A Most Glorious Revolution: Savoyard Spain

[morbidteaparty]

Isn't that the same name as the current King of Spain?

Why has the name come back into fashion earlier ITTL? Or is it just luck and happenstance?

It is the same name as the current king of Spain.

As for it's significance ITTL there isn't one really, though given his parents constitutionalism and belief in continuity it could be argued that it's a nod to a royal past (and IOTL Alfonso XII was the first king of that name since the 1300s so there is a precedent.)

 

[morbidteaparty]

The febrile atmosphere that characterised the election of 1888 continued in the Cortes it had returned. The election campaign had been marked by sporadic violence, including the Black Day in Barcelona where striking dockers clashed with local police leaving two dead and sixteen wounded after police opened fire following rumours of anarchist led violence and rioting in the city, with hundreds of trade unionists, socialists and anarchists summarily arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Montjuïc in the aftermath. While the majority would be released following a general amnesty issued by King Felipe, the harsh Public Safety Law [1] proposed by the Conservative government of Antonio Cánovas [2] saw harsh debate erupt in the chamber between his government and the Radical and Socialist elements of the Cortes. [3]


The decision of the king to ask Cánovas to return to the premiership, was greeted with ambivalence amongst many within royal circles, and soured the relationship the young monarch had with his mother, who had long regarded Cánovas with barely concealed contempt. [4] In contrast to his immediate predecessors Cánovas did hold the luxury of a significant majority in both houses of parliament which eroded the possibility that his government’s legislative agenda would be hampered by strident opposition from the upper house.


What this legislative agenda was to be however, was a murkier prospect. Cánovas had previously married a pragmatic instinct for reform and economic policies which would win the support of the industrialists and urban bourgeois to the three pillars of his party’s traditional support: the army, the church and the landowner. Faced with increased radical agitation [5], Cánovas pushed for the promulgation of several repressive measures contained within the Public Safety Law to be enacted in response to the violence in Barcelona. The law included measures that would’ve prohibited state employees from the right to strike [6], granted the executive the power to both ban organisations deemed subversive and meetings viewed as an endangerment to public safety, and finally banned periodicals and elements of the press viewed as inflammatory or “facilitators of subversive propaganda.) The law, drawn up by Interior Minister Camilo García Polavieja [7] was greeted with outrage amongst Socialist and Radical circles, and an obstructionist campaign was led in parliament by PSE leader Pablo Iglesias. [8] Attempts by Cánovas to force the law through parliament via royal decree floundered in the senate and the bill was eventually dropped, though the tensions it engendered between Cánovas and the parliamentary opposition remained high. The king’s own personal disquiet over the use of the royal decree briefly soured the otherwise strong relations between himself and the elder statesman. [9]

King Felipe VI of Spain ​

While frustrated in his domestic ambitions, Cánovas found more fruit in improving Spain’s foreign relations. Membership of the Latin Monetary Union, had strengthened commercial ties with both Italy and a resurgent France, though the dominance of protectionism and continued reliance on tariffs stymied any attempts at closer commercial ties between the three. While relations between Spain and France were now more cordial than they had been, Cánovas gravitated more naturally to the United Kingdom due to Spain’s increasing economic reliance on commercial ties with the British, particularly in the expanding mining and metallurgical industries of the north and the shipbuilding industries of the south. [10] While fully committed to protectionism, due in part to political expediency, negotiations over the formation of a customs union between Spain and Portugal were initiated by Cánovas and Portuguese Prime Minister José Luciano de Castro, though they soon floundered over broad disagreements over respective trade and shipping rights within the respective nations colonial ports. [11] The steady expansion of Spain’s northern industries reflected the improving economy as successive governments had focused on reducing the substantial balance of payments deficit, though the sight of landless peasants migrating north to the mines and steelworks of Asturias and Bilbao remained a common one.


