Historical Events

21 December

1808	Peninsula War: The second siege of the city of Zaragoza by Napoleonic troops began.
1879	Josif Stalin, leader of the USSR, is born.
1879	The New York Herald announces Edison's discovery of the light bulb.
1901	First time women take part in elections in Norway.
1925	Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin premieres in Moscow.
1959	US President Dwight Eisenhower arrives in Madrid, a visit that consolidated Franco's regime.

The Great Captain takes Naples

EL Gran Capitán, by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau

On 1 January 1504, the Great Captain achieved the capitulation of Gaeta and surrendered the city of Naples, taking it from the French monarch Louis XII. The kingdom of Naples had been linked to the Aragonese crown since the time of Alfonso V, but by the end of the 15th century the Italic Peninsula was as unstable as a hornet’s nest. Ferdinand the Catholic was fighting with France for his hereditary rights to the kingdom, even signing a renunciation agreement, the Treaty of Granada. However, the treaty had loopholes, and in trying to clarify which lands belonged to whom, the result was war. Ferdinand entrusted the matter to his best general, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, who was to prove himself an imposing strategist in the battle.

The decisive battle for Naples would be fought on the banks of the River Garellano. Louis XII sent a large army, far superior to the troops of the Great Captain, who in return was able to choose the site of the battle. The Spaniards, equipped on the opposite bank of the river and spurred on by the genius of their captain, resisted up to three furious attacks. With the enemy exhausted, Fernández de Córdoba moved on to the attack using a wooden bridge built in secret, which took the French army by surprise. His troops defeated on 28 December, Gaeta capitulated a few days later.

Bust of El Gran Capitán

After this impossible feat, the Great Captain was appointed viceroy of Naples and enjoyed an everlasting fame. Even so, it is said that on his return, the Catholic King had the audacity to ask him for an account of the the heavy expenses of the campaign. Perhaps he envied his general’s success when his figure paled in the absence of Queen Isabella. What is certain is that Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, astonished and somewhat annoyed by the bureaucratic bureaucratic disdain for his feat, invented a singular list of incalculable expenses among which he expenses, including 200,736 ducats and nine reales in prayers for friars and nuns. prayers of friars and nuns, the same in alms and 700,494 ducats in spies. spies. From then on, any implausible excuse will become known as the “accounts of the Great Captain”.

Inauguration of the Bullfighting School of Seville

La Maestranza, Seville’s bullring.

On 3rd January 1831, the Bullfighting School of Seville was inaugurated, the only official school of its kind in Europe and America. There has been much speculation as to the reasons for this institutional creation, and among all of them, the personal involvement of King Fernando VII can be ruled out. The King was a fan of the fiesta, but he was not a fanatic and possibly enjoyed the mass bath more than the bullfight itself. It seems more likely that the government was influenced by the neoclassical trend, which was sweeping through art and thought, and in which following certain rules was the crucial element in any composition that aspired to perfection. The rules, the parameters of each art, led to the sublimation of the work, and bullfighting was no exception. The government thus set itself up as the protector of the rules that contained the essence of bullfighting and would be responsible for methodically transmitting them to future bullfighters. The idea seemed far-fetched, but one can understand a certain concern for the risks involved in a profession in which passion often took precedence over technique and a desire for young bullfighters to have access to an education that could reduce the danger. This seemed to be the aim when the school was given the title of “Preservative”.

La Maestranza, Seville’s bullring.

The post of master of the Bullfighting School was claimed by the great bullfighter Pedro Romero, who at seventy-six years of age and retired for three decades, proclaimed himself the best possible candidate. Romero had never been injured and the argument seemed overwhelming, given the philosophy of the school. Having solved the problem of the maestrazgo, the school faced an important opposition that would ultimately determine its short life. The bullrings did not think it appropriate to have to finance the new institution with their profits. They were joined by the voices of the purists, who thought that bullfighting was and should be unpredictable and that it was not possible to confine it with rules of any kind.

The Seville School produced great masters during its short life, Francisco Montes, Arjona, Juan Pastor “el Barbero”, Juan Yust and Manuel Domínguez, all of them with their own style, which in no way suggested that they were cut from the same cloth.

