Spain: A Unique History (27 page)

The War of Independence was a remarkable disaster. For the past century France had been considered a friend and sometimes an ally, only to subject Spain to a brutal assault. Though the Spanish resisted bravely and ultimately successfully, the cost was enormous. The country had been spared desperate military conflict for nearly a hundred years, and was hardly prepared — no country would have been prepared — for the massive atrocities, suffering, death, and destruction that ensued. A significant aspect often passed over is the enormous amount of looting of valuables and art treasures by the French, the better part of which was never returned. Of the three great "lootings of Spain" — that by the Arabs, the French, and the revolutionaries of 1936, this was arguably the worst. The war cost Spain an entire generation of cultural and economic development, so that in the 1820s it had scarcely regained the level of 1800. In proportionate terms, Spain would thus begin the nineteenth century in worse comparative condition than it had the eighteenth century, so that whatever progress had been made in the "Siglo de las Luces" was seemingly placed in doubt. The war would inaugurate a new "long century" (1814-1923) marked by frequent and extensive conflict, both political and military, internal and external, that would continue even beyond, until the middle of the twentieth century. It initiated an attempt at political modernization and liberalization under some of the worst conditions, which helped to guarantee that it would for long not be very successful.

Historic Spanish liberalism has not enjoyed a good press, and among Left and Right alike has often been judged a failure. Yet it dominated Spanish affairs and governed for approximately a century, so that, if a failure, it was certainly a long surviving failure, implying that the standard caricature, like so many of the caricatures and stereotypes in Spanish history, may be something of an exaggeration.

It would be excessive to say that liberalism truly governed Spain between 1810 and 1814, given the chaos of those years, while the second liberal regime of 1820-23 was overthrown by foreign invasion, albeit in this case a foreign invasion that was accepted by much of Spanish opinion. From the death of Fernando VII in 1833 until 1923 some form of liberalism governed the country, usually fairly conservative, though occasionally quite radical. By 1923 Spain had lived under liberal parliamentary government for more years than had any other large continental European country, including France — no mean achievement for a "historical failure."

The liberal breakthrough resulted from the complete breakdown of government as a result of the French invasion, but this did not mean that the seizure of leadership by the liberals was the result of a conspiracy by a tiny minority, as some interpretations have had it. During the second half of the eighteenth century the slow but steady evolution of Spain's society, culture, and economy had encouraged the emergence of a small middle class and had also transformed the attitudes of part of the nobility. Something, at least, of the basis for a more modern economy had been laid, even if the general structure remained traditional. The new more liberal and capitalist interests were not hegemonic, but they were expanding, even if politically inarticulated. Most potential liberals would probably have been willing to continue to accept government by an evolutionary reformist monarchy, had such a regime continued to exist. In 1809-10, by contrast, they responded to a new vacuum of power, though they themselves continued to represent no more than a limited minority of Spanish society.

The Constitution of 1812 was, in fact, the great European liberal constitution of the early nineteenth century, more judicious and reasonable than anything found in revolutionary France, and stood as the most influential charter of liberalism to be found in Europe during the next two decades. This new "Spanish national model" inspired liberals in Italy, Germany, Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere, representing an attempt to reconcile the differing ideas of the French Enlightenment, the Anglo-Scottish and Spanish Enlightenments, and the Scholastic tradition with its doctrines of natural law.
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It was a unique achievement for its time, offering a broad, semidemocratic but nonetheless "organic" suffrage, taking care not to offend most aspects of traditional culture. This was a special achievement of the original Spanish moderate liberal elite, before passions had become inflamed by partisan conflict and the influence of more radical doctrines.

Though early Spanish liberalism originally had considerable influence in Spanish America, it was later virtually forgotten by American historiography, which preferred a manichean portrait of "liberal Latin America" versus "absolutist Spain."
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The Cortes of Cádiz included a tiny minority of representatives from Spanish America, and its constitution provided for direct American representation in the future Spanish parliament, even though on a very limited basis.
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Neither the Cádiz liberals nor most of the "exaltados" (radicals) of the second liberal regime were willing to grant greater proportionality for a transatlantic Hispanic nation, nor the complete equality and freedom of commerce demanded by Spanish Americans, so that any prospect of maintaining a transatlantic state proved completely illusory.
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The restoration of absolute monarchy by Fernando VII was in some respects a caricature of the kind of absolutism practiced by Carlos III. Most of the "enlightened" aspects of absolutism disappeared, to be replaced by extremes of authoritarianism and repression. The Constitution of 1812 offered a reasonable basis on which to initiate a moderate and Catholic form of liberalism, but this was never attempted, first being overthrown by Fernando and then, in its second incarnation, bypassed by the exaltados, the second generation of radical liberals, who inaugurated what might be subsequently termed the "exaltado tradition" in Spanish affairs, according to which periodically the axis of politics was shifted so far to the Left as to tip over into armed conflict. By 1823 both of the polarities of modern Spanish politics had been established, and would remain in place for the next century and a half, until consensus was finally achieved.

Undoubtedly the introduction of direct liberalism in Spain was somewhat premature, and would never have had the strength or opportunity to impose itself at that time had it not been for the destruction of regular government by the French invasion. In Spain there existed a liberal intelligentsia, as well as certain middle and upper-class social and economic interests that could be mobilized on behalf of liberalism, but an adequate civil society on which to build a liberal system did not exist. The result was the emergence of the "Spanish contradiction" for much of the period between 1810 and 1939 — the persistent efforts of small liberal or radical elites to introduce "advanced" systems, which lacked an adequate social, cultural, or economic base. The Spanish contradiction finally ended in the later years of the Franco regime, when it was replaced for a time by the "Franco contradiction" — a political system more retrograde and backward than the society and culture over which it presided.

