Historia y Política

From the Oriamendi to the March of don Carlos: Music and hymns in the construction of the Carlist political universe

José Luis Agudín Menéndez — 2025-06-24

In the increasingly numerous works on Carlist political culture, a specific treatment of the role played by music in its construction is missing. It has been highlighted that the making of hymns served to boost morale among the militias supporting Charles V and his successors during the discontinuous civil conflicts of the nineteenth century. The purpose of this article is, on the one hand, to delve into the different musical manifestations in the repertoire of Carlist collective action beyond the warlike attitudes, that is, in the conquest of the public space experienced in the period that includes the Six-year Democratic and the outbreak of the Civil War, marked by the appropriation of modern tools by Carlism. In this sense, it is convenient to address the musical evenings and the formation of choirs in the spaces of Carlist and Integrist sociability and the confrontations between the counterrevolutionaries and the Republicans, with music appearing in the middle. On the other hand, this study intends to analyze, starting from an interdisciplinary methodological conjunction, a sample of the large scores and hymns that the traditionalists have been compiling in compendia that came to light since the Civil War, highlighting scores of the famous Oriamendi, the March of don Carlos or the Hymn of the margaritas. In all of them it is worth highlighting the significance that the figure of the king-pretender acquired in the context of progressive erosion of legitimism.

Limits to capital flight in the midst of Francoism: Private business and political benevolence in the Rivara Case (1957-1959)

Enrique Faes Díaz — 2025-06-24

This paper aims to contribute to delimiting the scope of tax fraud in Spain, manifested in capital flight, just on the eve of the full insertion of the Franco dictatorship in the main Western economic organizations. The central source of the investigation is the judicial summary of the so-called Rivara Case, a financial scandal that culminated in the prosecution of more than 500 people who hoarded foreign currency and securities in Switzerland, out of control of the Spanish Institute of Foreign Currency. Through the analysis of the files that generated fines of more than one million pesetas in the first instance, the alleged justifications are explored, a preliminary map of the business sectors involved is drawn, and the tensions between different actors of Francoist State (policemen, judges, economical managers) are observed until the case is channeled under criteria of political «benevolence». The main conclusion is the generalized disconnection, around 1959, between Spanish businessmen and its fiscal duties concerning foreign currency and securities ownership. The context of this behavior was conditioned by discredit and inefficiency of the Francoist taxation, a historically weak tax compliance culture, and transnational interconnections that provided a clandestine route to financial resources or profit Historia y Política, avance en línea (2025), pp. 1-31 that was nevertheless socially accepted. Additional conclusions are Police effectiveness in fraud investigation, particularly in Barcelona, and the procedural diseconomies of the Francoist Justice for monetary matters.

The Steles of the Constitution: Rituality, public space and iconoclasm in Hispanic liberalism (1812-1874)

Ignacio García de Paso — 2025-06-24

During the period between the proclamation of the Cadiz Constitution and the end of the Democratic Sexennium, the so-called constitutional steles constituted the main monumental symbol and political object of the new liberal order. Such steles generally consisted of a plaque made of stone or marble, and their presence signaled the attachment of a specific town or city to the Constitution. In a process that started during the 1820 revolutionary cycle, the steles of the constitution became also the main target of those who intended to subvert the liberal order. They did so through an iconoclast repertoire that challenged such order through the physical destruction of the steles themselves. This paper approaches this double process of sacralization and iconoclasm. Its main goal is to understand the role of the stele in the politicization processes during the construction of the liberal order. To achieve this, this paper will use a wide range of examples taken from leaflets, newspapers, chronicles and secondary literature. These examples will be considered through the most recent scholarship on iconoclasm as a political phenomenon. The constitutional stele constitutes an excellent observatory from which to trace issues that include (counter)revolutionary festivals, rituality, symbolism, and the repertoires of collective action of the different political cultures in dispute during the period.

«Ganarse el pan francés». Employment policies and labour strategies of the Spanish women in exile in France (1936-1940)

Rocío Negrete Peña — 2025-06-24

Republican exiles to France faced the challenges inherent to all types of migration, such as finding remunerated work. This was one of the main objectives of the French administration as a counterpart to the asylum right. Despite the social, political and gender prejudices towards this foreign labour force, Spanish women also joined the ranks of workers in the context of the last years of the Third French Republic. Their labour insertion in sectors such as agriculture, domestic service or war industry would allow them to occupy a place in the management policies of the Republican exile, proving they were worthy of remaining in the country. Thus, if work facilitated their material installation, on a psychological level it also meant a reaffirmation of their capacity of agency and their construction of their identity as exiles, but also as workers.

