![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Abstract
The fall of the First Republic was a bitter disappointment to Emilio Castelar, and confirmed his lifelong opposition to military intervention in the political life of the nation. His reputation as a staunch defender of liberty, civil rights and the rule of law won him the admiration of intellectuals not only in Spain but all over Europe, and he was often asked to lend his voice to the emerging civil-society (i.e., non-state) organizations which were campaigning for peace in Europe in the face of the increasing belligerence of the great powers. Castelar’s response to these appeals, while undoubtedly sharing the commitment to peace, was influenced by his primary concern for the internal well-being and order of his own country.
Notes
1 For a brief account of the political and military complexities of the fall of Castelar, see C. A. M. Hennessy, The Federal Republic in Spain: Pi y Margall and the Federal Republican Movement, 1868–74 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 238–43.
2 ‘Si la nación es autónoma, fuerza es que lo sean todas las colectividades sociales, todas las agrupaciones naturales; es decir, el municipio y la provincia’ (Francisco Pi y Margall, Lecciones de controversia federalista y artículos doctrinales [Valencia: Imprenta de Pau Torrijos y Cía, 1906], 20; quoted in María Carmen García-Nieto París & Esperanza Yllán Calderón, Historia de España 1808–1978, 3 vols [Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1987], II, La experiencia histórica del sexenio revolucionario, 1868–1874, 144).
3 Raymond Carr, Spain: 1808–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 326. ‘The whole structure of Federal Republicanism was built on the two flimsy assumptions that the “people” would be the new regenerating force and that European republicanism was still active in the 1870s. The Federals only learnt that both were false after they had come to power in 1873’ (Hennessy, The Federal Republic in Spain, xv).
4 Carr, Spain: 1808–1939, 330–31; Hennessy, The Federal Republic in Spain, 181.
5 Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN). Discursos. Autógrafos. Legajo 26. Also in Carmen Llorca, Emilio Castelar: precursor de la Democracia Cristiana (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1966), 210–11.
6 Letter to Adolfo Calzado, 4 July 1874 (Correspondencia de Emilio Castelar, 1868–1898, ed. & prólogo de Adolfo Calzado [Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1908], 6). Calzado (1840–1909) was a Spanish businessman resident in Paris. Castelar had got to know him in 1866, when he (Castelar) was forced to flee Spain on being sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in the artillery sergeants’ revolt. Calzado helped him during his exile, when Castelar suffered considerable financial hardship. From about 1874, Calzado became his banker and financial adviser. Furthermore, Castelar, a lifelong bachelor, found a kind of substitute family in his visits to the Calzado summer home in Étretat. He adopted their youngest daughter, and was devastated when the child died in 1876 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 51). At a later date, Castelar seems to have assumed responsibility for the education of the Calzados’ son Álvaro, who settled in Madrid as a student in 1885 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 181).
7 Letter to Adolfo Calzado, 9 January 1875 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 22).
8 Letter to Adolfo Calzado, 4 July 1874 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 4). Some twenty years later, Castelar was still returning obsessionally to the same topic. When Juan Porqueras wrote to complain about Castelar entering into an electoral pact with Sagasta’s Liberals, he drafted a reply saying, among other things: ‘yo sigo mi política con arreglo a mi responsibilidad ante la historia, [ … ] Yo responderé de ella ante Dios y el mundo, y nada, ni nadie, me hará desistir del camino comenzado en la madrugada del tres de enero’ (AHN. Diversos. Títulos y Familias. Legajo 2410). Further references to this collection will be incorporated into the main text in the form (AHN 2410).
9 Manuel Suárez Cortina, ‘El republicanismo español tras la crisis de fin de siglo (1898–1914)’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 20 (1998), 165–89 (p. 167). ‘[Castelar] piensa en una República tan limpia, tan pura, tan perfecta, que es irrealizable’ (Llorca, Emilio Castelar, 289).
10 Letter to Calzado, Florence, 28 September 1874 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 15).
11 Letter to Calzado, 14 April 1883 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 152).
12 His funeral oration for his colleague Eusebio Pascual runs to 243 octavo pages (‘Discurso pronunciado por don Emilio Castelar en la necrópolis barcelonense al enterrar el cadáver de don Eusebio Pascual y Casas, el día [20] de abril de 1883’ [Biblioteca Nacional MSS/22458/2]). Not everyone was equally convinced by Castelar’s oratory. Writing to Menéndez Pelayo on 3 August 1892, Juan Valera commented: ‘Castelar … escribe en mi sentir peor que nunca: con un gongorismo flamante, verdaderamente ridículo’ (Epistolario de Valera y Menéndez Pelayo, 1877–1905, intro. & notas por Miguel Artigas Ferrando & Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1946], 443).
13 Letter to Calzado, 6 June 1877 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 73).
14 Llorca, Emilio Castelar, 247. ‘Castelar was mainly responsible for linking Spanish federalism to the main current of European republicanism. [ … ] The September Revolution [ … ] gave him the opportunity to open up a vista of a regenerated Spain taking over the leadership of a Latin republican confederation of France, Spain, Italy and Portugal’ (Hennessy, The Federal Republic in Spain, 89).
15 Letter of 4 June 1870 (Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 371).
16 Jules Simon (1814–1896) was a former Minister of Education and a conservative Republican deputy during the Third Republic. Fréderic Passy (1822–1912) was the founder of the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix, which after the Franco-Prussian War became the Société Française des Amis de la Paix, and in 1889 evolved into the Société d’Arbitrage entre les Nations. He was a member of the International Bureau of Peace, based in Bern, and along with Henry Dunant was awarded the first ever Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1833–1918) had served with Garibaldi, and in 1866 fought in the Italian army against Austria. Subsequently, he became an international peace activist, and with Louis Renault was a Nobel Peace Laureate in 1907. In 1887, he founded the Unione Lombarda per la Pace e l’Arbitrato, which called for disarmament and envisaged the creation of a League of Nations. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910), in addition to his fame as a novelist, became known throughout Europe for his conversion in 1884 to Christian pacifism. Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) was co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany.
17 This document was first classified as No. 259 in Castelar’s personal archive purchased by the Biblioteca Nacional in 1984. Though I understand that all these manuscripts were re-catalogued according to the normal system used by the BN, there are three that I have been unable to trace in the online catalogue.
18 BN provisional 289 (see note 17).
19 Carr, Spain: 1808–1939, 361.
20 ‘Mi política se reduce a estos tres términos: derechos individuales, gobierno de la Nación por la Nación misma, Presupuesto de la Paz’. Note for secretary to reply to a correspondent, 20 February 1893 (AHN 2410).
21 Emilio Castelar, Discursos pronunciados en el Congreso de Diputados durante los períodos legislativos de 1876 y primero de 1877 (Barcelona: Librería Española, 1877), 210–11.
22 Llorca, Emilio Castelar, 179.
23 José Carvajal y Hué (1835–1899) was a lawyer and economist who had been a minister during Castelar’s Presidency in 1873–1874.
24 Correspondencia, ed. Calzado, 218–19.
25 BN provisional 281 (see note 17).
26 ‘[ … ] con tolerar y sostener las anticientíficas y antieconómicas reformas del general López Domínguez, y los disparatados presupuestos del Sr Gamazo, [el gobierno] armó el conflicto, sembrando rebeliones por doquiera’ (El Correo Militar, 21 August 1893).
27 Genaro Alas, ‘El Presupuesto de la Paz’, Nuestro Tiempo, 34 (October 1903), 459; emphasis in original). Genaro Alas (1845–1918, elder brother of the novelist and critic Leopoldo), could speak with authority on these matters, as he was trained as a military engineer, and had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.