In March 2021, the Espasa publishing house published «1917. The Catalan State and the Spanish Soviet» by Roberto Villa García. A book that, with all certainty, should be in the library of anyone interested in history, since The work not only denies clichés and breaks with far-reaching historiographical myths, but also provides a more than novel vision of one of the most important events that occurred in the final stages of the Bourbon Restoration: the triple crisis of 1917.
Traditionally, this episode in the history of Spain has been approached from an interpretation that studies the three crises separately (the military juntismo, the Assembly of Catalan Parliamentarians and the revolutionary strike of August) as a series of events that were hardly related to each other. . However, this research breaks with this historiographical myth and immerses the reader in a revolutionary experience that maintained a close relationship between its main promoters, and that ended up putting the constitutional monarchy of Alfonso XIII in check. But it is not only limited to this, but also shows us the functioning of a political regime that was not different from that of other European countries and that It would be far removed from the image of “oligarchy and caciquismo” with which the Restoration system has generally been represented.
His reading, on the other hand, takes us to a period marked by economic, political and social instability as a result of the dramatic events that devastated the old continent, and that had a more than marked influence on the Spain of Alfonso XIII. Indeed, The First World War and the Russian Revolution were a real headache for the successive governments of the period, who had the difficult task of maintaining neutrality —a position that was about to blow up due to the existence of firm allied and interventionist positions such as those defended by the Count of Romanones— and appease the drastic social confrontation derived from the maritime blockades exercised by the German Empire, the intense inflation and the revolutionary effervescence carried out by socialists, anarchists, reformists, republicans, nationalists and Junteros.
Data sheet
The author
Before addressing the main impressions of the book as well as its valuable contributions to the field of historiography, I think it is convenient to describe a brief reference to the author of this great research work. Roberto Villa García is Professor of Political History at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, and has published a dozen books and numerous articles on parties, electoral behavior, political violence and the crisis of democracy in contemporary Spain and Europe. His most recent posts are The Republic at the polls. The awakening of democracy in Spain; Spain at the polls. An electoral history (1810-2015); Lerroux. The Liberal Republic; and the famous best-seller research 1936. Fraud and violence in the Popular Front elections (together with Manuel Álvarez Tardío), also published by the Espasa publishing house.
«Spain was no different»: the functioning of the constitutional monarchy
One of the chapters that I most wanted to highlight in the book is the third: «Spanish democracy». In it, the arbitral role of the monarch in the political functioning of the Restoration system, the mechanism of the different powers of the State and their interrelation with a constitutional regime that —like other European states in the first third of the 20th century— was beginning its steps towards the implementation of a full liberal democracy. In Spain, since the thirties of the 19th century, a norm had been established by which the ministers were responsible before the Cortes. In this sense, the king could not act freely with regard to choosing the president of the Council of Ministers. The monarch had to take into account the composition of the chambers, that is, the parliamentary majorities. This is demonstrated by the fact that, as the author points out, «under the reign of Alfonso XIII and until 1917, seventeen of his twenty-three governments had been formed after the elections, and with the same political significance as the majorities of some chambers already constituted ».
Likewise, it played the role of arbitrator between the Executive and Legislative powers: when there was a certain dissonance between the two, the king decided whether the ministers should be replaced by others more in line with the representation of the chambers or whether, instead, they should be dissolved because they no longer reflected the state of opinion that had formed them in the beginning; or because the majority no longer acted compactly in the face of problems of an internal nature in the ruling party and elections had to be called.
Only in the event of a serious government crisis that did not see an end, could the monarch, as in the British case, take an active role in the Executive. It functioned as a reserve or extraordinary magistracy that the system itself protected with the task of correcting the “dysfunctionalities” that the governments could not resolve. However, it was established, in turn, the prerogative that it was a temporary resource: once the instability came to an end or that the parties had resolved their internal differencese should return to normal system operation.
