page_title: History of Málaga
section_title: Economic expansion and industrialisation (1833–1868)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Málaga / 19th century / Economic expansion and industrialisation (1833–1868)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Retrato de la reina Isabel II de España (1830-1904), que fue la hija y heredera del rey Fernando VII y la madre de Alfonso XII.
context_page_description: The history of Málaga, shaped by the city's location in southern Spain on the western shore of the Mediterranean Sea, spans about 2,800 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. The first inhabitants to settle the site may have been the Bastetani, an ancient Iberian tribe. The Phoenicians founded their colony of Malaka about 770 BC. From the 6th century BC, it was under the hegemony of Carthage in present-day Tunisia. From 218 BC, Malaca was ruled by the Roman Republic; it was federated with the Roman Empire at the end of the 1st century during the reign of Domitian. Thereafter it was governed under its own municipal code, the Lex Flavia Malacitana, which granted free-born persons the privileges of Roman citizenship.
  The decline of the Roman imperial power in the 5th century led to invasions of Hispania Baetica by Germanic peoples, who were opposed by the Byzantine Empire. In Visigothic Spain, the Byzantines took Malaca and other cities on the southeastern coast and founded the new province of Spania in 552.
context_section_description: The second half of the 19th century began a period of prosperity in Málaga, with an economy energised by the resumption of traditional mercantile activities and new industrial employment. This positioned the city as an important European manufacturing centre; urban renewal projects and the modernisation of local infrastructure were initiated by local government. Manuel Agustin Heredia's ironworks, La Constancia, located in San Andrés, started a run of productivity in 1834 that made it the country's leading iron foundry.
  Commerce grew significantly as the city attracted business entrepreneurs, and powerful families rose from the merchant class, some gaining influence in national politics. Notable among them were the Larios and the Lorings, the conservative politician Canovas del Castillo, the industrialist Manuel Agustin Heredia, and the Marquis of Salamanca.
  From 1834 to 1843, in the period known as Spain's third bourgeois revolution, the country was ruled under the liberal government of the Progressive Party (Partido Progresista). After these years of progressivist domination, the Moderate Party (Partido Moderado) gained control. It held power continuously during the so-called Década moderada ("Moderate decade", 1843–1854) under the leadership of General Ramón María Narváez, the Duke of Valencia, using the executive office to advance its economic goals and maintain public order. The Moderates were to the right of the opposing Progressive Party, but also characterised themselves as liberal. Like the Progressives, they supported Isabel II against the claims of the Carlists.
  Isabella II of Spain took a more active role in government after she came of age, but she was unpopular throughout her reign. During the railway boom years of the early 1850s self-enrichment by senior Moderate politicians and members of the royal family was coming under mounting press criticism, a mood which would culminate in a fourth bourgeois revolutionary insurrection in the summer of 1854.  This uprising began in the spring of 1854 as an expression of dissatisfaction on the part of the people against the government.  The people were protesting the growing economic hardship under which they had been suffering.  On June 28, 1854, a military coup occurred in Madrid, led by General Domingo Dulce and General Leopoldo O'Donnell.  The coup overthrew the dictatorship of Luis Jose Sartorius, 1st Count of San Luis.  As a result of the popular insurrection, the Progressive Party obtained widespread support in Spain and came to power in the government in 1854. The Progressives were the party of the National Militia, the jury trial, laicism, and of national sovereignty and the broadening of the franchise under census suffrage. Although riots in December 1854 accompanied the demobilisation of Málaga's radical proletarian Militia companies,
  a new Progressive Town Council was elected and port and consumer levies were withdrawn, taxes that the lower classes, who supported the uprising, abhorred.
  The expanding economy in all sectors required an increased money supply and capitalisation apart from that offered by the professional moneylenders. In 1859, Jorge Loring founded the private Bank of Málaga, the first to issue currency under the national Act of 1856. The bank's business was based in the booming steel and textile industries, and in commerce of the port; it operated under the control of the leading businessmen of the province.
  In 1862, Queen Isabel II and her consort Francis de Assisi de Bourbon visited Málaga to mark the official opening of the Córdoba-Málaga railway, the Málaga railway station, and an exhibition of provincial agricultural and industrial products. The visit had a diplomatic purpose as well, serving as a means to repair political relations with Málaga in particular and Andalucia in general; that year there had been a bloody revolt in the Granadan town of Loja which had spread to some villages in Málaga province, with half of the detainees convicted of rebellion being Malagueños.
caption: Formal portrait of Queen Isabel II of Spain
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