During the first half of the 19th century, different ideological factions were born (or rebuilt). Read with contemporary eyes, they were placed at very different points on the political spectrum, from right to left. During the second half of the century, many settled, others disappeared. Others were evolving with the swing of the century itself, at the mercy of the accelerated changes.
The arrival of contemporaneity, and, with it, the change in social, economic and political configuration shook European societies from the foundations. In that shock, the ideologies that supported the previous system changed, disappeared or had to adapt to the new times.
These processes splashed across the political spectrum, from the left to the right. Precisely, the right was, to a great extent, affected in its configuration by the very course of the century. In this article we are going to talk about the origins and evolution of the right wing of Spanish politics.
Revolution and counterrevolution
To understand the origins of the Spanish right, one must start from an essential term: counterrevolution. It is understood as counterrevolution everything that opposesboth ideologically and de factophysically, to a revolution. In this case, the counterrevolution we are talking about is opposed to the liberal revolution in Spain, which has as its origin the War of Independence (1808). Its effects lasted throughout the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the Old Regime and the implantation of a liberal society was not something sudden, but rather it took place gradually.
Different political cultures positioned themselves against this liberalization of Spanish society and politics. These are currents that are commonly called reactionary. They are so named because during the 19th century, the advance of societies is interpreted, in many political cultures, as a Manichaean scheme of contradictory dynamics. The revolution (in this case liberal) was interpreted as the path of progress, of advance. The reaction was the opposite dynamic, which was opposed to that liberal revolution, which reacted this. That is to say, it tended to the permanence of social structures, or even to regress, in a kind of run back.
In the Spanish case, several currents of thought can be traced that take the counter-revolution as an ideological base. this evolved from 1808 until the arrival of the Bourbon Restoration, about. However, far from becoming extinct, they remained until Franco and even to this day. That current ended up being structured, taking different forms, which were articulated from what we could call “generic reactionarism” (Urigüen, 1988: 20).
From that first reactionism or “generic reactionism” typical of the end of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century, the first political manifestations of it arose. They were not yet organized or divided into fractions according to their different political nuances. That counterrevolutionary magma of the first quarter of the 19th century was the seed from which different modalities of opposition – to different degrees – to the revolution arose. In this article we have tried to synthesize them into three: Carlism, the first liberal Catholics and the traditionalists, later called neo-Catholics. These three alternatives, which during the second third of the century took parallel paths, ended up meeting in the final phase of the reign of Elizabeth II.
Dynasty was one of the common elements between the different reactionary currents; at the same time that it kept them divided during a good part of the 19th century. Reactionary political cultures were generally defined as legitimist. The axis of his political thought was the belief in practically absolute sovereignty.
The dynastic conflict for the Spanish crown during the 19th century, between Carlists and Elizabethans, marked the future of the century. However, a part of the Elizabethans and Carlism shared a common ideological base that allowed them to get closer, despite the conflict over the crown.
The reactionary culture in Spain was not a phenomenon carried out exclusively by Carlism, therefore. This movement is generally taken as the main and archetypal actor, but it was not the only counterrevolutionary ideological position in Spain (Aróstegui, Canal, G. Calleja, 2003:11).
So did those sectors of the political right that, even integrated into the liberal state and participating in its game, position themselves against some of its premises. However, that counterrevolutionary magma that was mentioned broke off into multiple options, of greater or lesser importance. All these options can be concentrated in the three that will be explained in this article.
God, Country and Kings: Dynasty and Reaction
Before explaining these three factions, it is necessary to explain the common path they traveled. The relationship between the different factions of the right was closely linked to the dynastic question and the social questions that were hidden under it. When enlightened reformism became a liberal revolution in 1808, two initially antagonistic sociopolitical factions were defined: the royalists, in favor of an absolute monarchy, and the liberals, in favor of the sovereignty of the nation and its citizens. In turn, the liberals ended up dividing themselves between progressives and moderates, taking these more conservative positions, sometimes even close to Carlism. This fact manifested itself in various conflicts that were not limited to those known as the Carlist wars, but rather had arisen years before.