Tensions within the Philippines, in the aftermath of the Mindanao mutiny, remained high particularly amongst the newly transient migrant communities and the locals in the city of San Jose del Monte, as increasingly large numbers of immigrants from China and the southern regions of the archipelago arrived in Luzon to work in the large rice fields that dotted the central region of the island. Local recruitment practices divided workers into three groups: Indios (locals recruited from Luzon), Moros (predominantly from the southern regions) and Chinos (largely recruited from the migrant Chinese communities), though in practice the majority of workers were recruited from Luzon itself or were ethnic Chinese. Tensions between the two groups exploded into a brawl, rapidly escalating into a battle of honour, which despite the attempted intervention of the local prefect and colonial police rapidly deteriorated, with rumours that the Chinese workers had attacked and killed locals, creating widespread mob violence, resulting in the death of several Chinese citizens and widespread looting and damage to property. [12] The slow response of the colonial authorities to the violence, and the spread of inaccurate news reports [13] further exacerbated the situation with the Spanish consulate in Shanghai attacked in riots that arose as news of the massacres reached China. The aftermath of the violence saw martial law reimposed in the affected provinces, though the continued employment of Chinese labourers was largely unaffected.


The ineffectual response of the colonial authorities resulted in the dismissal of the Governor-General and the holding of a parliamentary enquiry. Wary of further violence, and committed to maintaining martial law, Cánovas order the dispatch of five thousand Spanish troops to the archipelago reviving fears that the worst excesses of colonial rule were returning.


BRIEF NOTES


[1] The law had been previously proposed (in a reduced form) by the Herrera government to combat the anarchist violence taking root in the south. Its provisions were gradually expanded under successive governments.


[2] While no longer the dominant force within the Conservative Party as he had been, Cánovas remained one of its leading figures and assumed the premiership for the third time after making it clear in no uncertain terms that he would refuse to serve in cabinet under either Silvela or Azcárraga who had initially been asked to form a ministry by the king.


[3] The Radical and Socialist parties had both increased their numbers of seats at the election at the expense of the Liberals and the ailing Republican party. While relations between the two party’s respective leaderships were ambivalent, they did successfully coordinate an obstructionist campaign against the proposed Public Safety Law using the filibuster: points of order, endless speeches and other procedural delaying tactics often with the tacit support of the Liberals.


[4] Queen Marie viewed Cánovas as a relic of the Bourbon era, and viewed him as an arrogant narcissist who viewed the premiership as a means for his own personal gain. While these criticisms were unfair they owed much to the poor relationship between Cánovas and King Amadeus whose death further soured the queen’s view of him.


[5] These included a series of well attended rallies, public marches in support of those imprisoned in the aftermath of the violence in Barcelona and a series of satirical pamphlets aimed at the government.


[6] The definition of state employees was rather broad within the proposed legislation, indicating that while the original provision had been largely restricted to the military and police, it was now being expanded to include the civil service, teachers and any other profession reliant upon the state.


[7] Polavieja was a competent administrator who had previously served in posts in Cuba and Spanish Mauretania. His appointment as Interior Minister was controversial however, as he had overseen the brutal pacification of Mindanao in the early 1880s and was hated within radical circles for his suppression of the Black Hand in Andalusia.


[8] Iglesias remained the dominant figure of the socialist movement alongside Francesc Ferrer, who had emerged as the leader of the Socialist Party’s Catalan wing. His tense relationship with Zorrilla often hampered efforts by the two parties to coordinate their efforts in parliament, though faced with the repressive Public Safety Law they formed a broad front of opposition with Sagasta’s Liberals, despite the personal reservations of Iglesias himself.


[9] Felipe, was of different character to his father, less interested in the tempestuous world of politics and the constitution and more interested in the military and hunting. Nevertheless, he was a committed constitutional monarch, and while not wishing to oppose the efforts of the government, found the use of his royal prerogative to pass legislation somewhat unedifying.


[10] The cities of Cádiz, Ferrol and Cartagena had seen their shipyards expand production as the Spanish navy continued to modernise, while Spain’s colonial extension into Western Africa had increased the need for merchant shipping.


[11] The disagreement was over whether certain goods would be exempt from customs charges in the respective nations colonial entities in Africa, and whether or not the suspension of the respective tariffs would be a temporary measure utilised as part of a broader customs agreement or whether a joint tariff on external good from other markets would be applied.


[12] The violence saw several Chinese owned properties razed to the ground, notably in one much reported incident, a Chinese bakery where several families were hiding to avoid the violence. The acquittal of the local prefect and chief of the local militia caused a widespread scandal.


[13] These included widespread reports of hundreds of deaths (the official number was never confirmed but was later registered by the colonial government as some thirty-two Chinese citizens and five locals), children impaled and carried victoriously on bayonets and machetes and widespread reports of rape, further destabilising the situation.

