New Iberian Troubles? (The Iberian Peninsula 1906-1910)
To say the return to peace was difficult for the Holy Empire of Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal was somewhat difficult was a large understatement. Both governments were of course declared victory the next day after the peace treaty was signed and paid large sums to the newspapers and the information means they didn’t control to ensure their version of events was the correct one.
In the ‘liberated’ lands of Portugal, the new King Luis IV and his ministers had not a lot of successes convincing the population of this victory. That was, in part, due to the fact they weren’t that many Portuguese citizens in several cities. Not because of the Spanish massacres, though these had played a role in the mind of the lower classes. No, the real reason there weren’t that many Portuguese anymore...they were leaving. A majority of the men and women departing were now deathly afraid of a resumption of hostilities between their country and Spain, and they wanted to get out before the next war began and they were forced to learn to speak Spanish. It was obvious the ‘Portuguese victory’ had been bought with English lives, foreign volunteers, English weapons and French political assistance. If those things had not been there to help Luis III, everybody agreed annexation would have been unavoidable.
Thus Portuguese workers, bourgeois and merchants who had lived for centuries at Porto, Lisbon or in the lands of the Crown of Portugal left, much like the Dutch had once done decades ago for Batavia. Thousands crossed the Atlantic to find a new life in Brazil or tie their futures to those of distant cousins, but they were definitely a minority. Easily thrice or four times these numbers went to the last colonies of Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. It would be there they would rebuild their fortunes, away from delusional Kings and world-shattering European wars.
Luis IV, as a result, inherited a country which was in dire economic condition and there was little sign of improvement. Worse, the population was less and less Portuguese. Many adventurers and volunteers, seeing the local population sell everything and leave before 1906 or 1907 was out, decided it was a good idea to buy. Consequently, the plains and the hills of the Iberian Peninsula saw English, Irish or German-speakers arrive and settle in these war-torn areas, often at prices they couldn’t have afforded in their country of birth.
And these new dwellers were not exactly satisfied by the political and administrative state of things in Portugal. To make it worse from a monarch’s perspective, the army of Portugal was for all intent and purposes an extinct species. People who fled to other continents included a large proportion of soldiers, who had not appreciated being forced to fight a horde of fanatic Spanish. As such, Luis was forced to rely on the diminished English garrisons if there were problems...and the loyalty of his troops to him was somehow questionable. As such, the nobility lost most of its remaining privileges, the Cortes was remodelled to serve as a genuine Parliament with vote for those citizens who paid some low-level amount of taxes and the power of the legislative branch was significantly reinforced despite several ministers fighting tooth and nail against it. By 1910, Portugal was a parliamentary monarchy in all but name...time would tell if it was enough to satisfy the electors.
The Holy Empire of Spain was in a somewhat better situation at the end of the war. True, it had lost far more soldiers than Portugal, but in a way it was the excess of war veterans who had caused problems to the stability of the Empire and now thousands of them were dead. Furthermore, the fighting –with the exception of the coup of Duke Cadiz – had been done in foreign territory and on this point the peace conditions were eminently satisfying: paying reparations was embarrassing, but it beat rebuilding a country where everyone hated the Spanish-speaking people. Isabella III, thanks to the diplomatic support of France, was at last able to push for reforms removing the great nobles of the sensitive positions of power. Administration tests and land grants to the loyal regiments introduced at last some measure of meritocracy in the Spanish internal affairs and the grumblings were much reduced. For those who thought a new rebellion was necessary, there were ships ready to take them to South America where they would enjoy building new roads and bridges. Isabella III wanted to make Southern Andalusia an indivisible part of the Spanish realm, and wanted to increase the percentage of Spanish-speaking population in the newly conquered territories. Southern America, by contrast, had yet to mobilise when the English Crown officially buried the war hatchet.
The years which followed were a sense of artistic and architectural renewal for Spain, though it was a melancholic one, after the losses of an entire generation to the Great War and the recent Iberian War (Portuguese-Spanish-English War didn’t sound particularly good). The middle-classes profited extremely well from the disgrace of the high nobility, and while the Spanish industrial sector remained very limited, it grew rapidly as Madrid exported fruits, wine, iron and new textiles all over the Mediterranean. But the Holy Empire remained an absolute monarchy with an omnipresent church, and it had not only its good points...