Alfonso XIII became King of Spain at the moment of his birth in May 1886 because his father, Alfonso XII, had died five months earlier. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was regent until May 1902, when he turned sixteen and took the oath of office under the Constitution of 1876, when he began his personal reign, which lasted until 14 April 1931, when he had to go into exile after the proclamation of the Second Republic.
Stages The reign is usually divided into several stages:
The regency of Maria Christina of Austria (1885–1902) was "a particularly significant period in the history of Spain, for in those years at the end of the century the system knew its stabilisation, the development of liberal policies, but also the appearance of major fissures that in the international arena were expressed first with the colonial war and later with the US, causing the military and diplomatic defeat that led to the loss of the colonies after the Treaty of Paris in 1898. On the domestic front, Spanish society underwent a considerable mutation, with the emergence of such significant political realities as the emergence of n, the strengthening of a workers' movement with dual socialist and anarchist affiliation, and the continued persistence, albeit declining, of the Republican and Carlist oppositions. The constitutional period (1902–1923) was the period of his personal reign during which King Alfonso XIII kept to the role conferred on him by the 1876 Constitution which governed during the Bourbon Restoration in Spain, although he did not limit himself to playing a symbolic role but actively intervened in political life, especially in military matters, thanks to the relatively broad powers held by the Crown. The political king, the politician on the throne, was thus an obstacle to the transformation of the political regime of the Restoration into a parliamentary monarchy, and his intervention "became more marked at times when the parties (of the time) showed little internal cohesion and opinion did not opt for a leader in a clear way. In those circumstances, the monarch's decision to hand over power to one or another political leader constituted a decisive participation in the internal politics of the parties'. The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930) was the second period of Alfonso XIII's personal reign in which the king did not oppose Primo de Rivera's coup d'état, bringing the liberal regime to an end. In this way, Alfonso XIII linked his fate to that of the Dictatorship, so that when Primo de Rivera failed in his attempt to establish an authoritarian regime and resigned in January 1930, the monarchy itself was called into question. General Berenguer's dictablanda (1930–1931) was unable to prevent the growth of the republican option, which led to the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, and Alfonso XIII was forced to go into exile. As historian Manuel Suárez Cortina has pointed out, "in the years that he was at the helm of state affairs, Alfonso XIII was able to observe a notable change in Spanish society: the consolidation of an autonomous workers' movement, the affirmation of regionalism and peripheral nationalism, the formation of an economic system with markedly protectionist features and various attempts to modernise the political system, which seemed unfeasible from the middle of the second half of the century". According to historian Javier Moreno Luzón, the changes that took place during his reign "provoked very serious social and political conflicts.... Spain did not resemble Great Britain, but neither did it resemble an African colony; it was closer to Italy and other second-tier European states which, at the beginning of the 20th century, were entering into complex mass politics".
Regency of Maria Christina of Habsburg (1885–1902)
"Pact of El Pardo" and Sagasta's "Long Parliament" (1885–1890)
King Alfonso XII died on 25 November 1885 of tuberculosis, and his wife María Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena took over the regency. The death of the king, with no male offspring —Alfonso and María Cristina, who had married on 29 November 1879, had had two daughters— and with a third child to be born, as the queen was three months pregnant, created great uncertainty about the future of the Restoration regime, which had only ten years to live, as the supposed "power vacuum" could be exploited by the Carlists or the Republicans to put an end to it. In fact, in September 1886, just four months after the birth of the future Alfonso XIII, a republican uprising led by General Manuel Villacampa del Castillo and organised from exile by Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla was the last military attempt by the republicans, the failure of which deeply affected it.
