Maria Cristina's Regency and the Rise of Liberalism in Spain

The Regency of Maria Cristina

Upon the death of Ferdinand VII, the coronation of Elizabeth II was carried out. However, because she was a minor, her mother, Maria Cristina, exercised the regency. This period coincided with the start of the First Carlist War, leading the regent to seek support from the Liberals to maintain the future Queen Elizabeth II on the throne. To this end, she moved away from absolutism, although the ruler's idea was to carry out some administrative changes while essentially leaving the political system unchanged. She appointed Cea Bermudez, a moderate absolutist, as prime minister. His most notable work was carried out by Javier de Burgos, which involved the division of Spain into 49 provinces in 1833, placing a civil governor at the front of each.

These reforms did not seem sufficient to the most progressive Liberals. This pressure determined the removal of Cea Bermudez and his replacement by Martinez de la Rosa. Martinez de la Rosa's idea was to support a transition negotiated by the political, military, and economic elites to prevent the collapse of the system. A compromise was sought between the past absolutist monarchy and the new moderate liberalism. The result of this commitment was the publication of the Royal Charter of 1834, which called on the longer absolutist monarchy and opened the way for the installation of a liberal regime.

This action had the support of a moderate section of the Liberal Party, but not the so-called progressive Liberals. From that moment on, the unity of the Liberals was definitely fragmented between moderate Liberals and progressive Liberals. The limited political action to a sector that was liberal enough led to a revolutionary movement in 1835, in which these urban groups joined the National Militia, resulting in the emergence of Local and Provincial Revolutionary Boards whose demands were becoming more radical: they rejected the statute, requiring the notice of courts and a free press.

This, coupled with serious riots that spread throughout the country and involved the burning of convents and killings of monks, resulted in the termination of Martinez de la Rosa and his replacement by a strikingly progressive Liberal, as in the case of Juan Alvarez de Mendizabal. Mendizabal was appointed Head of Government and held the ministries of Finance, War, and Navy. According to Mendizabal's ideology, to consolidate the liberal regime, it was necessary to liquidate the system of feudal land ownership typical of the Old Regime. In order to complete the Carlist War, the necessary funds were needed to raise an army and, at the same time, to get this win to affirm the Elizabethan system. Within his extensive work of government, which even included the drafting of the 1837 Constitution, the most notable was the confiscation of church property, known that between 1835 and 1837, which affected not only the regular clergy but also the secular clergy.