Crisis of the Old Regime, liberal revolution and the nation-state (1808–1874)
What the exam tests
The collapse of the absolutist monarchy under the impact of revolutionary France and Napoleon, the birth of Spanish liberalism in Cádiz, and the long contest between moderados and progresistas that built the liberal state between 1833 and 1874.
Key stages
- 1808: Aranjuez (March), the abdications at Bayonne, 2 May in Madrid; war to 1814; juntas; guerrilla warfare; local episodes such as Medina de Rioseco (July 1808).
- Cádiz: Cortes from 1810; Constitution of 19 March 1812 - national sovereignty, indirect male suffrage, Catholic confessionality, separation of powers, new municipal and provincial order.
- 1814–33: return of Ferdinand VII and the Manifiesto de los Persas; Riego's pronunciamiento (1820); Trienio Liberal; the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis (1823); Ominous Decade.
- 1833–40: First Carlist War (Vergara, 1839); regencies of María Cristina and Espartero; Estatuto Real 1834; progressive Constitution of 1837; moderate Constitution of 1845.
- Economic and institutional change: Mendizábal's desamortización (1836–37, ecclesiastical) and Madoz's (1855, municipal); provincial division of 1833; Guardia Civil 1844; railway Barcelona–Mataró 1848; Concordat 1851.
- 1868–74: Gloriosa, Constitution of 1869 (universal male suffrage), Amadeo I (1871–73), First Republic (1873–74) and cantonalism; Pavía and Sagunto close the cycle in 1874.
Worked example
On Article 3 of 1812 ("sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation"), proceed in four moves: identify the text (decree of the Cortes of Cádiz, 1812, in wartime); explain the literal meaning; interpret it as the transfer of sovereignty from the king to the nation, with the consequences (equality before the law, abolition of seigneurial jurisdiction, a single legal order); and evaluate its limits - indirect suffrage, confessional state, no rights for women, application suspended in 1814.
Mark-losing traps
- 1837 (progressive) and 1845 (moderate) constitutions have opposite suffrage and sovereignty clauses.
- Mendizábal disentailed Church property; Madoz disentailed municipal and common land.
- Do not call 1812 a democratic constitution: suffrage was indirect and restricted, and Catholicism was the sole religion.
- 1868 is the revolution; 1873 is the Republic; 1874 is the Restoration.
- Carlism is not only a dynastic dispute: it mobilised fueros, religion and rural opposition to liberal property laws.