It has been mentioned that, despite coming from a common trunk, liberal Catholicism and, in particular, neo-Catholicism and Carlism, ran for a good part of the 19th century along parallel channels whose margins were sometimes diffuse.
These ideological currents during a good part of the 19th century were separated by the dynastic question, although it was not the only factor to take into account. However, in its essential presuppositions, it is the same ideological line in which one part of it will support Don Carlos and the other his niece, Queen Isabel. Some of them trust Don Carlos as the only valid (and legitimate) representative of a specific ideological branch. There was another part that trusted that this ideology could be developed under the reign of Elizabeth II, so they opted for that branch of the Bourbon family. Catholic liberalism, in this case, is also integrated on behalf of the queen.
It seems logical to think that these political tendencies, with such a similar root and ideological burden, had encounters or approaches at some point. The margins became fuzzy between them at times. And, in fact, it happened. As the foundations of Elizabeth II’s throne eroded in the 1860s, different counterrevolutionary currents drew closer. This was not due, as anticipated, to a dynastic preference but because they were the ones who, at that time, could most closely represent their ideology.
In fact, the relationship between all these currents during the nineteenth century has generated some discussion and confusion in historiography. Generally, historiography has had a certain tendency to call these early movements Carlism. Nevertheless, Carlism It is a term that began to be used during the 1820s. There is a certain custom of identifying counterrevolution and Carlism, elements that do not necessarily have to go together. Neo-Catholicism has even been considered as a branch broken off from Carlism. This idea, however, has been nuanced and practically banished today (Urigüen, 1988: 45).
In addition, between its dissociation in the 1830s and its reunification after the abdication of Isabel II, other factors come into play beyond the dynastic question that explain said dissociation, which are explained below.
For a long time, the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833 has been taken as the starting point for these conflicts, but the reality is that this year only meant the explosion of a series of previous problems. The struggle over who would occupy the throne after the death of the king was only the external form of a conflict that, in its interior, was more social than dynastic. The social changes they opposed had been in the making for decades.
It was a reaction movement that the defenders of the absolutist feudal regime forged from the end of the 18th century opposing the enlightened reforms, which have their greatest exponent in the figure of Godoy. When, after the War of Independence, that enlightened reformism represented by Godoy was transformed into a liberal revolution in the Cortes of Cádiz (1812), two opposing sociopolitical factions were determined. Realism (the seed of subsequent counterrevolutionary movements) and liberals (Pérez Garzón, 2015:144) were in conflict.
This reaction movement, still in full formation, would maintain a single ideological and action path during the first quarter of the 19th century. During that stage, it began to split into different tendencies that maintained a solid ideological base as a common trunk. Therefore, in these first moments we will simply speak of counterrevolution.
From the revolts against Godoy that have been mentioned, passing through the War of Independence (1808-1812) and the Persian Manifesto (1814) and until the realistic movements that emerged in the 1920s, the counter-revolution slowly took shape. It was in that decade when the movement of supporters of the dynastic vindication of Don Carlos María Isidro de Borbón began to be called Carlism. This, brother of Fernando VII, was heir for a time and then dispossessed of the right to the throne. He defended his primacy against Ferdinand’s heiress, Isabel, who would later rule as Isabel II. However, the features of this movement were already present before the appearance of Don Carlos in other movements (Aróstegui, Canal, G. Calleja, 2003: 15-19).
During the reign of Ferdinand VII, absolutism evolved as a political mentality. With this evolution, support for it also grew within a society that was experiencing its first liberal experience, that of the Liberal Triennium (1820-23). The Constitution of Cadiz, of a liberal nature, was imposed in January 1820. However, it was in force only until the entry from France of the One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis (1823) into the Iberian Peninsula in order to restore absolutism .
Some military and noblemen joined the counterrevolutionary movements, although not the entire aristocratic layer, almost the entire clergy and important masses of the peasantry. So did some of the social layers of artisans and craftsmen in the cities. They were, in essence, all those whose lifestyles had been negatively altered by the liberal revolutions.
All of this came together around…