AHC: Carlist Spain AND Liberal Spain

Rush Tarquin

The challenge should you choose to accept it, is to divide Spain into a Liberal Spain and a Carlist Spain, which should survive in one piece till the 20th century with mutual recognition of borders, or at least an ongoing truce. Carlist Spain should include Galicia, Navarre, Cantabria, Asturias, Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and the Basque country.
 
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Diez Mil Cantos

I doubt Catalonia would have sided with the Carlists
They were opposed to being part of Spain nearly since its creation+ bationalism was beginning to enter Catalonia around this time
If there is Two spains in existence, I think its more likely that they would take advantage of the weakness of a disunited Spain and declare their independence
 

Rush Tarquin

Diez Mil Cantos said:
I doubt Catalonia would have sided with the Carlists
They were opposed to being part of Spain nearly since its creation+ bationalism was beginning to enter Catalonia around this time
If there is Two spains in existence, I think its more likely that they would take advantage of the weakness of a disunited Spain and declare their independence
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Which period of time are you talking about?
 

Lleibi

Iori said:
You do know that Catlonia was the bastion of the Carlists during the several Civil Wars in 19th century Spain, right?
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That's true, but it was the north and the interior Catalonia. Coastal Catalonia from Barcelona to the Ebro's stuary (which was, populationally speaking, most of Catalonia) was liberal.
 

Lleibi

Falecius said:
What about Asturias and Cantabria?
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Carlist too.

Northern Spain was mostly rural, and had a pretty sparse population (even if the population densite wasn't low). That means that the religious parish is the most important social structure, with the parish church being the meeting center. That's why religion had a strong stranglehold on the rural north.
 

Falecius

jotabe1789 said:
Carlist too.

Northern Spain was mostly rural, and had a pretty sparse population (even if the population densite wasn't low). That means that the religious parish is the most important social structure, with the parish church being the meeting center. That's why religion had a strong stranglehold on the rural north.
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True, but not every part of Spain in that situation went Carlist, as the final defeat of Carlists in every Carlist war sort of proves.
 

Rush Tarquin

Falecius said:
What about Asturias and Cantabria?
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Yes, a Carlist Spain would look rather strange without them.

I shouldn't have said permanent, since I would expect fractures within the Carlist state to appear pretty much immediately if it was created in, say, the 1870s. But I mean surviving the war with a mutual recognition of borders, even if it's only a de facto recognition a la North and South Korea.

I'll edit the first post now.
 

Lleibi

I wonder how the nationalisms would develop in the Carlist zone. While the PNV and the Lliga were off-shots of the Carlist remnants, the Irmandades da Fala gathered majoritarily a liberal/federalist tradition from the Galician provincialism (although it had a traditionalist element as well, coming from Alfredo Brañas).

Nowadays the Traditionalists defend (beside the political ultra-catholicism), some sort of republican federal Kingdom as the political organization of Spain. Having had time to evolve on their own during the XIX century, and then with the apparition of the nationalisms in a good chunk ofl of their territory, i wonder if they would had arrived at a system of federal kingdom (or personal union through the king).

Edit: Now, if we go to the I Republic, 1973, where the cantonalism exacerbated the 3rd Carlist war...
I understand that during the federal period of the I Republic, while in the southern Spain the cantonalism exploded, in the northern regions with a more developed regionalist movement, they were starting to write their federal constitutions.
So, IOTL, in less than a year, the I Republic collapses completely, and shortly after, the army pronounces the restauration of the Borbon monarchy.
I guess that the best idea to make a Carlist Spain as an independent country could be to have a bit stronger and stabler I Republic so it doesn't collapse nearly as fast. Make it last a few years, and be able to slowly regain control of the cantonalists, but giving more free reign to the Carlists in their areas.

A stabler I Republic will also remain federalist. So what we would be looking for is some kind of arrangement at the end of the III Carlist war, where the federal states of Galicia, Navarre, Cantabria, Asturias, Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and Basque country adopt a traditionalist constitution for themselves (Charles VII was willing to be a constitutional king), and obtain from Madrid the right to federate among themselves under a commong king. All of those states would belong to Spain only nominally, having their own king instead of the president of the Republic to assume the executive power.
After a while, and because of the further discredit the republican govt. in Madrid has fallen to, thanks to this arrangement, the Republic falls, and the Borbon monarchy is restaured on the head of Alphonse XII. But by this time, the Carlist Spain is too firmly entrenched to be removed easily, without a very bloody war. After the fall of the republic, both Alphonse XII and Charles VII consider themselves kings of all Spain, but in fact, they have no wish to enforce their claims: the country is expended after the the Carlist war, the Cantonalist war, the constant changes of government...
 
