28/11/2013
Carlos Dardé is Professor of Contemporary History, University of Cantabria. Author of the biography Alfonso XII (Arlanza Ediciones, Madrid, 2001) and of Cánovas y el liberalismo conservador (Gota a Gota, Madrid, 2013)
November 28 marks the birth anniversary in 1857 of Prince Alfonso de Borbón y Borbón who, in December 1874, would become King Alfonso XII. He was King for only a short period, eleven years scarce, because he died in November 1885, when he was just about to turn twenty-eight, from complications from the tuberculosis he was suffering. He was called "the Peacemaker"–as you can read in the magnificent monument erected to his memory in the Retiro Park in Madrid– for having ended the last Carlist war, but you could also apply this epithet for his decisive contribution to establishing a long period of peaceful coexistence among the Spaniards, which they hadn't enjoyed for decades.
Unlike the UK, where Queen Victoria had lost much of her former effective power to a new symbolic power in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, the monarch in Spain remained being the cornerstone of the political system as he had the power to dissolve Parliament and appoint governments which, later, were confirmed by an election manipulated by the Ministry of the Interior. From this privileged position, Alfonso XII, taught by the hard experience of eight years in exile following the dethronement of his mother, Isabella II, in 1868, and a knowledge of modern Europe–he was educated in Paris, Geneva, Vienna and a British military academy–fully supported Antonio Cánovas del Castillo's project to make a non-vengeful but inclusive restoration of all people willing to abandon the use of military pronunciamientos to get to power. Later, the King showed, as the English minister in Madrid wrote, that he was not a puppet in the hands of those who had placed him on the throne, and summoned the leader of the liberal opposition, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, to rule. Práxedes Mateo Sagasta was nothing less than a former convict, sentenced to death for conspiring against Isabella II. The peaceful alternation of parties in power thus became a reality.
The King was involved in some scandals regarding his private life and caused a serious diplomatic incident with France when he recklessly showed his preference for the German army. But overall his work as head of the country was largely positive. He skilfully managed the conflict with Germany for the Caroline Islands, controlled the army high command, tried to moralise the administration, and demonstrated his proximity to people during natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Andalusia or the cholera epidemic in 1885. Surrounded by a certain romantic atmosphere, helped by the knowledge of his disease and the sudden death of his beloved first wife, Mercedes de Borbón, the King was able to transform the coldness with which he was received into a wide wave of sympathy and acceptance of his person and the institution he represented. Alfonso XII, a true liberal king, strengthened the monarchy in Spain.