Benito Pérez Galdós, master of realism, passes away

Benito Pérez Galdós

Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is the great master of realism in Spain. Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he was nevertheless the novelist of Madrid par excellence. He arrived in the capital at the age of nineteen, in 1862, to study law, in accordance with his family’s wishes, but he soon discovered his vocation for journalism and literature. Having started out very young in the pages of El Debate and La Nación, between 1866 and 1867 he wrote his first novel, La sombra (“The Shadow”), which was not published until 1870 in La Revista de España. He first went to press with La fontana de oro, which was written and published in 1870. While he was writing for the press and developing his own narrative, Galdós translated works by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who left a deep impression on him. After El audaz (1871), Galdós began his historical, literary and didactic reconstruction of Spain’s past, under the general title of Episodios Nacionales, which are still of enormous utility and singular beauty, and which span from the reign of Carlos IV, in which Galdós locates the origin of all Spain’s ills, with the disaster of Trafalgar, the first title of the series, to his own day.

Galdós considered himself a reformist in the field of literature. He broke with romanticism, advocating a kind of realism that could sometimes be suffocating. In fact, he criticised almost all contemporary writers for being, in his opinion, incapable of capturing the life of their time on paper. Despite being recognised as one of the best Spanish-language writers of all time, Galdós felt affronted by the awarding of the Nobel Prize to José Echegaray, a popular but less brilliant writer. Moreover, the fact that the authors of the Generation of ’98 did not regard him as their mentor also cost him more than one displeasure. Nevertheless, his name will always be linked to the best literature our country has produced.

Birth of the Casa de Contratación of Seville

Reales Atarazanas in Seville

On 14 February 1503, the Royal Decree was passed establishing the Casa de Contratación of Seville, the great administrative body that would regulate maritime traffic and trade with the New World. Located in the Reales Atarazanas (royal shipyards), the Casa de Contratación was also a warehouse for the deposit of goods brought from America and a market for auctioning them to the highest bidder. It collected the taxes that the crown reserved for commercial traffic and issued the permits to set sail. No one from Spain could set foot in the New World without the express permission of the Casa de Contratación.

Only three officials set the Casa de Contratación in motion. The “factor”, the most important position, established the kind of provisions the ships would carry for trade, their rigging and equipment, as well as their armament. There was a treasurer who was in charge of storing and distributing the funds received from the conquests and the goods of the deceased, and a scribe or accountant who kept the books of accounts. As the territories in the New World expanded, new ordinances arose to meet the new needs. In 1579, Felipe II created the figure of a president to delimit the different competencies. At that time, the Casa de Contratación also settled legal disputes between colonists.

The Casa de Contratación’s most important function was of a scientific nature. The Casa de Contratación became a great centre of science applied to navigation, with a great work in the training of sea pilots. During this first stage, Spain led the greatest scientific advances in the fields of cosmography, cartography and naval engineering. A senior pilot compiled the information brought back by sailors to draw up nautical charts of the main routes of the New World. The experience of pioneers such as Juan Sebastián Elcano, Juan de la Cosa and Andrés de Urdaneta contributed to enriching an unprecedented naval heritage, while the school of pilots guaranteed the endurance of dominance on the oceans.

The humanist Luis Vives is born

Juan Luis Vives

The philosopher and writer Luis Vives was born in Valencia on 6 March 1492. A man of transit between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Luis Vives was born into a family of converts who had serious problems with the Inquisition.

A universal Valencian, Luis Vives spent most of his life outside Spain. He was educated in Paris, where he began his teaching career, although he soon moved to Bruges, where he made friends with intellectuals and families of some renown who favoured his position. In Flanders he met Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More, and both were impressed by the intellectual level of the Valencian. Erasmus wrote of him in his Epistolary, “Even if we grant that there are those who equal him in eloquence, I do not see, however, anyone who combines so much eloquence and such a profound knowledge of philosophy”.

His friendship with Thomas More would take him to England, where he would teach at Oxford and enjoy the protection of Henry VIII. At least he enjoyed it as long as Louis did not take up the cause of Catherine of Aragon, whom the monarch wanted to divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Vives was arrested and expelled from the island, a better fate than his friend Thomas More, Catherine’s staunchest defender.

Although he did not like to teach, but to write, Vives imbued his works with a strong didactic and moralising spirit, typical of his humanist training. His most important work was De disciplinas, an encyclopaedia of pedagogical knowledge. Vives was a thinker with a strong Europeanist spirit, giving the concept a sense of common Catholic identity, and also a pacifist. Some say that among his anonymous works from his youth is one of the greatest works of Spanish literature, El lazarillo de Tormes.

Fernando VII accepts the Constitution of Cadiz

Fernando VII by Vicent López Portaña

On 7 March 1820 Fernando VII swore in the Constitution of Cadiz. “Let us march frankly, and I am the first, along the constitutional path”, the monarch had said, reinventing himself. Of course, two months earlier, General Riego had managed to bring about the triumph of an attempted liberal uprising which the King, far from fighting, suddenly wanted to lead.