From ancient regimen wars to total wars in xix century through the Spanish case (1793-1840)

Daniel Aquillué Domínguez — 2025-06-24

Between 1792 and 1815 there was a shift in the way warfare was conducted and perceived in Europe, away from the conventions of eighteenth-century warfare to what has been characterised as total war. This article analyses these changes through the Spanish case, with the Convention War, the Peninsular War and, mainly the Carlist War. First, it reflects on the concept of total war subject to historiographical debate, focusing on some of its features and pointing out not only quantitative issues but also the perception of contemporaries. It then goes on to argue that the first war was an eighteenth-century conflict, the second an international total war and the last one a civil total war. Finally, an interpretation is put forward that the new dynamics of warfare shifted from international conflicts to civilian ones, thanks to a mobilised, politicised and armed population that had lived through various experiences.

Carlist children in 1936: Inside a culture de guerre?

Francisco Javier Caspistegui Gorasurreta — 2025-06-24

In the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, the growing perception of childhood as a defined social sector, with its own characteristics and needs, made it the target of different political parties and ideologies. An example of this was Carlism in Spain, which began the political socialization of children in the early years of the 20th century. It counted on a past that served as a legitimizing element and provided the framework in which to insert the children. When the civil war of 1936 broke out, the carlist organization of infancy had experience for their mobilization and a structure, the Pelayos, which allowed the boys (not the girls) to fit into the heart of a war culture of their own, thus favoring the mobilization of its members within the total war effort and through heroic models widely disseminated through various mechanisms within the children’s group, such as indoctrination and military activities or the distribution of publications, among which the Pelayos magazine stood out. The escape and incorporation of adolescents to the tercios de requetés showed this mobilizing capacity and attachment to the Carlist war culture.

Presentación

Ester García Moscardó — 2025-06-24

Presentación

Cantonalists without a canton in Northern Spain: The republican insurrectional culture in Asturias

Sergio Sánchez Collantes — 2025-06-24

The objective of this paper is to trace the expressions of intransigent federalism in Asturias, inscribing them in a discursive and insurrectional sequence that culminated in the First Republic with the cantonal revolution. The need to include the northern regions in the map of republican insurrectionalism is defended, since it was a polycentric phenomenon despite the different scope and projection of the attempts. For the period of 1873-1874, specifically, it is proposed to differentiate between a cantonalism in power and a cantonalism without a canton, which could respond to what was observed in Asturias, where a guerrilla faction was raised in 1874 that official sources called «cantonal» without any autonomous municipal power being established. In this sense, the paper also tries to weigh the reasons why an Asturian Canton was not proclaimed in the terms in which it was done in other places in Spain. From various discursive testimonies, it is highlighted that there was talk of «cantons» in the federal building that was conceived by certain sectors of Asturian republicanism, and it is considered that this thought cannot be separated from a singularly active insurrectional tradition that It reiterated —even in part— procedure, objectives, leadership and social bases at least since October 1869. Along with the indispensable newspaper sources, letters from the archival collection of José Posada Herrera, books of municipal government agreements and other complementary documentation have been handled.

«Advanced sentinel of the European federation». Transnational revolutionary expectations in the Spanish First Republic

Ester García Moscardó — 2025-06-24

This text deals with an interpretative re-dimensioning of the Spanish First Republic’s establishment from a perspective concerned with its transnational implications. The expectations of democratic realisation of supranational scope that the event aroused among European republicans allowed us to destabilise the strict national meaning of the failed process of the republic’s consolidation. At the same time, they reveal the horizon of political possibilities opened up by the democratic imaginary in 1873 concerning the different revolutionary geographies elaborated since the mid-nineteenth century within the framework of the republican cultural tradition. Based on a contextualised analysis of the European and Spanish democratic press of the time, complemented by diplomatic sources, I argue that, after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the Republicans interpreted the proclamation of the First Republic in Spain as the last hope for democracy in Europe. This interpretation was specifically popular among republicans in south-western Europe, who were indebted to a long revolutionary tradition of sovereignty which, in the political and cultural context of 1873, nurtured the ideal of the federation of Latin peoples as the first step towards the future realisation of the United States of Europe. From this perspective, the triumph and consolidation of the Spanish federation coul be seen as a fundamental achievement for a new European order that would counteract the monarchical and militarist hegemony of the northern powers.

