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Abstract
During the two decades between the foundation of the Partido Demócrata Español in April 1849 and the ‘Glorious’ revolution of September 1868, Democrat leaders used newspapers to create a mass following among the urban and rural pueblo. Apart from promoting their programme of political and social reform, editors of El Pueblo, La Discusión and La Democracia in a straightforward discourse, also strove to enlist readers' emotional engagement with national and international causes. They did so by publicizing examples of those who were or could have been interpreted as wrongdoers in relation to political regimes, and yet were interpreted otherwise in the causes they promoted. Thus figures such as Mariana Pineda, Tomás Brú, Sixto Cámara and José Garibaldi were evoked by Democrat propagandists to serve as exemplars of patriotic self-sacrifice and heroic martyrdom. The paper explores, first, how—in southern Spain—this cult of republican martyrdom and self-sacrifice was deployed by local leaders to enlist support (especially through clandestine Carbonari societies), and, secondly, how such appeals were received by the pueblo.
Notes
1 Letter from Antonio Guerola, civil governor of Málaga, to the Minister of Development (Madrid, 13 June 1861), in Antonio Guerola, Memoria de mi Administración en la Provincia de Málaga como Gobernador de ella desde 6 de Diciembre de 1857 hasta el 15 de Febrero de 1863, intro. de Federico Suárez, 4 vols (Sevilla: Fundación Sevillana de Electricidad, 1997), I, 174–75; the original punctuation of quotations in Castilian has been retained throughout the text.
2 Clara E. Lida, ‘Literatura anarquista y anarquismo literario’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 19:2 (1970), 360–81.
3 In this essay ‘Democrat’ is used as a synonym for ‘Republican’. Between 1843 and 1868, the term ‘Republican’ disappeared from the political vocabulary in Spain as Democrats and ‘advanced’ (left) Progresistas, in the face of censorship and repression, distanced themselves from the negative, revolutionary connotations of French republicanism. However, Carbonari initiation ceremonies, which formed the basis of the clandestine network of the Democrat party, included a republican oath. After September 1868, most Democrats were swift to declare their republicanism.
4 Florencia Peyrou, Tribunos del Pueblo: demócratas y republicanos durante el reinado de Isabel II (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2008); Román Miguel González, La pasión revolucionaria: culturas políticas republicanas y movilización popular en la España del siglo XIX (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007); Clara E. Lida, Anarquismo y revolución en la España del XIX (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1972); and, by the same author, Antecedentes y desarrollo del movimiento obrero español (1835–1888) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1973).
5 Moderado is used in this essay to refer to the conservative Liberal party that ruled between 1843–1854, 1856–1858 and 1863–1868 and supported the ideal, prescribed in the constitution of 1845, of a limited, propertied democracy designed to contain egalitarian and democratic tendencies emanating from France.
6 Javier Fernández Sebastián, ‘Democracia’, in Diccionario político y social del siglo XIX español, dir. Fernández Sebastián & Juan Francisco Fuentes (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002), 216–28 (p. 220).
7 Jaime Balmes, ‘La situación y las necesidades del país’, in El pensamiento de la nación: periódico religioso, político y literario, 3 vols (Madrid: Imprenta y Fundación de Aguado), I, No. 27, 7 August 1844, p. 417.
8 ‘Alegría’ was a term used frequently at the time by the political authorities to describe a mood of optimism and conspiratorial readiness of Democrats.
9 José María Jover, Política, diplomacia y humanismo popular en la España del Siglo XIX (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976), 341.
10 Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: una biografía (Madrid: Taurus, 2011); Antonio Flores, Crónica del viaje de sus Majestades y Altezas Reales a las Islas Baleares, Cataluña y Aragón (Madrid: Imp. de M. Rivadeneyra, 1861); Eduardo de los Reyes & Francisco Javier Cobos, Crónica del Viaje de Sus Majestades y Altezas Reales por Granada y Su Provincia en 1862 (Granada: Imp. de Francisco Ventura y Sabatel, 1862).
11 Demetrio Castro Alfín, ‘Republicanos en armas: clandestinidad e insurreccionalismo en el reinado de Isabel II’, Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne, XXIII (1976), 29–40; Carolyn P. Boyd, ‘Historia patria’: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975 (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1997).
