1983) (Madrid, 1983), chap. X.Google Scholar

54 For details of these currents see Burgos, Manuel Espadas, ‘La Institución Libre de Enseñanza y la formación del militar español durante la Restauración’, in Temas de Historia militar, I (Zaragoza, 1982).Google Scholar

55 El Imparcial, 8 Sept. 1898.

56 For examples of popular anti-military reactions, see El Impartial, 13 May 1899, 6 May 1900, La Vanguardia, 28 Jun. 1899; also Fernández, Almagro, Historia, p. 573Google Scholar and Nuñez, , Militarismo, pp. 227–35. For the press campaign over corruption amongst the military see for example, El Nacional, 27 Mar.–20 Apr. 1899.Google Scholar

57 As early as 1899, the military press was calling for ‘dictatorial measures’: e.g. La Correspondencia Militar of 10 Oct., quoted in Solé and Villaroya L'Exèrcit, pp. 42–3. For the rising crescendo of verbal attacks against Catalanism leading to the 1905 incidents see pp. 53–71.

58 ¡Cu-Cut!, 23 Nov. 1905.

59 For a detailed analysis of military demands sympathetic to the army viewpoint, see Jorge, Cachinero, ‘Intervencionismo y reformas militares en España a comienzos del siglo XX’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, no. 10 (1988), 155–84.Google Scholar

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61 Boyd, Carolyn P., Praetorian politics in liberal Spain (University of North Carolina, 1979), p. 14.Google Scholar

62 For a brief but interesting discussion of right-wing regenerationism see Montalbán, Manuel Vázquez, Los demonios familiares de Franco (Barcelona, 1987), pp. 32–40.Google Scholar

63 For an echo of these views see Miguel Primo de Rivera's Manifesto of 1923.

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