13/02/2014
Carlos Dardé is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cantabria
The First Spanish Republic was proclaimed on 11 February 1873. It was not established due to a big wave of opinion, or the duty of a well-established party in the country, but to the manoeuvres of royalist parties which King Amadeus of Savoy was unable to neutralize and which made his continuity on the throne unviable. The (federal) Republican Party, which had been founded in November 1868 and had won appreciable parliamentary representation in the following elections, would only decline since then. “Nobody has destroyed the Spanish Monarchy, nobody has killed it; the Monarchy has died due to internal decomposition”, would state the republican Emilio Castelar.
The First Republic was a brief and tumultuous period which took place in the midst of a big social upheaval and was undermined by two inherited civil wars¾the Cuban and the Carlist¾and, above all, by a third one, caused by the division of Republicans regarding the way to establish federalism. Its second president, Francisco Pi y Margall, resigned because he was not willing to send the army to fight those who proclaimed the Canton in Cartagena, refusing to acknowledge the parliamentary sovereignty of the Cortes. His substitute, Nicolás Salmerón, did turn to the army keep the phenomenon from spreading: Seville, Cadiz, Valencia, Almansa and Torrevieja proclaimed themselves independent cantons on 19 July and, a day later, Castellón and Granada; Salamanca, Bailén, Andújar, Tarifa and Algeciras did it on 22 July. They were not the only ones. There were many conflicts, which claimed numerous lives: Urtrera opposed Seville’s attempt to join them; Huelva did not want to change Madrid’s leadership for Seville’s, and asked the government for protection; the same happened in Loja, which refused to join Granada or Málaga; the canton of Castellon cut off communications with that of Valencia, which was seen as a rival. But President Salmerón resigned because he refused to sign the death warrants of two soldiers who deserted and killed some of their colleagues. Emilio Castelar, the last president, restored order. However, his management was not approved and, before the so-called “intransigent” regained the power, General Pavía entered the Congress (without a horse, like it is commonly believed) on the night of 3 January 1874 and dissolved the Constituent Assembly. The republican project had been cut short for good.
Such first experience left a very bad memory. Republicanism was weakened in Spain. Something similar happened throughout Europe, like the British historian H.A.L. Fisher stated on the eve of the First World War. It was military defeat in 1918 what put an end to central European monarchies, and Alfonso XIII’s complicity with Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship what put an end to that of Spain in 1931. In order words, just like in 1973, the end of the monarchy was rather due to its own mistakes than to the weight of republican tradition.