12 The initial response to the democratic uprising at Loja was that it was fomented by a network of Protestants orchestrated by Manuel Matamoros and José Alhama from their prison cell in Granada. See William Greene, Manuel Matamoros and his Fellow Prisoners: A Narrative of the Present Persecution of Christians in Spain compiled from original letters written in Prison (London: Morgan and Chase, 1863), 73–80; and Juan B. Vilar, Intolerancia y libertad en la España contemporánea: los orígenes del protestantismo español actual (Madrid: Istmo, 1994), 13, 191, 240–41, 357–65.
13 Guy Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain: Democracy, Association and Revolution, 1854–1875 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Spanish translation: El nacimiento de la política moderna: democracia, asociación y revolución, 1854–1875, trad. Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso (Granada: Comares, 2014).
14 Isabel Burdiel, ‘La ilusión monárquica del liberalismo isabelino: notas para un estudio’, in Visiones del liberalismo: política, identidad y cultura en la España del siglo XIX, ed. Alda Blanco & Guy Thomson (Valencia: Univ. de Valencia, 2008), 137–58; Nelson Durán, La Unión Liberal y la modernización de la España isabelina: una convivencia frustrada, 1854–1868 (Madrid: Akal, 1979).
15 Adrian Shubert, ‘Baldomero Espartero (1793–1879): del ídolo al olvido’, in Liberales, agitadores y conspiradores: biografías heterodoxas del siglo XIX, ed. Isabel Burdiel & Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000), 183–208.
16 Raúl Martín Arranz, ‘Espartero: figuras de legitimidad’, in Populismo, caudillaje y discurso demagógico, ed. José Álvarez Junco (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1987), 101–28.
17 Florencia Peyrou, ‘¿Hubo una cultura política trasnacional en la Europa del siglo XIX? Aproximación desde España’, Documento de Trabajo, 2012/9 del Seminario de Historia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (13 de diciembre de 2012), 1–21, <https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/docs/297-2013-07-29-9-12.pdf> (accessed 16 March 2017).
18 Isabel María Pascual Sastre, La Italia del Risorgimento y la España del Sexenio Democrático (1868–1874) (Madrid: CSIC, 2001).
19 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1101.
20 ‘Noticias de la provincia de Granada’, La Correspondencia de España, Diario Universal de Noticias, 16 July 1861, p. 2.
21 In 1869 Castelar was reported by a malagueño textile worker and writer in search of patronage in Madrid, to be arrogant, snobbish and unapproachable; see Francisco Flores García, Recuerdos de la Revolución (memorias íntimas) (Madrid: Ruiz Hermanos, 1913), 15–16.
22 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2007), 226–71.
23 González, La pasión revolucionaria; Génis Barnosell, ‘God and Freedom: Radical Liberalism, Republicanism, and Religion in Spain, 1808–1847’, International Review of Social History, 57:1 (2012), 37–59; Edward Berenson, Populist Religion and Left-Wing Politics in France, 1830–1852 (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1984).
24 Carlist general noted for his summary execution of Liberal prisoners.
25 Emilio Castelar, Retratos históricos (Madrid: La Ilustración Española y Americana, 1884), 65–66.
26 Castelar, Retratos históricos, 71.
27 Castelar, Retratos históricos, 69.
28 ‘[…] me metieron en una casa del tal Francisco Bera y me pucieron con los hojos bendado y despues que me los de sataron, me dijeron con tres cuchillos de con baynado juras por la libertad y la republica y a esto abia un Santo cristo de lante y un plato con tierra y macha y una cierra me des bendaron y me le lleron unos libros en los que daban a entender que no a bia tal, Virgen Madre de Dios ni que tal Dios esistia que Dn. Ymilio Castelar tenia la Ley de Dios berdadera y que toda criatura que y ba teniendo huso y rason, desde entonces enade lante los estaban juramentado y enceñandole esto con pena de muerte elque cellegue a des cubrir yo esto lo tome como una tonteria y mas conel miedo que etenido ciempre á Dios y Maria Santisima, y a S.M. la Reyna […]’. Approximate translation taken from this carpenter's rambling account of five years of persecution at the hands of Colmenar's Carbonari society, accompanying a letter addressed to the Military Governor of Málaga and forwarded to the First Minister; see Biblioteca de la Real Academia de Historia (BARH), Fondo Narváez, I (67 Legajos), Legajo 34 (17 November 1866), from Carlos de Fridrich (Málaga) to Ramón María Narváez (Madrid).
