Political system of the Restoration (Spain)

The political system of the Restoration was the system in force in Spain during the period of the Restoration, between the promulgation of the Constitution of 1876 and the coup d’état of 1923 that established the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Its form of government was that of a constitutional monarchy, but it was neither democratic nor parliamentary, "although it was far from the one-party exclusivism of the Isabelline era." The regime "was defined as liberal by its supporters and as oligarchic by its detractors, particularly the regenerationists. Its theoretical foundations are found in the principles of doctrinaire liberalism," emphasizes Ramón Villares.

The political regime of the Restoration was implemented during the brief reign of Alfonso XII (1874-1885), which constituted "a new starting point for the liberal regime in Spain."

Its main characteristic was the gap between, on the one hand, the Constitution and the laws that accompanied it and, on the other, the actual functioning of the system. On the surface, it appeared to be a parliamentary regime, similar to the British model, in which the two major parties, Conservative and Liberal, alternated in government based on electoral results that determined parliamentary majorities, where the Crown played a representative role and had only symbolic power. In Spain, however, it was not the citizens with voting rights—men over the age of 25 as of 1890—who decided, but rather the Crown, "advised" by the ruling elite, which determined the alternation (the so-called turno) between the two major parties, Conservative and Liberal. Once the decree for the dissolution of the Cortes was obtained—a power exclusive to the Crown—the newly appointed Prime Minister would call elections to "manufacture" a comfortable parliamentary majority through systematic electoral fraud, using the network of caciques (local political bosses) deployed throughout the country. Thus, following this method of gaining power, which "disrupted the logic of parliamentary practice," governments were formed before elections rather than as a result of them, and election results were often even published in advance in the press. As noted by Carmelo Romero Salvador, under the Restoration, "corruption and electoral fraud were not occasional anecdotes or isolated outgrowths of the system, but [resided] in its very essence, in its very being." This was already observed by contemporary foreign observers. The British ambassador reported to his government in 1895: "In Spain, elections are manipulated by the government; and for this reason, parliamentary majorities are not as decisive a factor as elsewhere."

In 1902, the regenerationist Joaquín Costa described "the current form of government in Spain" in terms of "oligarchy and caciquism," a characterization that was later adopted by much of the historiography on the Restoration.

The historian José Varela Ortega highlights that the "stability of the liberal regime," the "greatest achievement of the Restoration," was obtained through a conservative solution that did not disrupt "the political and social status quo" and that tolerated an "organized caciquism." The politicians of the Restoration "did not want to, did not dare to, or could not break the entire system by mobilizing public opinion," so that "the electorate found itself excluded as an instrument of political change, and the Crown took its place" as the arbiter of power alternations. This meant abandoning the progressive tradition of national sovereignty (the electorate as the arbiter of change) in favor of placing sovereignty in "the Cortes alongside the King." However, by opting for a conservative rather than a democratic solution, the politicians of the Restoration "tied the fate of the monarchy to parties that did not depend on public opinion," which had profound long-term implications for the monarchy.