When, at the end of the war, the arrival of “The Desired One” was announced, the liberals had moved from Cadiz to Madrid and were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the King, to whom they intended to offer a crowned constitutional regime. Fernando, who was soon to forget, delayed his arrival in the capital, visited Zaragoza and lingered in the Levant, taking a bath with the masses and receiving the so-called “manifesto of the Persians”, which called for a return to a more nuanced absolutism. His entry into Madrid was a tremendous success. The crowd, seized by enthusiasm, unhitched their horses and began to pull the carriage. Seeing that he had no shortage of support, Fernando repealed the Constitution, declared its decrees “null and void” and ordered the liberals to be hunted down, in the hope that those six years of absence would be erased from history and collective memory.

But this puerile wish was totally unfeasible. The war had created a different situation, and although everyone wanted the return of the King, there were many who rejected a return to the previous regime. The militiamen and peasants were a clear example of this. On the other side were the merchants, who were in favour of a liberal regime in search of economic recovery. And all of them were empowered and led by the ideological liberals, who did not accept absolutism as a matter of principle. Before Riego triumphed, Espoz y Mina, Porlier and Lacy tried and failed. General Riego’s coup at Cabezas de San Juan was not the most brilliant, in fact he failed in his attempt to take Cadiz, but it was not put down and provoked a succession of small uprisings.

By abiding by the Constitution of 1812, Fernando VII initiated the Liberal Triennium. Then came the Ominous Decade. The King lacked the convictions to impose a model. What is certain is that for some he was an absolutist monarch, while for others he left the door open to liberalism.

Luis de Requesens is buried in Flanders

Luis de Requesens y Zuñiga by Francisco Jover Casanova

On 8 March 1576, Luis de Requesens y Zúñiga, who was supposed to be the diplomatic solution to the problem of the Netherlands, was buried in Flanders. Of the many issues that Felipe II dealt with during his prosperous reign, there was one that he was unable to solve, that he failed to manage or understand, perhaps because he lacked his father’s background and qualities to do so. Felipe II was not a cosmopolitan king, nor did he speak languages, nor did he share the Flemish background or the wealth of powers of the Emperor Carlos V. For him, Flanders was an inherited problem that he added to his own and tackled according to his principles. Therefore, when the Calvinist revolt broke out, he sent the Duke of Alba as his first choice, and allowed him to initiate a harsh repression that only aggravated the matter and added to the rebels’ strength.

By appointing a man as opposed to Alba as Luis de Requesens, Felipe II recognised his mistake and tried to make amends. The new governor was a more affable, patient and conciliatory man than the duke, although he suffered from poor health and real military deficiencies. The monarch was sending a low-profile man to spearhead a conciliatory policy. There was no money to sustain a rebellion in such a state of gestation. Requesens abolished the Tribunal de Tumultos, a body set up by Álvarez de Toledo to try and suppress the rebels, reduced the high taxes levied by his predecessor to pay for the war, and offered an amnesty to the rebels. He also tried to negotiate with William of Orange, to whom he proposed that the Calvinists could sell their goods and leave the country. These were poor arguments. The prince did not listen to such arguments. It is likely that he would not have listened to others either. The rebellion was at a point of no return and, more importantly, Holland was beginning to become aware that it was an autonomous country.

The death of Luis de Requesens in the midst of a prelude to a revolt among the tercios because of delays in payment completely invalidated a diplomatic solution that had already been stifled. The governor’s body remained unburied for three days for lack of resources.

Antonio Ulloa, Governor of Louisiana

Antonio de Ulloa by Andrés Cortés y Aguilar

On 5 March 1766, the new governor of Louisiana, Antonio de Ulloa, arrived in New Orleans to take up his post. Spain had received this vast region under the Family Pact with France and in compensation for losses incurred in the war with England. The job was a complex one, as the French colonists did not accept the new authority, the new language or the different trade laws, and force was often used. He left office before he had completed his first year in office and returned to the Peninsula after a brief stay in Havana.

Antonio de Ulloa was born in Seville in 1716 into a distinguished family. His father was the city’s procurador mayor and his ancestors included loyal soldiers who fought against the Moors in Granada. He received nautical and mathematical instruction but was a weak and sickly young man, so his father embarked him in 1730 on the galleon San Luis to test his readiness to sail. He travelled to Cartagena de Indias, suffered the fury of the hurricanes of the West Indies and on his return to Cadiz decided to take his exams to enter the Academy of Midshipmen.