The King of Spain arbitrated the alternation between the two great constitutional parties that took turns in power. The king’s intervention was essential to prevent one of the formations from gaining a monopoly on power. That liberal monarchy had been established with the aim that the sectarian exclusivism that characterized the Elizabethan period would not return. It was feared that the Government would use the resources of the Administration in its favor to perpetuate itself in power, or that the opposition, wishing to achieve power, would resort to military coup or revolutionary attempts to force the Crown to dismiss the Government. Thus, in the Restoration the role of the monarch guaranteed the opposition that his position would not be definitive and that the party in power could not abuse its position to bend and persecute its political opponents.
The courts
The Spanish Courts maintained operating formulas inherited from the 19th century. Parliament was, above all, a body that discussed the laws and budgets of the State through debates that decided the votes themselves. Parliamentarians were not subject to party discipline mechanisms, so leaders could not condition the vote of their deputies and senators. However, there were unwritten rules: the leader with a significant number of “rebels” punished indiscipline by abandoning power and depriving the entire party of its advantages. This presupposed the dissolution of the chambers and the calling of new elections, which endangered the seats of the disobedient. The threat to resign used to intimidate criticswho did not want to bear the responsibility of their party becoming the opposition.
The change of government did not always mean that the monarch authorized the decree of dissolution to call elections. The king granted it, in his capacity as arbitrator between the two powers, when the parliamentary majorities denied their support for the measures that the Executive considered necessary. The king’s freedom to appoint a government and dissolve the Cortes was not sovereign, nor was any other faculty or mechanism of the constitutional regime. Not just anyone could be called to govern, but only those party leaders who brought together general government programs and an organization established enough to obtain an electoral and parliamentary majority in accordance with the basic criteria of a democracy. in the making. Only in situations of crisis of leadership and through the advice issued in the consultations, the monarch could resort to individuals who were outside the leadership or who did not enjoy a large parliamentary majority.
That constitutional framework, optimally fulfilled in the last quarter of the 19th century, had begun to wear down since 1899. Indeed, the death of Cánovas and Sagasta had caused in the two great constitutional parties the absence of leaders capable of redefining the leadership of their organizations. This made it more difficult for Alfonso XIII to elect the President of the Government, especially between 1902 and 1907. Also, since 1899, parliamentary majorities were shorter and shorter and any internal division was likely to cause the governments of one or another party to end prematurely. For this reason, moreover, the elections each time had to be agreed with a greater effort on the part of both tendencies and the party in power needed greater tolerance from the other so that the alternation would not be paralyzed. Only from 1913, when Eduardo Dato acceded to the Presidency of the Government, the system of pacts between liberals and conservatives established in the eighties of the nineteenth century was recovered.
The Role of the King: Army and Diplomacy
Even if he didn’t rule Alfonso XIII, following the prerogatives and functions assigned to him by the 1876 Constitution, had an active role in those areas that were traditionally situated in a kind of symbolism superior to party politics and public opinion: diplomacy and the army. It is true that both spheres were subject to the Ministries of State and War, but both institutions had to keep in mind that the monarch had to be consulted in decisions that directly affected these issues, as well as his right to veto them. On the other hand, as head of state and representative of the nation, he held the position of highest-ranking diplomat and thus had frequent contact with other heads of state, ambassadors, and military attachés. He was also the supreme head of the Army.
Military policy, according to the constitutive law of the Army of 1878 and under the supervision of the Ministry of War, allowed the monarch initiative and examination with regard to the promotion of ranks, jobs and military rewards. The king was also the commander-in-chief of the Army when military operations were carried out in the context of a military campaign. The militia acted, in this period, as an autonomous corporation and subservient to the Government. and the constitutional parties.
In 1917, military coups were a thing of the past. The Army was synonymous with stabilization and not as a subversive object used by the parties to impose their ideas against other political tendencies. The king, in this sense, acted as a counterweight against the capture of the Army by political parties. “And, in this, Alfonso XIII never behaved differently from the British, Dutch, Belgian or Scandinavian monarchs, who did with him…