Partidas realistas

The partidas realistas (Spanish for royalist militias) were groups of absolutist guerrilla fighters that emerged in Spain during the Liberal Triennium (1820–1823). Their goal was to overthrow the constitutional regime established after the Revolution of 1820 and restore the absolute power of King Ferdinand VII. These militias served as the armed wing of the counter-revolution, a broad movement encompassing the political strategies of reactionary elites aimed at dismantling the revolution and suppressing liberalism. The counter-revolution began the moment Ferdinand VII reluctantly swore allegiance to the Spanish Constitution of 1812 on March 9, 1820. Despite his oath, the king never accepted the constitutional system and immediately began conspiring against it, leading the movement with the complicity of court members and senior state officials who also opposed liberalism. As the Marquis de las Amarillas noted in his memoirs, "None [of the ministers] could ignore that the King secretly protected uprisings against the Constitution he had been forced to swear to uphold."

While the first partidas appeared in 1820, their numbers increased from the spring of 1821 and peaked in 1822, sparking a full-scale civil war—known as the Royalist War—in Catalonia, Navarre, and the Basque Country. Initially defeated by constitutionalist forces, the royalists were forced to flee to France or Portugal. However, the French-led expedition of 1823, bolstered by reorganized Spanish royalist troops from exile and surviving militias, marked the triumph of the counter-revolution. Ferdinand VII was freed from what royalists called his "captivity," the constitutional regime was abolished, and absolutism was restored, ushering in the so-called Ominous Decade.