Hispania Nova is the first on-line Contemporary History journal in Spanish language. It publishes original research articles and book reviews on different topics of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was founded in 1998 by Ángel Martínez de Velasco and Julio Aróstegui and it is distributed electronically via the Open Access system. It is published once a year, in January, as a dossier with original, unpublished research articles and book reviews. Its goal is to promote greater knowledge in this field and to encourage discussion amongst historians and social scientists worldwide. It focuses on a comparative and multidisciplinary approach and presents a critical and rigorous view of History. All articles published are assessed by a peer-review, double-blind system. License Attribution-NonComercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Spain de Creative Commons (CC BY-ND-ND 3.0)
HISPANIA NOVA is a journal duly registered, with ISSN 1138-7319 and legal deposit M 9472-1998. The texts published in this journal - unless specifically stated- are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No derivative Works 3.0 Spain license. They can be copied, distributed and publicly communicated as long as the author, journal and institutions publishing the works are quoted, not use the material for commercial purposes and no derivative work is made. The complete license agreement can be found in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en
It is not true that the Catholic-Monarchical Communion experienced a paralysis after the shock of the defeat of Carlism on the battlefields in 1876 against the nascent Restoration. And it was not because it once again waged a battle through the press, the only means of communication through which Carlism still maintained its presence and guaranteed the organization of its supporters. One of the bases of the Catholic-monarchical journalistic renaissance came from the Nocedal clan and the newspaper El Siglo Futuro (1875-1936). Without him we cannot understand the cultural resistance against the Canovist Restoration, manifested through the challenges posed by the organization of pilgrimages and the instrumentalization of centenarians. These were just two of the examples of the mobilizing capacity of Nocedalism, although there were others, such as the predicament of electoral abstentionism.
Political Participation in the Rural Environment During the Beginnings of the Restoration (1875-1890)
The beginnings of the Bourbon Restoration have generally been represented as a period characterized by political stability and its capacity for social control, especially in the rural world. However, this image blurs when we find social practices that took political confrontation outside the institutional sphere. The objective is to analyze during the previous years of the reimplantation of the right of association and universal male suffrage, the problematic relationship that developed between rulers and governed in rural areas, the tensions that arose between those who disputed municipal power, the pressure that ordinary rural people were able to exert on local elites and some of the behaviors of dominant groups in the management of social conflicts.
This article analyses the “double campaign” that Captain General Camilo Polavieja conducted during the Philippine Revolution of 1896-1897. On the one hand, it discusses the military campaign that Polavieja conducted in Cavite. Knowing that he would meet stiff resistance, including combatants and civilians, he waged an all-out war that ignored the principles of waging war “with humanity” that were being codified. Knowing the bad press that this could arouse and how damaging it could be to his political aspirations, Polavieja also led a propaganda war in the Hong Kong press, which was international in scope and very harsh on Spain’s handling of the uprising. The general justified his methods on the grounds that they were the only effective means of dealing with what he portrayed as an illegitimate and ferocious insurgency that did not respect the Laws of War and should, therefore, be excluded from their protection.
Correligionarias. Women in the Republican Mobilization at the Beginning of Spanish Restoration Regime (1875-1900)
Since the last military pronunciamiento of 1874 brought in the regime of the Restoration, a restrictive framework for citizen participation under a form of adulterated liberalism took shape in Spain. Among the main victims of the new institutional architecture were the republican forces, the preferred target of the monarchist governments’ control measures. The new regime relied on conservative Catholicism and placed women in a situation of dependence and subordination to men. Nevertheless, in the republican movement many women took part in collective action: they participated in rallies and meetings, swelled the ranks of associative and cultural organizations and fought against the monarchy in various arenas. Their public presence led to greater visibility, their own forms of organization and the dissemination of discourses in defense of their rights, as well as a change in the gender culture in some republican groups.
