History of Isabel II of Spain
Fernando VII had two daughters. According to the Salica Law, women could not access the throne, so the successor of the crown must be the brother of the king, Carlos María de Isidro. However, Fernando VII changed the law shortly before he died (with the promulgation of the pragmatic sanction) and appointed his daughter Isabel heiress the throne. At the death of the king, in 1833, María Cristina, wife of Fernando VII, was in charge of the regency until Isabel II reached the age of majority. However, the supporters of Carlos Maria de Isidro rose in arms against the regent, who was forced to seek support in the liberals. Thus begins, the first callist war.
The Carlists defended the absolutist monarchy, conservative Catholicism and formalism. Geographically, their supporters predominated in the northern half and especially in the Basque Country and Navarra. The liberals, also called Elizabethins or Cristinos, were supporters of liberal principles. The Carlists, commanded by General Zumalacárregui, got important victories in the north. The callist suitor himself, Carlos Mº Isidro, arrived at the gates of Madrid in 1837. In 1839, the Carlist General Maroto and General Isabelino Espartero signed the Vergara agreement, with which the first Carlist war was completed. Espartero promised to maintain the vasconavarros fueros, as well as the jobs and grades of the Carlist military. For their part, the Carlists accepted Isabel II as queen.
The first three years of the regency of María Cristina served for moderate liberals to be consolidated in politics. The main political instrument was a pre -constitutional letter, the real statute, a kind of letter granted that did not recognize national sovereignty, or political freedoms, nor the division of powers.
In 1836, a group of sergeants entered by force at the San Ildefonso de la Granja Palace, where María Cristina passed her summer vacation. The military forced the regent to sign a decree by which the 1812 Constitution was restored and the Royal Statute of 1834 was repealed. This fact is known as the Granja riot. Immediately after a new constitution was written, that of 1837, with some changes with respect to that of 1812 that made it more moderate. With this new Constitution of 1837 it was intended to be content both progressive and moderate liberals. On the one hand, he proclaimed national sovereignty and granted individual rights;But, on the other hand, he maintained a strong executive branch in the hands of the king, who also had legislative powers and the right to veto. The suspension of the courts;established bicameral cuts, with a congress chosen through census suffrage and a real designation Senate.
By a municipal law (1840) that suppressed the right of citizens to elect their mayors, who were appointed by the government directly, there were new popular popular uprisings and María Cristina was forced to renounce the regency.
When María Cristina resigned, in October 1840, General Espartero was appointed regent by the Cortes. The Spartan general, a recent winner against the Carlists, ruled until 1843 dictatorially and without ever submitting to Parliament. Espartero won everyone’s rejection: his policy, radically freeambista, endangered the incipient Catalan industry. The Opposition of the Basques, who had seen how, for their support to the Carlists, the Pacional Law of 1841 reorder the Vasconavarros fueros.
Some progressive sectors, who had initially supported Espartero faced him, because they did not accept their authoritarian forms even if they were made in the name of liberalism. In 1843 a military revolt was initiated by Narváez, who dropped the government. Spartano fled and exiled in London.
Proclaimed of legal age at age 13, Isabel II Audio the Throne of Spain (1843) and commissioned government formation to the moderate party, led by Narváez. The moderate match ruled for 10 years (the moderate decade) with a hard hand. He repealed the Constitution of 1837 and wrote a new one in 1845, in which more powers were granted to the crown and cut those of Parliament. Similarly, census suffrage was maintained.
In 1844 the Civil Guard was created, a military police force aimed at maintaining order in rural areas. Moderate politicians tried an approach to the Church, an enemy with the liberal regime since the confiscation of 1836. In this sense, in 1851 a concordat or collaboration agreement with the Vatican was signed by which the Church recovered many of its privileges and was authorized to intervene in teaching.
The progressive biennium began in 1854 with a military pronouncement, known as "La Vicalvarada". His instigator was General Leopoldo de O’Donnell, leader of the Unión Liberal Party. The movement did not intend to destroy Queen Elizabeth II, but to force her to admit the democratic reforms interrupted in 1844, as stated in the Manzanares Manifesto that Antonio Cánovas written Liberal. After the Vicalvarad. An important measure of this era was the application of a second confiscation (1855), according to the Pascual Madoz plan. Of the year 1855 is also the Law of Railroads, which planned the railway network that was so important in the development of Spanish capitalism.
The progressive biennium ended by the reaction of moderate liberals and the pressures of the crown and the ecclesiastical sectors. The moderate ones are now governed: the governments of Generals Narváez and O’Donnell occur. In that period, the paralysis of the confiscation of 1855, the recognition of the Church of many of its traditional prerogatives and privileges, the hard repression against the peasant revolts carried out by the Civil Guard and, finally, the establishment of practices the establishment of practices and, the establishment of practices and, the establishment of practiceselectoral that resulted in the corruption of the political system. The opposition to this moderate policy was translated into events such as the tragic bloody repression of students on the night of San Daniel;or the uprising of the San Gil Barracks, against Isabel II.
A foreign policy was also initiated to imitation of the great colonial operations of European powers. In this sense, troops were sent to Conchinchina that today is part of Vietnam, to defend Spanish missionaries, and some expeditions to North Africa.
Faced with the conservative policy of the moderate ones, yearnings for broader civil rights increase. Among the enlightened layers the Democratic Party was implanted and republicanism appeared, while the first workers’ organizations were created.
A group of Democratic and Progressive politicians, some in exile, signed a pact in the Belgian city of Ostende (1866) that included an agreement to dethrone Isabel II. In 1868, two years after this pact, the Spanish Navy docked in Cádiz and directed by Admiral Topete revolted against the Isabel II monarchy. What was initially a more military pronouncement became a revolutionary movement, in which the popular sectors occupied the squares of their locations to the shout of "the Bourbons die". In a few days the revolution triumphed, which its protagonists described with the name of "La Goriosa".
In conclusion, the reign of Isabel II saw the first steps of the liberal revolution in Spain. This stage was characterized by the struggle between progressive and moderate liberals, which alternated in power. These changes of government originated after coups and were generals that accessed power, so this time is known as "general regime".
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