29 Archivo de la Diputación Provincial de Granada (ADPG), 604/2, ‘Gefes é instigadores de los apuntados en Alhama y Santa Cruz’; underlining in the original. For a contemporary assessment of the propagation of Socialism in the Andalucian countryside, see Antonio María Claret, ‘De los daños y errores que los protestantes y socialistas han causado y sembrado en las provincias de Andalucía’, in Antonio María Claret, Autobiografía, ed. José María Viñas & Jesús Bermejo (Barcelona: Claret, 1985); also available online at <http://www.claret.org/sites/default/files/documentos-biblioteca/Autobiografia_0.pdf> (consulted 12 February 2014).
30 Flores García, Recuerdos de la Revolución, 56–57.
31 Guy Thomson, ‘Mazzini y España, 1832–1872’, Historia Social, 59:3 (2007), 21–53.
32 Fernando Garrido, Biografía de Sixto Cámara (Barcelona: Manero, 1860); José Miguel Fernández, Sixto Cámara: un utopista revolucionario (Vitoria: Univ. del País Vasco, 1984); Peyrou, ‘Hubo una cultura’, 17–18.
33 It was reported that so many copies had been made of an engraving depicting Garibaldi at Aspromonte that the lithographic stone became useless, requiring the printers to order another (La Discusión, 25 September and 19 November 1862).
34 Civil Governor Guerola observed that republican Carbonari societies found it easier to recruit among illiterate men in smaller and remoter settlements where regular religious instruction was lacking (Guerola, Memoria, III, 1101).
35 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 84–103, 143–65.
36 Manuel Morales Muñoz, ‘Rituales, símbolos y calores en el anarquismo español, 1870–1910’, in Cultura y política del anarquismo en España e Iberoamérica, ed. Clara E. Lida & Pablo Yankelevich (México D.F.: El Colegio de México, 2013), 27–61 (p. 44).
37 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 289–92.
38 Elías Reclus, Impresiones de un viaje por España en tiempos de Revolución; del 26 octubre 1868 al 10 marzo de 1869, ed., trad. & notas de Francisco Madrid (Madrid: Pepitas de Calabaza, 2007), 45.
39 BARH, Fondo Narváez, II, Legajo 74, Expediente 6, ‘Revolucion Socialista de Loja. Memoria de los sucesos que han tenido lugar antes y después de dicha revolución iniciada en la villa de Iznájar el 29 de junio de 1861’.
40 The other two leaders were the lojeños, Rafael Pérez del Álamo, aged thirty-three, and Ramón Calvo Jiménez, aged between twenty-four and twenty-seven. Joaquín Narváez was aged thirty-nine.
41 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 144–55.
42 Ángel Aroca Lara, ‘Iznájar en el levantamiento de Pérez del Álamo’, in Actas del III Coloquio de Historia de Andalucía, 2 vols (Córdoba: Monte de Piedad, 1983), I, 353–65 (p. 361).
43 Pérez del Álamo's first son was baptized Baldomero (Benito Madariaga de la Campa, ‘Rafael Pérez del Álamo [1827–1911]’, Semblanzas Veterinarias, 1 [1973], 76).
44 Guy Thomson, ‘La revolución de Loja en julio de 1861: la conspiración de los carbonarios y la democracia en la España moderna’, in Visiones del liberalismo, ed. Blanco & Thomson, 159–93.
45 Natalio Rivas, ‘Recuerdos de antaño: los primeros comunistas españoles’, ABC, (Sevilla), 23 June 1941, p. 2.
46 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 376, 253–55.
47 Madariaga de la Campa, ‘Rafael Pérez del Álamo’, 60.
48 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 143–84.
49 Flores García recalls how, after two spells in El Saladero for press offences, ‘casi ascendí á personaje, y muchos de mis compañeros me tuvieron envidia por el novenario que pasé en chirona. El periodista revolucionario que no pasaba por el Saladero estaba en ridículo’ (Flores García, Recuerdos de la Revolución, 174).
50 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 169.