The Shadows of the “Soldier King”. Corruption, Complot and Treason in Restoration Times (1875-1876)
At the dawn of the Restoration of the Bourbon regime (1875), prominent representatives of Catalan political conservatism and the government led by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo participated in a large-scale bribery operation of the Carlist leaders of the military district of the Centre. The article analyses the details of these negotiations, the taint of the new government at its origin, as well as the legal and moral limits that could legitimise corruption, saving the honour of the army and the “soldier king”, in the interests of the general nation. The result of the operation, which had tacit royal approval, moved an entire army corps towards the Pyrenees, and in turn contributed to further eroding the already weakened Catalan Carlism.
Exercise of Power and Emotional Erosion in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Republicanism
The aim of this text is to propose an analysis of the republican disenchantment of 1873 that focuses on the emotional dimension of the phenomenon. The analysis is based on the hypothesis that in a political culture with a high sentimental appeal, such as nineteenth-century federal republicanism, the practice of power led to an erosion of the emotional capital accumulated over the previous decades around republican hope, which reached a breaking point in the wake of the Cantonal episode. It is argued that the collapse of the federalists can be interpreted as an emotional breakdown. On the basis of newspaper sources of the period, it attempts to shed light on the characteristics and extent of this breakdown.
Introduction. Dissent, Disorder and Resistance
Order, stability and consensus are characteristics that part of the historiography has attributed to the political regime of the Restoration as opposed to the chaos and social polarisation that, according to the same account, predominated in the immediately preceding period. The commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Revolution of 1868 and the First Republic, however, has served to revise this period and rethink it as a time of intense politicisation in a democratic sense, so that the coup d'état of General Martínez Campos must be read within a dynamic of de-democratisation confronted by different protest and resistance movements. This dossier focuses on both the internal ruptures and the rearticulation that the main opposition movements to the Canovist regime underwent from the years immediately after the return of the Bourbons to the throne until the consolidation of the system. In this sense, priority has been given to the introduction of new perspectives that contribute to the renewal of the debates on the Restoration in the context of its 150th anniversary.
Gérard Chastagnaret, Un vertige Méditerranéen, Hilarion Roux, Marquis d´Escombreras (1819-1898). [Madrid], Casa de Velázquez, 2023, 426 páginas
Aurélie Andry, Social Europe, the Road Not Taken. The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, 337 páginas
Adrián Presas Sobrado y Julio Prada Rodríguez, Élites y poder local en Galicia. De la crisis de la Restauración a la consolidación del régimen franquista, Madrid, Los Libros de la Catarata, 2023, 285 páginas
Elena Hernández Sandoica, Rosario de Acuña. La vida en escritura, Madrid, Abada Editores, 2022, 909 páginas
Adrián Almeida Díez, La izquierda abertzale y LAIA. Historia de la ultraizquierda independentista vasca, 1974-1984, Madrid, Catarata, 2023, 189 páginas
Pedro Rújula, Religión, Rey y Patria. Los orígenes contrarrevolucionarios de la España contemporánea, 1793-1840, Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2023, 294 páginas
Ángel Viñas, Oro, Guerra, Diplomacia: La República española en tiempos de Stalin, Barcelona, Planeta, 2023, 508 páginas
Carmen Peña Ardid y Juan Carlos Ara Torralba, La Transición española. Memorias públicas/memorias privadas (1975-2021), Zaragoza, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2023, 446 páginas
David Ginard Ferón, Matilde Landa. El compromiso y la tragedia (1904-1942), València, Publicacions Universitat de València, 2023, 261 páginas
Juan Manuel Matés-Barco y María Vázquez-Fariñas (Eds.), The Age of Global Economic Crises (1929-2022), London & New York, Routledge, 2023, 193 páginas
Class dynamics and the configuration of democracy
This article highlights the role of businessmen in their ability to steer and determine crucial aspects of Spanish political change in the 1970s. In contrast to the interpretation that Spanish businessmen were a sort of “impotent privileged” class under Francoism and, consequently, incapable of influencing the process of democratizing political change, this text analyzes how businessmen experienced an extraordinary accumulation of organizational resources, and their own unification as a class, under Francoism. In this framework, the strong crisis of legitimacy and hegemony that they will experience at the beginning of the process of political change can be faced with a strong mobilization of resources and the creation of a new employers’ organization in an extraordinarily short time, capable of transforming their relationship with political power at the end of the period of creation of a new political regime.
