page_title: Electoral Carlism (Restoration)
section_title: Success factors
hierarchical_section_title: Electoral Carlism (Restoration) / Success factors
caption_attribution_description: Español: Diputados tradicionalistas con Beatriz de Borbón
context_page_description: Electoral Carlism of Restoration was vital to sustain Traditionalism in the period between the Third Carlist War and the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. Carlism, defeated in 1876, during the Restauración period recalibrated its focus from military action to political means and media campaigns. Accommodating themselves to political framework of the Alfonsine monarchy, the movement leaders considered elections, and especially elections to Congreso de los Diputados, primary vehicle of political mobilization. Though Carlist minority in the Cortes remained marginal and its impact on national politics was negligible, electoral campaigns were key to sustain the party until it regained momentum during the Second Spanish Republic.
context_section_description: Many students striving to analyze the Carlist popularity (or lack of thereof) point to socio-economic conditions, though conclusions offered by scholars from this school could be contradictory. The prevailing opinion holds that the movement flourished in rural areas with large commons and dominated by middle-size holdings, at least self-sustainable but usually able to enter the market exchange. This type of units provided economic grounds for peasant owners, the social base of Carlism, and was frequent in the Northern belt of Spain. Whenever this social group was giving way to peasant owners of small, non-sustainable plots, landless peasants, tenants or jornaleros, the rural workers – like was the case in New Castile or Andalusia, home to many Spanish landowners – Carlism was losing its base. In industrialized areas the ensuing social mobility was undermining traditional life patterns and undercutting the Carlist popularity. Rapidly growing urban proletariat, though not entirely immune to Carlist propaganda, tended to embrace anarchism and socialism instead.
  Another group of determinants listed is related to culture and religion. It is noted that Carlism was strongly linked to religiosity, most fervent in the Northern provinces; destitute peasant masses in Extremadura, Andalusia or New Castile have largely ceased to be Catholic. Population groups demonstrating religious apathy or outward hostility, like socially mobile middle-class professionals dominating culturally and politically in urban communities during the early Restauración, are held responsible for trailing Carlist popularity in the cities. In the 20th century it was the class of industrial workers which became liable for growing secularization of large metropolitan areas and the Carlist lack of appeal in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Málaga, Zaragoza or Bilbao. The ensuing Carlist anti-urbanism should not be applied universally, though; some scholars note that in parts of Spain like Galicia the movement was absent in rural areas and remained sustained only in middle-size cities, like this of Ourense.
  Scholars focusing on Carlism and regional movements agree that until some point the two sustained each other. The discussion is mostly about whether they started to part when regional identities gave way to ethnic threads or even later, when conscious ethnic communities embraced national and political claims. It is also not clear why the interaction was material in some regions, while in the other – like Galicia – it remained marginal. Carlist historiography of the last decades seems marked by increasing skepticism towards socio-economic conditions being put on the forefront, now suspected of schematic Darwinism and oversimplifications. One reviewer underlines emergence of “nueva historia política”, backed by focus on family interaction patterns, collective mentality, religious and moral values, anthropological factors like customs and other elements described as “microsystems of daily life”. Another notes an apparent return of political analysis as a primary investigation key. One more prefers to analyse semiotics of culture discourse as key to understanding of Carlist popularity - also in terms of electoral efforts - among the underpriviledged.
caption: Carlist members of Parliament with Doña Beatriz, Don Jaime's sister, 1918
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