Spanish American war =Stronger Spanish kingdom in the long run .

For a TL I am doing I have Spain losing the war with the U.S.A same as OTL .Then I have a revolution in the Catalonia that spilt into Spain proper .This led to a peasant being crowned king .
Fast forward and Spain is stronger as a result .The nation was reformed and a navy built up .Also the nation was industrially rebuilt and thus was able to take a much greater part in the global scene .
I wonder if this could be possible .Does Spain have the resources on it`s own to become a strong and capable nation ?Or is it ASB .
 
Why a peasant being crowned king? Declaring a Republic or a Military dictatorship would be more plausible.

How losing cataluña makes Castilla y Leon (Spain without cataluña) stronger? If they lose the war they only keep their north african territories so rebuilt and strengthening would be hard like hell.

Spain without the colonies and without cataluña is a week country. Navy up would be hard without extra money from overseas.

And putting a peasant as King would piss off the conservatives in Spain, you could see some kind of Franco appearing earlier and civil war would follow.
 
My idea was that he was a soldier in the Spanish army who disobeyed orders and wound up killing his superiors .In full view of townsfolk .Then he led the rebels .
The reason he was not just made a dictator was to piss off the conservatives .It was meant to show that he was the boss and could do as he saw fit .And they were in jail for ruining Spain`s once massive empire and destroying the nations economy .
 
Possible interesting outcomes if you continue this. It would also be interesting how other countries react to a peasant rising to become King.
 
I dont think they would freak out .This is the early 1900`s after all .And also I am thinking of having the Spanish be viewed early in the TL as insignificant has beens like the Portugese so why would anybody care .
 
Maybe if Spain sees that trade is the soft power of the future. And no, we're not goody-two shoes. The trade benefits Spain 60% and the former colonies 40%, which is enough to keep the colonies involved.

And maybe if the new dictator rather intuits that he has a shelf life of around ten years and doesn't push it too much further than that.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
Not sure about this- the Monarchy comes out of the Spanish-American War in very good shape. The Queen regent didn't really want to fight the War but did so to preserve the Monarchy- basically she took the Russians advice- if Revolution threatened the regime, the only thing for the Queen to do is to put herself at the head of the movement and lead it

The Spanish were incensed at the Americans and wanted war as a means of defending Spanish honor (something which meant a lot in 1900) No one realistically thought they had a chance in the war

After the defeat the Spanish come out way ahead- not only do they no longer have to rule Cuba and the Philippines which were a great drain on their resources- the Spanish who owned property in the two sold out and brought the money back to Spain. There's a huge economic boom

None of this precludes a Catalonia revolt, but I'm curious as to how your provoking one
 
This is set in a TL I am currently writing .Not going to happen for a while but I just wanted to run some things by you all first .
So in the TL Spain loses it`s colonies as OTL save Peru/Bolivia which it absorbs as a part of the Kingdom .Also they treat the Catalonia region with less than respect .Nationalism flares up in the region and bada bing bada boom you have the tinder that sets it off .
 
Yeah no. Your underestimating how attached the Spanish were to the Borbón dynasty. They've been restored with popular support multiple times. Plus the sovereign at the time was Alfonso XIII, a child. Its difficult to put blame on a child for your country's failures. At the most you could have a peasant officer rise to become Regent et Dictator, but not King. Its just next to impossible.
 
How losing cataluña makes Castilla y Leon (Spain without cataluña) stronger? If they lose the war they only keep their north african territories so rebuilt and strengthening would be hard like hell.

Spain without Catalunya is still much more than Castilla-León.

Anyway, as someone else said, the loss of cuba and Filipinas actually was a boost for spanish economy, ending with a constant drain for the national budget etc.

On the other hand, the theory os spanish backwardeness needs a lot of nuances. It has been used inside and outside spanish hisrtoriography, for different reasons, but in recent years it has been pretty much debunked. Certainly Spain was not in par with the top industrial powers, but she had a very typical european, unless we limit europe to a handfull of countries, proccess of industrialization since the last third of the 19th century, as her political proccess was not such an exception neither.

Yeah no. Your underestimating how attached the Spanish were to the Borbón dynasty. They've been restored with popular support multiple times. Plus the sovereign at the time was Alfonso XIII, a child. Its difficult to put blame on a child for your country's failures. At the most you could have a peasant officer rise to become Regent et Dictator, but not King. Its just next to impossible.