The period spanning from Franco’s death to June 1977 election is probably one of the most transcendental and, at the same time, most misunderstood historical moments in recent Spanish history. This article analyses this context on the basis of documentation emanating from the top of the Ministry of the Interior and, to a lesser extent, from the secret service. The content of these reserved instructions proves the reluctance of those responsible for public order, both during the government of Carlos Arias Navarro and during that of Adolfo Suárez, to change the criteria for action in this area that had prevailed until November 1975. The dismantling of the dictatorship and the progressive granting of rights that followed appear, consequently, as an achievement of the protests, and not as the result of the will for change of the ruling elites during that time.
An International Tribunal for Franco’s Crimes?
There were few attempts to prosecute the crimes of Francoism in the 1970s, as the Spanish left had largely accepted the policy of reconciliation promoted since the 1950s, renouncing to demand accountability. However, an international tribunal for the crimes of Francoism was initiated in 1978 by the PCE(m-l). Although the initiative failed on the Peninsula, it continued its activities in exile in France and Switzerland. Based on unpublished sources, the article analyzes the roots, the actors, the objectives, and the posterity of the Tribunal by reinserting it in the global context of transnational mobilizations against human rights violations committed by States since the 1960s, which gave rise to a new type of international tribunal, that of the Russell Tribunal. Thus, it aims to contribute to clarifying on an international scale the debate on the forgetting of Franco’s responsibilities during the Spanish transition to Democracy.
The Badly Wounded Claws of the Gray Eagle
Abstract: The final years of the Franco dictator ship were moments of important anti-Franco mobilization, from different territories and social spectrums. On the other hand, repression also increased. In this state violence, the Social Political Brigade (BPS) played a relevant role, since it was the police in charge of political crimes and one of the pillars of the regime to confront “subversion.” The idea of this article is to analyze how the agents of this Corps acted against the different militancy against the dictatorship, its origins and its changes through out the dictatorship. Also see how the opposition faced this repression in the late Franco years, whether it faced it or not and with what intensity.
Between 1968 and 1972, the Francoist state laid the structural foundations of a repressive framework focused on combating social subversion and political dissent, an effort in which military intelligence services played a prominent role. The origin of this struggle and the mechanisms used for its suppression are rooted in the Civil War and the reorganization of the Army carried out in the immediate post-war period, which led to the definition and implementation of a series of internal control instruments in military units that would have profound repercussions on civil society. This article offers the initial conclusions drawn from the systematic study of the Bulletins and information notes prepared by the Intelligence Services throughout the Franco´s rule, providing a new perspective on the social control mechanisms employed by the regime during its final years.
The Final Crisis of Francoism. New Approaches and Studies on Conflict and Violence. Gutmaro Gómez Bravo (coord.). Introduction
The General Commissariat of Cults in the Republican Zone in the Spanish Civil War (1938-1939)
In the final period of the Spanish Civil War, the government of Juan Negrín decided to reestablish public Catholic worship in the republican zone. For this purpose, a General Commissariat of Cults was established, headed by the Catalan doctor Jesús Maria Bellido Golferich. As a measure closely linked to the strategy of democratic normalization formulated in the spring of 1938 in the so-called “thirteen points” of the Negrín government, this turn in republican religious policy generated relatively abundant reactions in the media of the two contending areas and abroad. This work addresses the origins of the Commissariat, as well as its fleeting activity (December 1938-January 1939), in the context of the dispute over national and international public opinion between Republicans and Francoists.