51 Constancio Bernardo de Quirós, El bandolerismo andaluz (Madrid: Turner, 1988), 162–65; Guerola, Memoria, II, 667–69, and III, 971–93.
52 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1173.
53 A month before the outbreak of the Loja Revolution, Pérez del Álamo protested against the removal of Civil Guard commander, Andrés Brul, who had kept the peace in Loja since arriving in February, tirelessly pursuing any criminal who had appeared in the district, calmed tensions between the political parties and earned the sympathies and respect of the whole town (El Pueblo [Madrid], 25 May 1861).
54 Archivo Histórico Municipal de Antequera (AHMA), Policía 518, n.d., Alcalde Corregidor (Antequera) to Guerola (Málaga).
55 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 163.
56 Durán, La Unión Liberal, 264–70.
57 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, Legajo 23-16, letter of 2 April 1861 from José María Narváez (Loja) to the Duke of Valencia (Paris).
58 Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain, 89–91.
59 An allusion to the Polish origins of Luis Sartorius, moderado First Minister in 1853–1854. Initially a label for the Count of San Luis’ political supporters, ‘polaco’ came to refer to the nouveau riche of the 1850s railway boom. By 1861 ‘polaco’ referred to all Moderados in Loja, rich or poor. Democrats and ‘advanced’ Progresistas in Loja referred to themselves as ‘Patrios’.
60 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, (67 Legajos), 23-16, letter of 2 April 1861 from José María Narváez (Loja), to the Duke of Valencia (Paris).
61 ‘[L]os peores’ refers, possibly, to day-labourers employed on estates who doubled as secret society instigators and whose corresponding control over their affiliates was a useful asset for landowners.
62 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, (67 Legajos), Legajo 23-16, letter of 2 April 1861 from José María Narváez (Loja) to the Duke of Valencia (Paris).
63 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
64 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
65 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
66 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
67 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
68 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
69 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
70 BARH, Fondo Narváez II, letter of 2 April 1861.
71 Guerola, Memoria, I, 65–71.
72 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1013.
73 In July 1861 the civil governor laboured to protect Luis Miranda, Archidona's leading Democrat, from arrest, convinced that this gentle lawyer was ‘un hombre excelente […], si bien lo consideraba enemigo político del Gobierno, no le creía asociado a la demagogia socialista de Loja’ (Guerola, Memoria, III, 1134).
74 The Liberal Union was an attempt to end the two decades of violent conflict between Moderados and Progresistas by attracting elements of both parties into a new party, the Unión Liberal. To keep a check on the historical parties, O’Donnell's Minister of Government, José Posada-Herrera, allowed provincial governors to act pragmatically in elections and to intervene to block candidates only if they were strongly opposed to the administration. Democrats took advantage of this relative laxity (see Durán, La Unión Liberal).
75 Ferran Ayala i Domènech & Eliseu Toscas i Santamans, ‘De las relaciones centro-periferia en el Estado liberal: gobernadores civiles, ayuntamientos y secretarios municipales en la España del ochocientos’, El Consultor de los Ayuntamientos y de los Juzgados, 5 (2010), 750–67.
76 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1173.
77 Guerola, Memoria, I, 174.
78 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1147–49.
79 Guerola, Memoria, II, 477.
80 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1152–53.
81 Guerola, Memoria, I, 325–33.
82 Guerola, Memoria, IV, 1212–96.
83 Guerola, Memoria, I, 159–74.
84 Guerola, Memoria, II, 665–93.
85 Among the thirty-eight towns not visited by Guerola were Villanueva de Algaidas, Villanueva de Cauche, Villanueva del Rosario, Villanueva de Tapia, Valle de Abdalajís and Alfarnate, each of which experienced successful Democrat recruitment during the late 1850s and early 1860s, and sent contingents to support the uprising at Loja in July 1861, Guerola, Memoria, II, 665.
86 Guerola, Memoria, II, 665–93.
87 Guerola, Memoria, III, 1013.
88 Guy Thomson, ‘Garibaldi and the Legacy of the Revolutions of 1848 in Southern Spain’, European History Quarterly, 31:3 (2001), 353–96.
89 BARH, Fondo Narváez II (67 Legajos), Legajo 39/21, letter of 11 August 1864 from Ramón María Narváez (Loja) to Carlos Marfori (Madrid).
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.