Republicanisms and Peninsular Republics: From Failure to Victory of the Republican Idea in the Iberian Context (1880-1914)

Teresa Nunes — 2025-06-24

How did the Spanish First Republic influence the Portuguese Republican movement and, consequently the process of institutionalization of the political party which overthrew the monarchical regime on October 1910? Not less relevant, what were the repercussions of the Spanish republican experience in the constitution of an ideological corpus according to the republican ideals in the Portuguese context, as well as the respective evolution from the 80s of the 19th century until the advent of the Great War? Such constitute the axial issues of the developed analysis, based on the critical and contextualized approaches of the historical representations and narratives conceived by Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso (1851-1910) and Victor Ribeiro (1862-1930) in 1887 and 1912, respectively. Substantiated through a qualitative methodological perspective, applied to primary sources, complemented by the confrontation with the critical readings of documental backgrounds relevant to the study of Portuguese republicanism, this approach seeks an analytical diversification of the topic in question. Emphasizing the considerable historiographical work, produced on the relations between the Iberian republican movements, it is intended to expand this effort through the use of republican historical representation and discourse, as well as their projection in differentiated and decisive contexts for the affirmation of republicanism in Portugal. In particular, our perspective addresses the contributions of the Spanish experience to the internal debate on the nature of the regime and the correlation established between the endogenous internal rupture and the emergence of a European pan-Latin entente.

Rebel loyalties: Afro-Cuban women and colonial war in the first Spanish republic, 1873-1874

Carla Andrés Bauzá — 2025-06-24

The First Spanish Republic (1873-1874) took place during the Ten Years’ War in Cuba (1868-1878). This paper examines through military and colonial sources how Afro-Cuban women participated in the insurgency and contributed to their strengthening during the First Spanish Republic. Gender, and a common experience of enslavement and resistance practices, played a key role in insurgent tactics such as mass desertions from Spanish military camps. Republicanism in the Spanish metropole advocated for the abolition of slavery and political and civil rights for free Afro-descendants but did not implement their reformist policies in Cuba. Afro-Cuban women participating in the insurgent communities, which were based on kinship relations, experienced republican colonialism as an extension of the slave system and racism. By focusing on gender and race in the context of the colonial war and republican policies, it is possible to observe a more complex dimension of the colonial relationship and the revolutionary (anti)colonial processes during the First Spanish Republic.

Francisca Moya Alcañiz: Que vuestro nombre no se olvide. Mujeres condenadas a muerte en los consejos de guerra franquistas (1936-1945), Granada, Comares, 2023, 243 págs

Adriana Cases Sola — 2025-06-24

Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón: Historia de las izquierdas en España, Madrid, Catarata, 2022, 510 págs. /Antonio Rivera: Historia de las derechas en España, Madrid, Los libros de la Catarata, 2022, 555 págs.

Enrique Maestu Fonseca — 2025-06-24

David Jiménez Torres: La palabra ambigua. Los intelectuales en España (1889-2019), Madrid, Taurus, 2023, 284 págs.

Maximiliano Fuentes Codera — 2025-06-24

Francisco Jiménez Aguilar: Masculinidades en vertical. Género, nación y trabajo en el primer franquismo, València, Universitat de València, 2023, 323 págs.

Elia Blanco Rodríguez — 2025-06-24

Juan Pro, Hugo García y Emilio J. Gallardo-Saborido: Utopías hispanas. Historia y antología, Granada, Comares, 2022, 508 págs.

Marisa González de Oleaga — 2025-06-24

José María Cardesín Díaz (dir.): Revuelta popular y violencia colectiva en la guerra de la Independencia, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2024, 346 págs.

Rafael Serrano García — 2025-06-24

Mónica Moreno Seco (coord.): Desafiar los límites. Mujeres y compromiso entre lo público y lo privado en el siglo xx, Granada, Editorial Comares, 2023, 256 págs.

Miguel Díaz Sánchez — 2025-06-24

Natalia Núñez Bargueño: Fe, modernidad y política. Los congresos eucarísticos internacionales. Madrid, 1911-Barcelona, 1952, Granada, Comares, 2024, 408 págs.

Alejandro Camino Rodríguez — 2025-06-24