The Normalization of Spanish-Central American Relations under the Diplomatic Action of Julio de Arellano y Arrospide, 1889-1895

Abstract

The Restoration regime’s Latin American policy in the last decades of the 19th century was conditioned by the false closure of the colonial crisis of 1868-1878. In order to avoid support to Cuban separatists by Latin American governments, the administrations of the period reformulated the nature of Spain’s geopolitical objectives in the region by renouncing the active interventionism of the second third of the century and, in turn, subordinating the interests of Spanish immigration and commerce to the maintenance of cordial relations with the region’s governments. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations with all of the American republics and the development of a conciliatory policy allowed Spain to resolve various pending issues of contention with some of these republics, while blocking the discussion of other discords until conditions were more favorable. As a result, Spanish diplomacy recurred increasingly to diplomats specialized in the Latin American region, such as Julio de Arellano y Arrospide, whose work between 1889 and 1895 at the head of the Spanish legation in Central America, is emblematic of Spanish diplomacy’s new directives and needs in Latin America.