Eeeh, no, rather the opposite. The Bourbons have been expelled twice by the people, and hated by large chunks of the populations since their arrival, including a terrible civil war because their proclamation as kings or crowds threatening with storming the royal palace in times of Charles III (and the king flying Madrid) or armed guerrillas against Ferdinand VI. They have been restored, however, despite popular opinion twice, the first one because it seemed there was not other option (1871) and the second one because a brutal dictator said so (1975)

But yes, the OP seems very unlikely and totally ouit of touch wirth spanish historical dynamics of the time (with respect). Had the monarchy fallen, a republic or a dictatorship are the likely outcomes, nobody is going to make a commoner anew king, that has not historical precedent in spanish history, nor makes sense in the context of the time. Noiw, you need good reason to make this revolution possible, and depending on the created political conditions we can think wether it will lead to a republic or a dictatorship.

Even more difficult is to make Catalonia split in the turn of the century, when a very tiny proportion of catalans supported independence (geez, they are not a majority even now) and when the open goal of catalan elites was to become hegemonic inside Spain, not to break it.
 
You gotta love how, in just under 3 years, the "Spain brutalizes the Catalans" cliche has completely replaced the "Spain brutalizes the Basques" cliche.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
Spain without Catalunya is still much more than Castilla-León.

Anyway, as someone else said, the loss of cuba and Filipinas actually was a boost for spanish economy, ending with a constant drain for the national budget etc.

On the other hand, the theory os spanish backwardeness needs a lot of nuances. It has been used inside and outside spanish hisrtoriography, for different reasons, but in recent years it has been pretty much debunked. Certainly Spain was not in par with the top industrial powers, but she had a very typical european, unless we limit europe to a handfull of countries, proccess of industrialization since the last third of the 19th century, as her political proccess was not such an exception neither.



Eeeh, no, rather the opposite. The Bourbons have been expelled twice by the people, and hated by large chunks of the populations since their arrival, including a terrible civil war because their proclamation as kings or crowds threatening with storming the royal palace in times of Charles III (and the king flying Madrid) or armed guerrillas against Ferdinand VI. They have been restored, however, despite popular opinion twice, the first one because it seemed there was not other option (1871) and the second one because a brutal dictator said so (1975)

But yes, the OP seems very unlikely and totally ouit of touch wirth spanish historical dynamics of the time (with respect). Had the monarchy fallen, a republic or a dictatorship are the likely outcomes, nobody is going to make a commoner anew king, that has not historical precedent in spanish history, nor makes sense in the context of the time. Noiw, you need good reason to make this revolution possible, and depending on the created political conditions we can think wether it will lead to a republic or a dictatorship.

Even more difficult is to make Catalonia split in the turn of the century, when a very tiny proportion of catalans supported independence (geez, they are not a majority even now) and when the open goal of catalan elites was to become hegemonic inside Spain, not to break it.

You are forgetting the restoration of Ferdinand VII. Liberal Bonaparte rule was so disagreeable to the Spanish populace that they fought tooth and nail, drained their blood for several years, in order to restore the throne to an absolutist, incompetent, capricious, vindictive asshole just because he was a Bourbon. The Spanish, above all, don't seem to like change.
 
You are forgetting the restoration of Ferdinand VII. Liberal Bonaparte rule was so disagreeable to the Spanish populace that they fought tooth and nail, drained their blood for several years, in order to restore the throne to an absolutist, incompetent, capricious, vindictive asshole just because he was a Bourbon. The Spanish, above all, don't seem to like change.

"Liberal" rule by José Bonaparte was so distasteful that spaniards created a parlamientary government in the only remaining free city (Cadiz) and promugalted one of the most progressive constitutions of the time. A parlamientary government whose legitimacy was issued from self-ruled regional and local Juntas created by the populace herself. The popukace fought for the legitimate king and against the invader for diverse reasons (since you have already ideological differences) but chiefly because the legitimate king represented their sovereignity (thus the juntas, because since the times of Suárez and Vitoria it was stablished that the sovereignity if Spain belonged to the governed who just loaned it to the monarch, thus tthe juntas reclaiming that sovereignity) chiefly, I said, because the Bonaparte was an invading king imposed manu militari by a foreign power whose army roamed the country murdering and raping and pillaging. It's interesting to note that most guerrilla leaders were staunchy liberals, reason why many of them payed with their life when absolutism was restored in 1815. Still, you only have to await 5 years (1820) to see a liberal revolution depriving the (already unpopular) king of its absolute powers and restoring the Constitution of 1812, a liberal regime toppled later by a foreign intervention....Tbe trope about the reactionnary ultramontane spaniards fighting against the light s brought by the foreign king because their fanaticism, borders colonialist thoughts and ignores almost everything that happened in those years in Spain and the local juridical traditions. There were reactionnaires like Merino? Of course, as in many other countries...
 
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