 

[Knightmare]

The ineffectual response of the colonial authorities resulted in the dismissal of the Governor-General and the holding of a parliamentary enquiry. Wary of further violence, and committed to maintaining martial law, Cánovas order the dispatch of five thousand Spanish troops to the archipelago reviving fears that the worst excesses of colonial rule were returning.

That might not help make things more peaceful....

 

[The Merovingian]

Maybe this King can visit the Philippines?

 

[King of the Uzbeks]

This remains one of the best timelines on the market.

 

[Linense]

The Spanish name of Amadeus's eldest son is Manuel Filiberto, not Felipe. Therefore, his royal name should be Manuel I of Spain, not Felipe VI of Spain.

 

[morbidteaparty]

The name of Amadeus's eldest son is Manuel Filiberto, not Felipe/Philip. Therefore, his royal name should be Manuel I of Spain, not Felipe/Philip VI of Spain.

He's born after this timeline starts to a different mother than OTL, with his full name being Phillip Albert Frederick William (Phillip Albert being a historical name within the Sardinian royal family.)

There's also the aside that regal names and personal names aren't always the same when it comes to monarchy.

 

[morbidteaparty]

The rightward shift undertaken by Cánovas, shored up his support, and his parliamentary bloc began to shift into a broader conservative union, though it remained an informal support system rather than a fully unified party. Disagreements amongst the fragmented liberal and radical leaning opposition, exacerbated by a tendency to split into factionalism further secured his parliamentary dominance.


The despatch of troops to the Philippines following the outbreak of inter-ethnic violence within Luzon, saw the government decide to introduce a policy of Christianising settlement within the southern, largely Muslim, archipelagos in order to dilute the restive influence of the Islamic Sultanates still present there. A further decision was made to encourage European settlement, with the government offering incentives to Spaniards, notably those from the poorer agrarian regions to emigrate to its Asian territories.

Spanish troops in the Southern Philippines​

Emigration from Spain, in the face of continued economic issues had slowly begun to increase, with crossing the eastern border into France, finding seasonal work as farm labourers or further afield as industrial workers in cities such as Paris and Lille. This was offset by the continued arrival of immigrants from Cuba who’s own economic problems slowly abated. The continued economic growth and development in the industrial cities saw further internal migration as those from the poorer regions in the south and centre of the country headed to Madrid, Barcelona, Asturias and Bilbao with the populations of Gijón and Oviedo in particular expanding as the mining and metallurgical industries continued to expand to meet increased foreign demand.


The reforms of the previous Sagasta ministry were left largely untouched by Cánovas, as he new layer of local and provincial government increased the monies available to the treasury through indirect taxation, which slowly eased he budgetary pressures his government faced. The continued spectre of land reform which had haunted the last few years of interchanging liberal and conservative government, and which had been one of the leading factors in the rise of the southern anarchist movement still dogged the Cánovas ministry. Increased police infiltration of the various anarchist and other radical groups that operated on the political fringes successfully curtailed some of the more extreme political violence which had coloured the last few years, though the government’s inaction on land reform would continue to fuel the tensions that had led to the anarchist growth in the first place.


The end of the year would also see Felipe undertake a tour of Europe as the new King of Spain, where he would be largely well-received. [1] It was on this tour, along with his brothers Victor and William, that he would be introduced to many of the unmarried daughters of European royalty, sparking rumours that the Queen Mother was looking to have the young king married as soon as possible. Prolonged stays in Paris, London, Berlin and Rome in particular encouraged widespread rumour, though photographs from the trip to Italy simply revealed that the king was enjoying a prolonged stay amongst his relatives, particularly enjoying an extended hunting trip in the Italian Alps. The king would upon his return construct a Tyrolean style hunting lodge in the Pyrenees, which would later become one of the royal family’s most popular holiday houses.


BRIEF NOTES


[1] The young king’s good grasp of languages, and fondness for hunting made him popular amongst both the British and German royal families, where he notably struck up a friendship with the Prince of Wales. Felipe, known for his love of hunting, would be introduced to another of his passions while in Europe, sailing.

 

[morbidteaparty]

It doth return!

 

[The Merovingian]

This was great! Cant wait for the next 7 months for the next update

 

[Germania09]

Good stuff as always

 

[penquista]

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!

 

[morbidteaparty]

I am currently in the process of moving house but once that's completed I'm hoping to have another update around the New Year

 

[penquista]

whenever you have it, we will be thankful