Building Liberal States: Restoration, Liberal Revolutions and Nationalisms, and the Spanish Sexenio Democrático
What this domain tests
From the Vienna order to the Spanish Restoration, this block examines how liberal states were built - by revolution, dynastic compromise or national unification - and where Spain and Catalonia sat in that process. Sources are often constitutional articles, pronunciamiento manifestos or Carlist proclamations.
Core content
- Restoration Europe (1815–1848): legitimacy and balance of power; 1830 (July Monarchy, Belgian independence) and 1848 (the springtime of peoples, failure of the Frankfurt Parliament).
- National unifications: Italy through Cavour's diplomacy plus Garibaldi's volunteers (kingdom 1861, Rome 1870); Germany through the Zollverein (1834) and Bismarck's wars - Sadowa 1866, Sedan 1870, Empire proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871.
- Spain 1814–1868: Ferdinand VII's absolutism, the Liberal Triennium 1820–23, the Pragmatic Sanction and the Carlist war from 1833; Mendizábal's confiscation (1836) and the 1837 Constitution; Moderado–Progresista alternation, the 1845 Constitution, Madoz (1855), the Progressive Biennium 1854–56.
- Sexenio Democrático (1868–1874): the Gloriosa, the 1869 Constitution (first with universal male suffrage), Amadeo I, the First Republic from February 1873, cantonalism, the Cuban war from 1868, and the pronunciamiento that opened the Restoration.
Worked example
Question: compare sovereignty and suffrage in the 1845 and 1869 constitutions. Reasoning: identify the political family behind each (Moderados against the 1868 revolutionaries); state shared sovereignty with the Crown in 1845 against national sovereignty in 1869; contrast census suffrage limited by wealth with universal male suffrage; add religion (confessional state against tolerance of other cults) and the Crown's powers (veto, dissolution). Four axes, each with a fact and a contrast, beat a narrative summary.
Traps
Placing universal male suffrage in 1837 or 1845; confusing the European Restoration of 1815 with the Spanish Restoration of 1874; saying the 1873 federal constitution was approved (it was drafted, never passed); treating Carlism as a Catalan movement when its base was Navarre and the Basque provinces; confusing the 1868 Gloriosa with the 1854 pronunciamiento.