page_title: Republicanism in Spain
section_title: Origins, the First Republic, and the Bourbon Restoration
hierarchical_section_title: Republicanism in Spain / History / Origins, the First Republic, and the Bourbon Restoration
caption_attribution_description: Español: Francisco Pi y Margall, presidente de la Primera República EspañolaEnglish: Francisco Pi y Margall, president of the First Spanish Republic
context_page_description: Republicanism in Spain is a political position and movement that holds that Spain should be a Republic.
  There has existed in Spain a persistent trend of republican thought, especially throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, that has manifested itself in diverse political parties and movements over the entire course of the history of Spain. While these movements have shared the objective of establishing a republic, during these three centuries there have surged distinct schools of thought on the form republicans would want to give to the Spanish State: unitary or federal.
  Despite the country's long-lasting schools of republican movements, the government of Spain has been organized as a republic during only two very short periods in its history, which totaled less than 10 years of republican government. The First Spanish Republic lasted from February 1873 to December 1874, and the Second Spanish Republic lasted from April 1931 to April 1939.
  Under the monarchical regime currently in force in Spain, there are movements and political parties throughout the entire political spectrum that advocate for a Third Spanish Republic.
context_section_description: The roots of Spanish republicanism arose out of liberal thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The first manifestations of republicanism occurred during the Peninsular War, in which Spain and nearby regions fought for independence from Napoleon, 1808–1814. During the reign of Ferdinand VII (1813–1833) there were several liberalist military pronunciamientos, but it was not until the reign of Isabella II (1833–1868) that the first clearly republican and anti-monarchist movements appeared.
  Federalist republicanism, emerged in the 1850s and 1860s, had a key figure in the person of Roque Barcia Martí.
  The Glorious Revolution of 1868 overthrew Isabella II, but the Cortes (Spanish parliament) elected in 1869 resulted in a majority of legislators belonging to the coalition between progressives, liberals and "cimbrian" democrats in favour of a liberal constitutional monarchy. A search for a new monarch among several European royal courts ensued and the Italian prince Amadeo I of Savoy was chosen. But Spain was in a period of profound instability: Legitimist monarchist Carlists (reactionaries and staunch defenders of the Ancien régime) had  launched another war against the country's progressive direction; there was colonial unrest in Spanish Cuba via the Ten Years' War; and the moderate-liberal monarchy was met with stiff opposition from all sides, by republicans to its left, and from its right by a large part of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church; thus King Amadeo abdicated on 11 February 1873.
  On that same day in 1873, the Cortes proclaimed the First Spanish Republic.
  However, the Republic fell victim to the same instabilities provoked by the ongoing wars and the division amongst republicans. The majority of republicans were Federalists, and they therefore supported the formation of a federal democratic republic, but there was also a unitary republican current. Moreover, within the Federalists there was an intransigent pro-confederation sector that was infuriated and later quashed by the Cantonal Revolution of 1873. The complicated political situation is demonstrated by the fact that in just eleven months there were four presidents of the Republic: Estanislao Figueras, Francisco Pi y Margall, Nicolás Salmerón and Emilio Castelar.
  On 3 January 1874, General Manuel Pavía led a coup d'état that established a unitary republican dictatorship presided by Marshal Francisco Serrano. The regime was followed by a pronunciamiento on 29 December 1874 in Sagunto, in which Brigadier General Arsenio Martínez Campos proclaimed the need to restore the monarchy. Following the acceptance of the coup by the Captain General of Madrid, Fernando Primo de Rivera, a new government led by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was formed putting and end to the Republic, bringing the so-called Restoration and the ascension of Alfonso XII (son of Isabella II) to the throne.
  After being banished from the institutions, republicanism underwent a heap of troubles, with differences of approach becoming apparent between those followers of Pimargallian "pactist" federalism and those ready to jump into Castelar's possibilism in regard of the new conservative regime. Castelar led the Partido Demócrata—later the Partido Demócrata Posibilista (PDP) and Cristino Martos the Partido Progresista Demócrata. Nonetheless, these parties, immersed in a system of unequal censitary suffrage between 1878 and 1890, were unable to compete with the large dynastic parties: the Liberal-Conservative Party of Cánovas del Castillo and Liberal–Fusionist Party of Sagasta. Later Pi y Margall formed the Partido Republicano Democrático Federal (PRDF), Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla and José María Esquerdo created the Partido Republicano Progresista (PRP), and Nicolás Salmerón established the Partido Republicano Centralista (PRC). These parties contributed a diverse set of independent republican deputies to the Spanish parliament.
  Factions of the PDP and the PRP branched off and fused to form the Partido Republicano Nacional. In 1898 the Fusión Republicana was formed, and in 1903 the creation of the 
caption: Francisco Pi y Margall, leader of the federal republicans who vouched for a "pactist federal republic, the incorporation of the masses to politics and social reform".[2]
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