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Lleibi

wolf_brother said:
Why not both?
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That was a very interesting read. Keeps Spain united, though, which is against the challenge. Precisely because of that, i think it's more plausible :D Divided countries due to ideological differences in XIX century seem too strange to me, usually this kind of thing only works out when a higher power compels an arrangement, something that is not available in the XIX. So i tried to use the war weariness and lack of manpower excedent to force a settlement.
Of course, both leaders, Carlist and Liberal, need to entitle themselves as leaders of all Spain. They still only acknowledge one Spain, but pragmatically they only enforce their sovereignty in their respective sides.
I guess this is not unlike China IOTL, where both China and Taiwan claim to be the only China that there is, but they still function as two independent countries and pragmatically they don't force the issue of enacting their sovereignty over each other
 

wolf_brother

Banned
jotabe1789 said:
That was a very interesting read. Keeps Spain united, though, which is against the challenge. Precisely because of that, i think it's more plausible :D Divided countries due to ideological differences in XIX century seem too strange to me, usually this kind of thing only works out when a higher power compels an arrangement, something that is not available in the XIX. So i tried to use the war weariness and lack of manpower excedent to force a settlement.
Of course, both leaders, Carlist and Liberal, need to entitle themselves as leaders of all Spain. They still only acknowledge one Spain, but pragmatically they only enforce their sovereignty in their respective sides.
I guess this is not unlike China IOTL, where both China and Taiwan claim to be the only China that there is, but they still function as two independent countries and pragmatically they don't force the issue of enacting their sovereignty over each other
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To be fair, the only reason the PRC hasn't conquered the ROC yet is because of the US' protection of the latter. Same with N. Korea and S. Korea. And with East & West Germany. In fact really you don't usually find many divided states that last very long in history; they essentially have to fight a war against the other, as its an existential threat to the legitimacy of the state. The only thing preventing them from doing so is usually great power politics. So unless the European powers divide on which Spain to back - which isn't likely IMHO - either liberal or Carlist Spain isn't going to last more than a year or so.
 

Lleibi

wolf_brother said:
To be fair, the only reason the PRC hasn't conquered the ROC yet is because of the US' protection of the latter. Same with N. Korea and S. Korea. And with East & West Germany. In fact really you don't usually find many divided states that last very long in history; they essentially have to fight a war against the other, as its an existential threat to the legitimacy of the state. The only thing preventing them from doing so is usually great power politics. So unless the European powers divide on which Spain to back - which isn't likely IMHO - either liberal or Carlist Spain isn't going to last more than a year or so.
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Can't help but to agree.

Maybe Napoleon III and the British empire support different sides? Dunno enough about the european politics of the time.
 

Rush Tarquin

Maybe if you could get Leopold on the throne and a Legitimists takeover in France, the Carlists would find themselves in demand.
 

Lleibi

You mean that Leopold gets chosen as king instead of Amadeo of Saboy? Who are the legitimists, anyway? (don't really know much about the european politics in that moment... for some reason, the period between 1812 and 1898 was always... uninteresting to me, i studied what pertained to Spain, but never bothered with the European context :D my bad)
 

Rush Tarquin

wolf_brother said:
Do you mean Leopold Salvator? 1889 seems incredibly late for a Carlist take over.
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Prince of Hohenzollern. Piss off the French enough to get a Legitimist dominated Sénat to back the Carlists. They'd probably rather back a Bourbon, but if one isn't available...

EDIT: Ninja'd by jotabe1789.
 

wolf_brother

Banned
Hmm. Assuming a Legitmist holds the crown in Paris, the Carlist would certainly have a great power patron. But who would support the Spanish liberals? Certainly not the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Savoyards, Ottomans, Romanovs, or Saxe-Coburg and Gothas. Only perhaps Braganzas would back the Spanish liberals, and only because the Carlist had a claim to the Portuguese throne as well. I doubt the Brits would back them, and in the face of a united European opposition Lisbon will back down. So we're back to square one - we don't have both liberal and Carlist Spain.
 
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