As a sailor, he had the opportunity to confront the Austrian fleet, although he would soon be called upon by the Academy of Sciences in Paris to take measurements in the Equator that would determine the true shape of the earth, an extremely important scientific mission to which he would devote eleven years in the company of the illustrious sailor Jorge Juan. On his return, Ulloa was part of a commission that travelled around Europe by order of King Fernando VI in order to gather new scientific and technical knowledge. As a result of this trip, the Royal Cloth Factory was founded, the shipyards of Ferrol and Cartagena were set up, the colleges of Surgery and Medicine were created and the Almadén School of Mines was renovated.

Posted to Peru as a military sailor with the aim of improving his knowledge of mineralogy, Antonio de Ulloa would discover platinum, a previously unknown element. Ulloa’s travels, research and adventures were recorded in his Relación histórica del viaje a la América Meridional and in his report Noticias secretas de América, written with Jorge Juan.

Cardinal Cisneros conquers Oran for Fernando the Catholic King

The capture of Oran by Cardinal Cisneros

On 17 May 1509, Spanish troops took the Algerian city of Oran, a refuge from the Moors who were ravaging the Mediterranean. The conquest of Oran was a personal project of Cardinal Cisneros, who thus rendered his last service to Isabella the Catholic and to his will, in which he asked not to cease the conquest of Africa. Expansion into Africa involved dismantling the main Mediterranean ports and enclaves and establishing a cordon of security, so that future hostilities with the Muslims would be transferred to their own shores. Cisneros devised and financed the operation out of his personal income, and such was his determination that the Catholic King allowed him to command the expedition, placing at his side an experienced soldier like Pedro Navarro, a veteran of the Italian wars alongside the Gran Capitán and the architect of the occupation of the Rock of La Gomera in 1508. The relationship between the two was not exactly good. The soldier was uncomfortable with the seventy-three-year-old primate’s interference in the military command of such an ambitious undertaking, but Cisneros remained until the end, making his triumphal entry into the conquered square on 18 May.

Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros by Matías Moreno

In mid-May the fleet set sail, consisting of 90 ships and 15,000 soldiers, most of them from the Tercio de Sicilia. For the first time in a war, cavalry troops armed with arquebuses were brought along. The militia landed at Mazalquivir, which was very close to Oran but separated from it by a steep mountain range. At the top, 10,000 Muslims welcomed them with a hail of stones and arrows. Six artillery pieces tried to protect the risky Spanish advance. The summit was not crowned until nightfall. Navarro cleared the area of the enemy and prepared the assault on the city, which was defended by a thick wall and two castles.

Oran’s good strategic position obviated the need for a large defensive garrison. This was perhaps the weakness that the brave Navarro exploited, ordering an all-out offensive on several fronts. The city did not resist the siege and little by little its gates gave way. The following day, Cisneros made his triumphal entry. Amidst the cheers of the troops, the Primate of Spain placed the Holy Cross on the city walls.

The great musician Isaac Albéniz dies

Isaac Albéniz, Photo Esplugas, Barcelona

The life and death of the great Spanish musician Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz (1860-1909) has always been surrounded by legends. The most widespread is the one about his supposed Jewishness, which is false. The next most important is that he died insane, which is strictly inaccurate: Albéniz’s death was due to what was known at the time as “Bright’s disease”, a degenerative nephritis, very painful and producing oedema throughout the body, which led to severe depression, but in no case to dementia. Finally, he was said to have studied with Franz Liszt, whom he never met. He lived only forty-eight years, devoted almost entirely to music. A child prodigy, he first performed in public as a pianist at the astonishing age of four. At six, his mother took him to Paris, where he studied for nine months with Antoine Francois Marmontel, a teacher at the Conservatoire, to which he was not admitted because he was too young. At seven, back in Spain, he gave several concerts and published his first composition: Marcha militar. He soon became known outside Spain and in 1875 he gave concerts in Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as in Barcelona, Valencia and Salamanca. The following year, he entered the Leipzig Conservatory, where he spent only two months, and then the Brussels Conservatory, with a scholarship granted by Alfonso XII. There, in 1879, he won first prize for piano performance. After a tour of South America, in 1883 he settled in Barcelona, where he met Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922), an advocate of music with national roots – along the lines of Diaghilev in ballet – who had an enormous influence. From this inspiration was born Albéniz’s masterpiece, the Iberia suite (1909), as well as the Suite Española, the Seis danzas españolas, the Rapsodia española and the Concierto fantástico, composed between 1886 and 1887, after his marriage to Rosita Jordana, who was his pupil. Albéniz’s career as a performer was also extremely important and his work as a composer never prevented him from being a pianist of universal fame. In London he began to collaborate with Francis Money-Coutts (Lord Larymer), a British banker who wrote poetic dramas and needed a musician to help him stage them. This relationship largely solved Albéniz’s financial problems. In addition, the maestro also composed three zarzuelas, which were premiered but whose scores have not survived.

Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, a prodigious mind, passes away

Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo by Joaquín Soroya

Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856-1912) is the exemplary model of the “polygraph”, that is, a man who writes about the most diverse subjects, always with solvency and after careful research. His fields of activity ranged from the history of ideas (to which he contributed a fundamental work that retains all its value, the Historia de los heterodoxos españoles) to literary criticism, to which he bequeathed a masterpiece, the four-volume Antología de poetas hispano-americanos (1893-1895), which he entitled Historia de la poesía hispanoamericana in its reprint. The same happened with his Antología de poetas líricos castellanos (1890-1908), in thirteen volumes reprinted in 1911 under the title Historia de la poesía castellana en la Edad Media. The extent of Menéndez Pelayo’s work in his fifty-six years of existence is astonishing.

He did his baccalaureate in Santander and his university studies in Barcelona and Madrid. A liberal in his early years, he ended up at odds with the Krausists and the Hegelians – with whom he polemicised in La ciencia española (1876). In Madrid, in addition to obtaining his professorship, he frequented Juan Valera’s tertulia. He was a member of the Spanish Royal Academy (1880), deputy (1884-1892), director of the Spanish National Library (1898 and 1912) and director of the Royal Academy of History (1909). In his maturity he resumed some aspects of the liberalism of his youth, albeit from an essentially Catholic point of view. He famously clashed for years with Benito Pérez Galdós, with whom, however, he ended up becoming a friend after rectifying some harsh criticisms of his work. He is also the author of a five-volume Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (1883-1891), in which, as in La ciencia española, he claims a national tradition distinct from the rest of the European ones. His Estudios de crítica literaria (Studies in Literary Criticism) is in five volumes and his Orígenes de la novela in four. The edition of his Obras completas, in 1940, to which the Epistolario and the Bibliografía were later added, took 65 volumes. Menéndez Pelayo’s work was continued by his nephew, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and his disciple, Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín.

Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid

Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo

On 20 May 1506, Christopher Columbus died at his home in Valladolid. It is true that his prestige had darkened, but he was far from dying alone and ruined. He would return from his fourth and last voyage ill and physically ailing, and his pride was greatly offended. Nicolás de Ovando, the new viceroy of the Indies, had treated him with as little consideration as his predecessor. At the gates of Santo Domingo and in the middle of a storm, the viceroy had refused him entry to the port. He had also ignored his warnings about the state of the sea, resulting in twenty ships sunk and 500 dead, among them the outgoing viceroy, Francisco de Bobadilla, who years earlier had sent Columbus back to Spain in chains. The rudeness did not end there. Ovando deliberately delayed Columbus’ rescue in Jamaica, from where he would return ill and battered after facing a rebellion by his men. To make matters worse, when Columbus arrived with the ringleader imprisoned, Ovando would release him under his own nose.

Columbus was concerned about his inheritance, for he knew that without the viceroyalty his fragile title of nobility would vanish in the hands of his first-born son Don Diego. In his last years he took on a mournful tone and spared no reproaches to the King and Queen for considering that they had broken their agreement by depriving him of the governorship of the Indies. Shortly after settling in Seville, he heard the news of the death of Queen Isabella, his great patron, which made his claims even more difficult. Ferdinand did not return his title to the discoverer, but neither did he treat him inconsiderately. He paid him his arrears, favoured his son Don Diego in his marriage to the house of Alba and, years later, reinstated him as viceroy.

Statue of Columbus in Barcelona, Spain

In his will, Columbus left a new mystery for enigma hunters. After naming his son Diego as his universal heir and asking him to look after the estate, he left an enigmatic signature, which he also imposed on his successors, in the form of a star-shaped pentagon with three S’s at the top and at the sides, followed by dots. For exegetes, this signature pointed to the cabala and confirmed the Jewish origins of the navigator, who may have been returning to his original faith at death’s door, secretly so as not to harm his heirs. He was buried with the honours of an admiral, a position he would never lose. New and vigorous adventurers had already taken over from his incredible adventure.