Traditionalism was strong in all parts of Europe during the early nineteenth century. Nowhere did traditionalism enjoy such militant popular support as in Spain, however, not because traditionalism was absolutely that much stronger than elsewhere, but rather because only in Spain had liberalism been forced on a society and culture that was still so traditionalist. In most other European states more traditional monarchies prevailed, in most cases — at least in the middle of the century — avoiding liberalism and popular mobilization almost altogether.

Carlism has been called the largest, virtually the only, political mass movement of nineteenth-century Spain, which is probably correct. It has often been seen as a sort of Spanish peculiarity, another Spanish exceptionalism, but, as in the case of other perceived Spanish exceptionalisms, this has led to exaggeration. Traditionalism existed in nearly all continental countries. In France during the 1790s, massive military action and wholesale violence, bordering on genocide, was required to crush French traditionalism. The difference in Spain was that traditionalism endured longer, to a minor degree persisting at least until the mid-twentieth century.

The dimensions of the traditionalist reaction after 1833 were due above all to the fact that in Spain liberalism was introduced at an earlier phase of the country's overall modernization than was the case elsewhere, making the Spanish contradiction particularly acute during the early nineteenth century. The strength of Carlism seems to have been correlated especially with two factors: first the force of religious and ultraroyalist sentiment, and second the vigor of traditional institutions. Thus Carlism was weakest in the south, enjoyed intermediate strength in the north-central part of the country, and was strongest in the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia.
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In such conditions, with a weak liberal monarchy, a relatively fragile elite liberalism, and a generally traditionalist society, civil war was not surprising. The liberals won not because they would have been able to carry a national plebiscite, which is doubtful, but because of their control of the state and the military, and because of foreign support. Whereas in 1823 foreign intervention had favored the Right (and would do so again in 1936-39), foreign assistance during the First Carlist War favored the liberals. Most of the upper classes, who might have been thought to support traditionalism, in fact backed the liberals, partly because Carlism seemed to a large extent a menacing popular movement of poor peasants, the Carlist bands often showing "hatred of the rich."

The conflict between liberalism and traditionalism, between revolution and counterrevolution, was not a morbid peculiarity of the Spanish but to a greater or lesser degree was characteristic of the politics of most of western continental Europe during the six decades that followed the Napoleonic wars, roughly through the 1870s.
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That there was much less civil war in France, Italy, Austria, or Germany than in Spain during that period was due primarily to the strength of the state in those countries. The German, Austrian, and Italian states simply held liberalism at bay almost altogether, until limited and nondemocratic forms of liberalism were finally adopted by the 1870s, somewhat the same as in Spain. France experienced more advanced liberalism, only to succumb to a modern form of new authoritarian state from 1851 to 1870, and thus counted fewer years under parliamentary government than Spain, with a convulsive history that had passed through three more revolutionary experiences by 1871. Spanish liberalism was in power proportionately longer than the parliamentary forces in any of these countries, but by comparison could only build a weaker state prone to convulsion. The frequency of convulsion was due not merely to that weakness but also to the narrowness and exclusiveness of the dominant liberal elites, the limited basis of civil society, and the loss of legitimacy in the system. The first sixty years of the new Spanish American republics were equally convulsive, until their political systems also began to stabilize somewhat by the 1880s.

Much better for Spain during the first half of the nineteenth century would probably have been a more advanced form of the reformist monarchy of Carlos III. It would have spared much conflict, bloodshed, and destruction, though such an alternative presents a quasi-utopian counterfactual that at no time existed as a genuine possibility. As it was, the reintroduction of liberalism in 1833-34, like its original eruption in 1810, was due to a unique contingency, in this case the dynastic dispute.

The third phase of liberalism began modestly with the Royal Statute of 1834, a very limited charter that sought to reconcile the Old Regime with a circumscribed liberalism, but was overtaken by radicalization within no more than two years, following a seeming iron law of Spanish politics. In this case, the
Wechselwirkung
or "reciprocal influences" of civil war radicalized both Left and Right, heightening the Spanish contradiction. Moreover, the mid-1830s first revealed sociopolitical fragmentation as a consequence of limited modernization, at least in Spain, though the slow pace of that modernization would make it possible, most of the time, to hold the fragmentation in check for another century. The next constitution (1837) was more liberal but not democratic, for even the more "progressive" liberals feared democracy, as was almost universally the case in European liberalism at that time. Nearly a decade would be required before the moderate liberals finally gained control of the situation.
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These struggles and conflicts were only enhanced by the intensity with which much of the Spanish elite lived the Romantic era in European culture. Though romantic literature was not as distinguished in Spain as in some other countries, romanticism reflected well the Spanish mood in the first half of the nineteenth century, a time of heroes and caudillos and dramatic, if often destructive, public events. As J. Marías says, in some ways during that era Spain was the romantic country par excellence, one of the reasons why it appealed so greatly to visiting romantics from other lands. The romantic ethos continued through the 1860s, giving way afterward to weariness and a more pragmatic attitude.

During the following generation, Carlism declined yet maintained much of its base in the northeast. The advance of those combined processes generally grouped under the rubric of "modernization" would inevitably weaken traditionalism, yet the pace of traditionalism's decline was slow, due to several factors. One was simply the rhythm of nineteenth-century economic development, which had long left some of the basis of traditionalism intact. A second was the concentration of the traditionalist base in the northeast, where it became increasingly identified with the defense and survival of local and regional institutions, even among certain social sectors that elsewhere might have come to support liberalism.