Spain in 1848: On the Edge of Revolution

This thesis argues that Spain, like most of Europe, had a revolution in 1848. This revolution was broad-based and geographically widespread, touching both the urban and rural milieux. It was not successful in toppling the government, let alone in remaking the state, but as elsewhere it fundamentally altered relationships of power. It also helped change the nature of the state and the locus of its power in the years which followed. Like elsewhere in Europe, the revolutionaries used established social networks to organise barricade fighting, riots, mutinies, petitions and support systems. They threatened the liberal political elite at the very heart of their Madrid power base, and on the eve of revolution it looked certain the government would fall. However, government reforms to the state had created a symbiosis between the two, aligning the latter tightly to the former. When revolution broke out, this symbiotic relationship allowed the relatively weak state to act with a rare agility to face down the revolutionaries, not only with violence but also with non-violent means of coercion. This response, along with clement treatment of those arrested and tight control of the narrative through threats to newspaper editors meant that the government’s response was broadly seen as proportionate by a wider public which were already predisposed to support a strong defence of property against public order. Having been inclined to compromise with the revolution at first, this popular reaction fostered a confidence among the political elite that they could largely exclude the demos from the political system. It also hastened the localisation of state power into the hands of regional strongmen in metropolitan Spain, and cemented it in the colonies. These two features would eventually be formalised by the Restoration system in 1874, but the seed was sown in 1848.