Gibraltar's constitution comes into force

Aerial view of Gibraltar

On 30 May 1969 the Constitution of Gibraltar came into force. The Gibraltarians had voted in a referendum that they preferred to remain part of the British Crown and were to be given a Constitution that would change forever the spirit of the negotiations on this region. The UK granted the Rock a high degree of autonomy and pledged never to negotiate its devolution bilaterally. This greatly complicated the resolution of the conflict, as Spain rejected trilateral negotiation, since it could not grant Gibraltar the status of a sovereign country, and Britain seemed to suddenly close off the possibility of unilateral decision making.

Spain had initiated the diplomatic route for the return of Gibraltar, putting it on the agenda of the UN Committee in June 1963. The government intended to give the Rock the status of a colonised region and initiate its decolonisation in accordance with the policy of self-determination of peoples, so much in vogue in the 1960s. The problem it encountered was that it still retained Ifni and Western Sahara and although it aimed to grant sovereignty to Equatorial Guinea, its dual role as a colonised and colonising country made it difficult to gain support. The UN ruled that Gibraltar was a colony and that Spain and the UK should resolve the dispute through negotiation. The UN established as an element to be taken into account “the interests” of the territory’s population, and Britain seized on this as an essential criterion, putting it ahead of Spain’s territorial integrity. Negotiations dragged on for many months, without reaching a common ground, and the Foreign Office then backed down by calling for the holding of a referendum. Spain made the negotiations conditional on the referendum being invalidated, but instead, on 30 May 1969, Britain published Gibraltar’s new constitution.

Gibraltar’s most known inhabitant.

When it realised that there was not the slightest hint of willingness to negotiate, the Spanish government decided to close the border at La Línea de la Concepción, cut telephone and telegraph communications and abolished the sea link between Gibraltar and Algeciras. The aim was to enforce strict compliance with the Treaty of Utrecht, breaking any kind of favourable interpretation. The fence would remain closed until 14 December 1982.

Wedding and assassination attempt on Alfonso XIII

King Alfonso XIII of Spain and fianceé , Princess Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg.

Alfonso XIII de Borbón (Madrid, 1886-Rome, 1941) was the posthumous son of Alfonso XII and María Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena, who was regent during his minority, between 1885 and 1902. He was crowned at the age of sixteen. On 31 May 1906, at the age of twenty, he married the British Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (1887-1969), daughter of Henry of Battenberg and Princess Beatrix of England. Victoria Eugenie was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, although she had to change her status from Serene Highness to Royal Highness so that the marriage would not be morganatic, i.e. between people of unequal rank. At the origin of this union was the plan to marry the young King to Princess Patricia, also Victoria’s granddaughter. Alfonso travelled to London to meet her, but she was apparently in love with another man. Instead, he met the woman who was to become his wife at a love wedding, much celebrated by the Spanish people, which took place at the Hieronymites in Madrid. On the way back to the Royal Palace, the Catalan anarchist Mateo Morral threw a bouquet of flowers containing a bomb at them from the balcony of the boarding house where he was staying at 88 Calle Mayor. There were dead and wounded among the people who witnessed the passing of the procession and some members of the royal entourage, but the King and Queen were unharmed.

Graphic document, seconds after the anarchist bombing (1906) of King Alfonso XIII on his wedding day,

Morral was not, as one might think, a desperate worker, but the son of a family of textile merchants from Barcelona, who had travelled and spoke several languages, who had adopted anarchist ideology in Germany, had left the business and had worked as a librarian with Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, a freethinker who was later accused of instigating the events of the Tragic Week and shot in 1909, among other reasons because of his relationship with Morral. During the Civil War, the Madrid City Council, in a fit of extremist passion, changed the name of Calle Mayor to Mateo Morral. In 1939, the street was restored to its traditional name.

Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile.

Alfonso X the Wise

On 1 June 1252, Alfonso X the Wise was proclaimed King of Castile on the death of his father, Fernando III. Alfonso was already thirty years old and had a hardened political and military life, spent in Andalusia alongside his father. When his father died, he had little territory left to increase his military fame. He conquered Jerez in 1253 and a little later surrendered Cadiz, a fortress that had always resisted the Holy King. With his warrior impulse, he managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and extend the Reconquest to Africa, although he only captured a few towns. Castile glimpsed peace on the horizon. With the Moors defeated, except for the tributary kingdom of Granada, only a Mudejar revolt in Murcia disturbed the tranquillity of the early years of his reign. Alfonso X’s obsession was therefore projected towards Europe, where he aspired to the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Alfonso X was the first of the ten grandchildren of the last emperor, Frederick II, whose daughter Beatrice of Swabia his father had married. However, the crown of the Holy Roman Empire was elective and any right had to be legitimised by a council of seven electors. Eventually Rudolf of Habsburg came to the throne and Alfonso X, who had invested too much time and resources in his ambition, found himself without the German crown and with a Castilian nobility on the verge of revolt.