The 1930s witnessed a change in the understanding of religion and the place it should fill in Spanish society. The Second Republic, proclaimed in 1931, had the intention of moving everything related to religious beliefs to the private sphere. Accordingly, the presence of the Church in the various state institutions was limited, before subsequently disappearing altogether. This also applied to the Spanish Navy where, among other acts, the number of chaplains was reduced prior to the elimination of the ecclesiastic corps, boat launches ceased to be blessed, services in centres and on ships and official attendance at religious events were prohibited, and the holiday for the Virgin of the Carmen, was abolished. This article reviews the measures issued by the central government in this respect and the way in which they were adhered to.
This article reconstructs the trajectory of the political current that founded the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in 1979. In the beginning, Spanish Trotskyist militants came into contact with Argentine militants in exile belonging to the Argentine Socialist Workers Party, and after adhering to its guidelines they decided to join (entrism) the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) first, and the Communist League. Revolutionary (LCR), later. However, these experiences occurred crossed by discussions about the path of the Spanish transition, the validity of the armed route in political processes, and the dynamics of entryism itself. Using party documents and oral interviews, our investigation seeks to trace the militant trajectory of this organization and outline the characteristics of a left-wing political culture whose common feature, in addition to ideological affinity, was that of being experiences in transit between dictatorships and democracy.
This study aims to analyze the role of Ernestina de Champourcin at the Lyceum Club Femenino in Madrid during the years 1926-1936. Her contribution focused on collaborating as the secretary of the institution, organizing conferences, and literary activities. This article aims to fill a gap in current historiography regarding this poet’s specific contribution to the Lyceum Club. To achieve this goal, I have supported the research using the Archive of the Residencia de Señoritas, the poet’s own letters (some unpublished and others published) deposited in the Ernestina de Champourcin Personal Fund of the General Archive of the University of Navarra, contrasted with her appearances in the press and in the correspondence of her contemporaries. Additionally, to highlight specific references, the unpublished Family Archive and the Documentary Center of Historical Memory have been consulted.
La Ilustración Republicana Federal (1871-1872)
La Ilustración Republicana Federal was an illustrated republican newspaper directed by Enrique Rodríguez-Solís, featuring the collaboration of prominent members of the Federal Democratic Republican Party. This collaboration, along with the newspaper’s period of circulation (1871-1872), renders it one of the most significant endeavors in disseminating republican pedagogy through the interplay of visual imagery and written texts. This article argues that, apart from being a potent tool for political promotion, the newspaper represented a sophisticated fusion of visual and narrative elements to propagate republican ideals, as noted by Fernando Garrido in the fifth edition of his Catecismo Republicano. Within this synthesis aimed at spreading and garnering popular consensus, the newspaper encompasses three crucial elements. Firstly, it brings together the figure of Marianne and the new republican symbolism, imbuing republicanism with dogmatic and ritualistic characteristics. Secondly, it emphasizes republicanism through the valorization of a new community of patriot-martyrs. Finally, through a public utilization of the past, it constructs a complex discourse that shapes the republican project in salvific and teleological terms, drawing upon diverse perspectives and interpretations of history. These elements, whether disseminated individually or collectively through texts, images, and objects, operated within a wider and intricate media framework, championed and defined by the collaborators, writers, and artists of La Ilustración Republicana Federal as «republican propaganda».
Tourism Competitiveness Improvement with Democracy in Spain, 1975-1995
Hostelry competitiveness in Spain suffered a dramatic reduction due higher wage paid under the new Democratic Regime. This significant decrease involves the influence of the Pactos de la Moncloa (Parliamentary agreements) and also the Oil crisis of the 70’s. The absence, in general, of coordinated strategies among public and private sectors added to the failure of the policies focused in improve labor productivity within touristic firms are the main reasons of the phenomenon. Productivity convergence (σ and β convergence) by worker and touristic labor costs convergence (hotels and restaurants) are permitting to afford significant evidence on how this touristic competitiveness is improving his level after the so call transition up to the last government of Felipe González (1982- 1995). The supply-side analysis -company competitiveness- is the novelty of our contribution as this point of view is not generally considered.