The leaders of the two parties of the time, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo for the Conservative Party and Práxedes Mateo Sagasta for the Liberal-Fusionist Party, met to agree on the replacement of the former by the latter at the head of the government. This was known as the "Pardo Pact", because although in reality the meeting of the party leaders took place at the seat of the Presidency of the Government and not at the Palacio del Pardo, the term is justified because the last residence of Alfonso XII was of decisive importance. It was there that the Restoration General, Martínez Campos, who arrived an hour after the Regent, was summoned, and who already had a solution to the crisis, following his many meetings since the start of the King's illness: two with Cánovas, who requested it, with Sagasta, with Generals Jovellar, Concha and Quesada, in a previous "military pact"; in fact Cánovas himself confessed that it was Martínez Campos' support that had led him to accept the liberal government. Many meetings and agreements were held at El Pardo; all the ministers and Sagasta arrived there; the most representative generals arrived there; the Nuncio was spoken to in order to facilitate the "pact" with the Church. Martínez Campos and the "other" pacts of El Pardo. This made possible the "benevolence" of the conservatives towards Sagasta's new liberal government so that it could develop the programme that had just been agreed by the various factions that made it up, known as the Law of Guarantees, which consisted essentially of introducing the freedoms and rights recognised during the democratic Sexenio —the pact included the definitive acceptance by the liberals of the 1876 Constitution and the shared sovereignty of the king and the Courts, on which the Constitution was based—. However, the faction of the Conservative Party headed by Francisco Romero Robledo did not accept the cession of power to Sagasta and left the party to form its own, called the Liberal-Reformist Party, which was joined by José López Domínguez's Izquierda Dinástica, in an attempt to create an intermediate political space between the two parties of the time.
In April 1886, five months after forming the government and one month before the birth of the future Alfonso XIII, the liberals called elections to gain a solid majority in the Courts and thus be able to develop their government programme, although they had already been able to begin to implement it thanks to the benevolence of the conservatives. This period was known as the Long Government of Sagasta or the Long Parliament because of its duration, almost five years, during which "a series of reforms were carried out that definitively shaped the social and political profile of the Restoration as a historical epoch", which is why some historians have considered it the "most fruitful period" of the Restoration. The first major reform of Sagasta's Long government was the approval in June 1887 of the Law of Associations, which regulated freedom of association for the purposes of "human freedom" and allowed workers' organisations to operate legally, as it included trade union freedom, which gave a great boost to the workers' movement in Spain. Under the protection of the new law, the anarcho-syndicalist FTRE, founded in 1881 as the successor to the FRE-AIT of the Sexenio Democrático, spread, and the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) was born, founded in 1888, the same year in which the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), which had been born underground nine years earlier, was able to hold its First Congress.
The second major reform was the law of the jury, an old demand of progressive liberalism that had always been resisted by conservatism, and which was approved in April 1888. Trial by jury was established for those crimes that had the greatest impact on the maintenance of social order or that affected individual rights, such as freedom of the press. According to the law, the jury would be in charge of establishing the proven facts, while the legal qualification of the facts would be the responsibility of the judges.
The third major reform was the introduction of universal (male) suffrage by a law passed on 30 June 1890. This satisfied a long-standing demand of the liberal and democratic left and was a "political event". However, the extension of suffrage to all men over the age of twenty-five —some five million in 1890— regardless of their income, as was the case with census suffrage, did not democratise the political system, because electoral fraud continued, only now the cacique networks were extended to the population as a whole, so that governments continued to be formed before the elections, and not after, since the government of the turn was able to build up a solid majority in the Courts with the encasillado —during the Restoration, no government ever lost an election—. Thus, "although formally it amounted to the establishment of democracy, [the approval of universal (male) suffrage] in practical terms made no difference". Moreover, the Constitution was not reformed, so that the principle of national sovereignty was still not recognised, and only one third of the Senate was elected, nor was freedom of religion, another of the principles of a democratic system, recognised.
On the other hand, proof that the aim of the law was not to establish democracy lies in the fact that no guarantees were adopted to ensure the transparency of suffrage and thus prevent electoral fraud, such as the updating of the census by an independent body, the requirement of accreditation for the person who was going to vote or the control of the whole process, which remained in the hands of the Minister of the Interior, known as the "great elector", as it was he who ensured that his government had a large majority in the Courts. "The fact that in some urban centres the opposition was able to reverse this reality is almost a testimonial fact. Political control from above, the practice of the turn by means of electoral fraud, is what constitutes the essence of political practices in Spain at the end of the century", concludes Manuel Suárez Cortina.
Stabilisation of the political regime of the Restoration (1890–1895) The first half of the last decade of the 19th century was the period of "fullness" of the political regime of the Restoration established by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo after the Democratic Sexenio. After these five years of relative stability, during which the shift between conservatives and liberals was normalised, the regime had to face "several problems that were not on its political agenda: the workers' problem, the crystallisation of a peripheral nationalism and, finally, the colonial question itself, which led first to the Cuban War of Independence and then to the Spanish-American war, the defeat that marked the final crisis of the century".
Conservative government of Cánovas del Castillo (1890–1892)