Statue of Alfonso X of Castile at the National Library. José Alcoverro 1892.

The last years of Alfonso’s reign were marked by unfortunate struggles with his son Sancho, who in his father’s absence had put a stop to the invasion of the Benimerines and was beginning to deserve the nickname of “El Bravo” (The Brave). The succession process would be obscure and complex, with Alfonso in full decline and in favour of the sons of his first-born son Fernando, the so-called Infantes de la Cerda. However, his unfortunate political actions should not obscure the many qualities of this complex monarch, more intellectual than political, who promoted art and culture like no other. He was a great supporter of the Toledo School of Translators and contributed his personal genius to the legal system, the scientific world, the historical chronicle and, above all, to the flourishing of poetry, with such notable works as the Cantigas de Santa María. These contributions helped the wise king to reach the intellectual pinnacle of his time.

The last of the Philippines

Group picture of The Last of the Philippines.

The history of the Spanish Empire, which began with the revolution represented by the discovery of America on 12 October 1492, ended on 2 June 1899 in the Philippines when, after eleven months of resistance, the Spanish troops besieged in Baler, on the island of Luzon, were defeated. There were no more than half a hundred soldiers, historically known as “the last of the Philippines”, surrounded by a group of pro-independence fighters. This was the final episode in the war between Spain and the United States, which had formally ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 December 1898.

Monument to the heroes of Baler, in the Plaza del Conde del Valle de Súchil, in Madrid.

By that agreement, the Americans bought the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico from the Spanish for the modest sum of $20 million – a century earlier, Jefferson had bought Louisiana, including New Orleans, from Bonaparte for $15 million; and in 1867, the United States bought Alaska from the Russian tsar for just over $7 million. However, the Treaty of Paris presented the Filipinos, who had already declared themselves independent, with new conflicts: on the one hand, they had not been present at the signing of the agreement, so they continued their struggle with the Spanish, with whom they had in no way made peace; and, on the other hand, they found themselves with a new colonial master they were not prepared to accept. So, at the same time as the Spanish-American war was ending, the Philippine-American war was beginning amidst the fringes of the war of independence against Spain. The besieged in Baler were under orders not to surrender.

Members of the Association Ultimos de Filipinas-Heroes of Bale

Being cut off from communication, they were unaware of the Treaty of Paris and the subsequent surrender of the territory. The Filipinos sent them numerous messages letting them know, but they always thought it was a trap to get them to give up. It took six months for a Spanish commission to arrive in Baler, and they had a hard time convincing them that what the besiegers had told them was true. Nor was it easy to convince the Filipinos to allow them to leave the city to be repatriated without reprisals.

Elcano returns to Seville after circumnavigating the globe

Elcano arriving to Seville

On 6 September 1522, exhausted, depleted and defenceless, Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition arrived in the port of Sanlúcar, Cádiz. It was two years, eleven months and seventeen days since he set sail with five strong ships and 256 crew members. Only the ship Victoria arrived in Sanlúcar with the eighteen survivors of the voyage. No wonder. What these eighteen brave men have just accomplished is the first round-the-world voyage in history. Ferdinand Magellan wanted to complete Columbus’ failed voyage to the East Indies by crossing the Atlantic.

The Portuguese sailor believed that, having overcome the obstacle of the new continent that could be skirted, the Indies should not be far away. As the King of Portugal, Manuel 1 the Fortunate, rejected the plan as absurd, Magellan offered it to the King of Spain, then Charles I, who accepted and subsidised the expedition. On 20 September 1519, the five ships set sail from the port of Sanlúcar. They reached the Brazilian coast without any problems, but from there, the profile of the southern cone seemed endless. They decide to land on the beaches of San Julián in Patagonia and spend the winter there, but the captain encounters an unexpected rebellion. The Spanish crew, led by Juan de Cartagena, refused to continue. Magellan resolved the conflict harshly, executing the most belligerent and leaving the ringleader ashore with his chaplain. He was lenient with the rest of the Spaniards.

Once again on a voyage, Magellan found the longed-for passage between Tierra de Fuego and the continent, which he called the Strait of Eleven Thousand Virgins, but which will remain for posterity with his name. Then a new problem arose. Esteban Gómez, captain of the San Antonio, took advantage of the dense fog to abandon the expedition and return to Spain. The ships were fewer and fewer and the dangers greater.

Elcano’s route around the globe.

