Regency of Maria Christina of Austria

Maria Christina of Austria was regent of Spain from the death of her husband, Alfonso XII, in November 1885 until their son, Alfonso XIII, turned sixteen and swore the Constitution of 1876 in May 1902. Queen Maria Christina was pregnant when her husband died and gave birth to King Alfonso XIII in May 1886.

According to historian Manuel Suárez Cortina, "the Regency was a particularly significant period in the history of Spain, because in those years at the end of the century the system experienced its stabilization, the development of liberal policies, but also the appearance of great fissures that in the international arena were reflected first in the colonial war, and later with the United States, causing the military and diplomatic defeat that led to the loss of the colonies after the Treaty of Paris in 1898. In the domestic sphere, the Spanish society underwent a considerable mutation, with the appearance of such significant political realities as the emergence of regionalisms and peripheral nationalisms, the strengthening of a workers' movement of double affiliation, socialist and anarchist, and the sustained persistence, although decreasing, of the republican and Carlist oppositions".^[1]