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Reign of Alfonso XII

Official portrait of Alfonso XII by Federico Madrazo shortly before the king's death in November 1885 (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

The reign of Alfonso XII of Spain began after the triumph of the Pronunciamiento de Sagunto of December 29, 1874, which put an end to the First Spanish Republic and ended with the death of King Alfonso on November 25, 1885, giving way to the Regency of his wife, María Cristina of Habsburg. During the reign, the political regime of the Restoration was created, which was based on the Spanish Constitution of 1876, in force until 1923.[1][2] It was a constitutional monarchy, but neither democratic nor parliamentary,[3] "although far from the party exclusivism of the Elizabethan era". "It was defined as liberal by its supporters and as oligarchic by its critics, particularly the regenerationists. Its theoretical foundations are to be found in the principles of doctrinaire liberalism", Ramón Villares has pointed out.[4]

According to Carlos Dardé, it was "a brief reign ―just under eleven years― but an important one. At its end, the situation of Spain in all areas was much better than when it began. And, in spite of the uncertainty caused by the disappearance of the monarch ―especially because of the unknown succession― the improvement continued during the regency of María Cristina of Austria, during the minority of her posthumous son, Alfonso XIII. The foundations laid proved to be sufficiently solid. That reign had been a new starting point of the liberal regime in Spain".[5][6]

The almost eleven years of the reign were years of economic growth based on the continuation of the railway network, foreign investments, the mining boom and the growth of agricultural exports, especially wine, taking advantage of the great phylloxera plague that was devastating the French vineyards.[7] The great beneficiaries of this economic boom were the nobility and the high bourgeoisie, increasingly intertwined by matrimonial, personal and economic ties, thus constituting the "power bloc" of the Restoration, intimately connected with the political elite, fully identified with their interests.[8][9][10] At the opposite extreme, in a society that remained agrarian (two thirds of the working population belonged to the primary sector) and in which the middle classes made up only 5 to 10% of the population,[11] there were millions of poor day laborers in the southern half of the country.[12]

  1. ^ Jover 1981, p. 271.
  2. ^ Varela Ortega 2001, p. 101-102."[The Restoration was a stable] regime, because Cánovas broke the coup dynamics of the Elizabethan era. He achieved it by suppressing in the Army and among the parties the political motives that made it possible. It put an end to the intervention of the Army as an institution in politics. It also put an end to the military acting as the armed wing of marginalized politicians, because it ended party exclusivism. It made room for the oppositions to conquer power by constitutional, not military means. It was not an easy task; nor was it automatic".
  3. ^ Varela Ortega 2001, p. 101.-"[The Restoration] was a liberal regime, not a democratic one."
  4. ^ Villares 2009, pp. 3–4.
  5. ^ Dardé 2021, p. 169.
  6. ^ Dardé 2003a, p. 11-12."Peace finally came to the country when the Carlist and Cuban wars were successfully concluded by the liberal and Spanish arms [...]. It was not without reason that the young king was called "the peacemaker". An appellative that also fits the monarch well for having been able to curb the warmongering desires of his ministers and public opinion on the occasion of the crisis that confronted Spain and Germany because of sovereignty over the Caroline Islands in 1885, although two years earlier his fondness for the army and German uniforms was the cause of a serious diplomatic incident with France. But the reign of Alfonso XII was also a decade of important political changes... A new Constitution was approved, and a new party system was created and came into operation. The monarch began to exercise, with an authority and wisdom unknown until then, the sovereignty that the Constitution recognized him, together with the Cortes. The parties alternated peacefully in power and thanks to this political stability was achieved".
  7. ^ Seco Serrano 2007, p. 169.
  8. ^ Jover 1981, p. 297-298.
  9. ^ Seco Serrano 2007, p. 169-170.
  10. ^ Suárez Cortina 2006, pp. 296–298"The arrival of the Restoration meant the triumph of the sectors most comfortable with the old liberal order, that alliance between nobility and high bourgeoisie... If in the Elizabethan era that nobility had been confined to the Senate, after the Gloriosa it recovered positions, opened up to new economic activities and acted as another element of the new social dynamics: it is incorporated into the business world, opens to new marriage strategies with the rising bourgeoisie and, above all, it is the bulwark of a new social pact in the alliance between Monarchy, Army and Church. [...] The dense network of business, family ties and political positions constitutes one of the most marked characteristics of this upper stratum of Spanish society during the Restoration".
  11. ^ Suárez Cortina 2006, pp. 295, 299"A large part of society still lived in a traditional universe, under the dominion of the peasant community and with the protection and lifestyle of the extended family".
  12. ^ Seco Serrano 2007, p. 170.

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