Food and water began to spoil and fatigue was compounded by disease. In the Philippines, while trying to trade with the natives, they were ambushed and the captain and many others lost their lives. From then on, a fierce struggle for survival ensued. Juan Sebastián Elcano takes command. Scurvy and infections decimate the crew. To make matters worse, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the Victoria was held up by the Portuguese at Cape Verde. However, this was the last hurdle. On 15 July, they managed to set sail, and on 6 September, they put an end to their agony by kissing the land of Sanlúcar in Cadiz.

They have travelled almost 80,000 kilometres, opened a route through America and sailed the two largest oceans. The earth, yes, was round, but no one would have imagined it was so big.

Elizabeth I, Felipe II's greatest enemy, ascends to the English throne

Queen Elizabeth I, by Johannes Corvus

On 17 November 1558, Felipe II’s wife, Mary Tudor, died and the British throne was left free for her half-sister Elizabeth I. Although she was soon to become the Spanish monarch’s fiercest rival, Felipe favoured the succession of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, who may not have needed the push, but did in fact have it. Elizabeth’s rival was Mary Stuart, wife of the dauphin of France and therefore an enemy of Spain. Felipe wanted his wife, on her deathbed, to recognise Elizabeth as her heir and this was achieved by the Earl of Feria, sent by the King to England.

Once the succession had been achieved, the marriage alliances followed. At first Felipe tried to unite Elizabeth with the Duke of Savoy, a loyal ally of his, but in time he thought that he himself might be a better suitor.

The Queen was no beauty, but she was young and powerful. Elizabeth needed Spanish support so that France would not overrule her rights in Rome in favour of Mary Stuart. It should not be forgotten that she was Anne Boleyn’s daughter and therefore her legitimacy was up in the air. The alliance was in Spain’s interest because it needed British support in the Netherlands. The Queen dragged out the negotiations while she strengthened her position in the islands, and as Felipe was not keen on the alliance either, things cooled down until the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis drove him into the arms of Isabella of Valois.

Portrait of Philipp II, by Sofonisba Anguissola

Elizabeth turned out to be a fanatical Protestant, a character that her governments accentuated, provoking a schism with Catholic citizens. Gradually the game between the two powers festered. Elizabeth kept up the form but financed Calvinists in the Low Countries and granted privateer’s licences to British pirates to plunder Spanish galleons. When Mary Stuart fled to England to escape the Protestant Scots, the priorities of both countries became clear.

Elizabeth saw her cousin as a rival, while Spain saw her as an opportunity to depose the Queen and establish a Catholic monarchy in England. In the end, Elizabeth beheaded Mary Stuart and Felipe organised the Great Armada. Elizabeth and Felipe, almost sweethearts, were already the bitterest enemies in Europe.

The law for political reform is passed

President Suarez.

On 18 November 1976, Franco’s Cortes approved its dissolution by means of the Political Reform Law, one of the key steps in the Spanish Transition. Its main architect was Torcuato Fernández Miranda, president of the Cortes and also of the Council of the Kingdom, who enjoyed the full confidence of King Juan Carlos I.

In 1976 the Franco regime was still in place, but the dictator was missing. Juan Carlos had received the inheritance and was head of state. However, the monarch was in favour of a total opening, a model that would rely on the crown from a parliamentary approach.

At that time the political forces were divided into three groups. There were the continuists, who were in favour of maintaining the essentials of the Fundamental Principles of the Movement, the reformists, who wanted to initiate an opening-up process based on the legality of the regime, and the rupturists, who advocated dissolving the legality, consulting the people and electing a Constituent Cortes.

The debate boiled down to the reform or rupture binomial, and the solution was a reform with the final result of rupture. The legal instrument that Torcuato Fernández Miranda devised to bring about the change was the Law for Political Reform, and with its approval, according to comments of the time, Franco’s Cortes was doing the hara-kiri. What the law provided for was to call elections and set up a new Cortes. It was given the status of a Fundamental Law, although in practice it rendered the other seven laws worthless. The Cortes approved the text with 435 votes in favour, 59 against and 13 abstentions, and in the subsequent referendum the Yes vote won 94 percent of the votes. Fernández Miranda had achieved his goal, to pass “from law to law” without dealing with reforms or ruptures.

Diario 16 cover of the day.

The reform had been executed with the utmost cleanliness, but was open to criticism. The democratic opposition and the so-called bunker of Francoism coincided in pointing out that the people had not been consulted on the model of state they preferred: monarchy, republic, organic democracy… receiving a reform that had been completed in its essential structure. The point is undoubtedly valid, although it is difficult to say how the society of the time, so accustomed to Franco’s paternalism, would have dealt with such a responsibility.

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