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Spain The Cuban Disaster and the "Generation of 1898"
Emigration to Cuba from Spain was heavy in the
nineteenth
century, and the Cuban middle class, which had close ties
to the
mother country, favored keeping Cuba Spanish. Cuba had
experienced periodic uprisings by independence movements
since
1868. Successive governments in Madrid were committed to
maintaining whatever armed forces were necessary to combat
insurgency. Hostilities broke out again in 1895. The
United
States clandestinely supported these hostilities, which
required
Spain to send substantial reinforcements under General
Valerio
Weyler. Reports of Weyler's suppression of the
independence
movement, and the mysterious explosion of the battleship
U.S.S.
Maine in Havana harbor, stirred public opinion in
the
United States and led to a declaration of war by the
United
States in April 1898. The United States destroyed
antiquated
Spanish naval units at Santiago de Cuba and in Manila Bay.
Despite a pledge by Madrid to defend Cuba "to the last
peseta,"
the Spanish army surrendered after a few weeks of
hostilities
against an American expeditionary force. In Paris that
September,
Spain gave up Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
The suddenness and the totality of Spain's defeat as
well as
the country's realization of its lack of European support
during
the war with the United States (only Germany had offered
diplomatic backing) threw Spain into despair. The disaster
called
forth an intellectual reevaluation of Spain's position in
the
world by the so-called "Generation of 1898," who
confronted
Spaniards with the propositions that Spain had long since
ceased
to be a country of consequence, that its society was
archaic, and
that its institutions were outworn and incapable of moving
into
the twentieth century. These words were painful for the
proud
nation.
The traumatic events of 1898 and the inability of the
government to deal with them prompted political
reevaluation. A
plethora of new, often short-lived, personalist parties
and
regional groups on both the left and the right (that broke
the
hegemony of the two-party system and ultimately left the
parliamentary structure in disarray) sought solutions to
the
country's problems. By 1915 it was virtually impossible to
form a
coalition government that could command the support of a
parliamentary majority.
Some politicians on the right, like the conservative,
Antonio
Maura, argued for a return to traditional
authoritarianism, and
they blamed the parliamentary regimes (kept in power by
caciques) for corrupting the country. Maura failed
in his
attempt to form a national Catholic party, but he inspired
a
number of right-wing groups with his political philosophy.
Regionalist movements were organized to free
progressive
Catalonia, the Basque areas, and Galicia from the
"Castilian
corpse." Whether on the left or on the right, residents of
these
regions stressed their distinct character and history. An
electoral coalition of Catalan parties regularly sent
strong
parliamentary contingents to Madrid to barter their votes
for
concessions to Catalonian regionalism.
Alejandro Lerroux was an effective, but demagogical,
political organizer who took his Liberal splinter group
into the
antimonarchist camp. He formed the Radical Republicans on
a
national, middle-class base that frequently allied itself
with
the Catalans.
The democratic, Marxist-oriented Spanish Socialist
Workers'
Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol--PSOE), founded
in 1879,
grew rapidly in the north, especially in Asturias, where a
trade
union, the General Union of Workers (Union General de
Trabajadores--UGT), had most effectively organized the
working
class.
The Federation of Iberian Anarchists (Federacion
Anarquista
Iberica) was well organized in Catalonia and Andalusia and
had
many members, but in keeping with anarchist philosophy,
they
remained aloof from participation in the electoral
process. Their
abstention, however, had a telling effect. They practiced
terrorism, and the anarchist trade union, the National
Confederation of Labor (Confederacion Nacional del
Trabajo--CNT),
was able on several occasions to shut down Barcelona. The
aim of
the anarchists was not to take control of the government,
but to
make government impossible.
Data as of December 1988
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