Notizie di libri e cultura del Corriere della Sera
Conflicts
The long separatist dream
Even a Savoy in 1873 occupied the throne of Madrid
"The throne of Madrid is free. Who wants it? '. It's the end of 1868 and the Queen Isabella II made the suitcases. The new Cortes (the Spanish parliament) need a ruler.
The long search ends in Italy: Vittorio Emanuele II offers the crown to
his son Amedeo, which arrives at the end of 1871 on the Spanish coast.
The first ceremony to be attended by the new king which is an explicit
signal: the funeral of his main supporter, General Prim, the victim of
an attack by dark contours. The reign of Amadeo I takes a little over a year and with the resignation of rey Efimero ends the attempt to expand the Iberian House of Savoy, a very little known episode in Italy.
The Republic was founded in February 1873, with great ambitions for renewal.
A current notable new leader has progressive inspiration, inspired by
Francesc Pi i Margall, an intellectual who hopes incisive reforms. Even the Primera República has a troubled life, marked by bitter fighting between federalists radicals (cantonalisti) and Republicans centralists.
At the end of 1874, a military uprising restored on the throne of the
House of Bourbon, who lived there for many years, using all the means to
retain power.
In September 1923, the King Alfonso XIII pushes the General Miguel
Primo de Rivera in yet another coup to prevent Cortes officially aware
of its responsibilities in the last disastrous campaign in colonial
Morocco. One of the first measures of de Rivera, an admirer of fascism, is the deletion of limited self-government of Catalonia.
This has very important consequences for Spanish history in which the
role of the central region of Barcelona is from the point of view of
production and social entrepreneurs here and unions are clashing
violently.
The antiautonomismo dictator displaces the Lliga Catalana, an alliance
led by industrial regionalists, who for reasons of class had supported
the coup.
This training has lost a lot of supporters and disappointed Catalanist
popular is oriented to the left, giving life a few years later, the ERC
(Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya), the leading party of the regional
life until the Civil War. And back to the present day.
The local elections of April 1931 marked, with the success of the
socialists and republicans, the inglorious end of the reign of the
Bourbons: Alfonso XIII fled from Madrid.
It's the time of the Second Republic, a reformist and moderate
autonomist experiment, which places Spain among the countries most
socially advanced. Catalonia, a bastion of the left, gets the Statute of Autonomy in 1932.
In the elections of November 1933, the Left will have divided following
the outbreak of the agrarian question: on the one hand laborers and
small farmers, for about half of anarchists, calling for a radical
agrarian reform, while the government, albeit progressive, does not want
to challenge the landowners, allies of the Church and protected by the
army. Moreover, the military leadership had always been opposed to regionalism and had not digested the Catalan Statute. Mejor que rota roja a España ("Spain Better a red uniform"), they said. The same slogan was used to justify the coup of 18 July 1936 that opened the Civil War.
The Republic, despite the electoral legitimacy and international
recognition, is only interested in the support of the USSR in the
unequal battle with the military coup leaders and their allies
determinants fascists and Nazis.
On 1 April 1939 Francisco Franco declares ended military operations
which, in its forecast in July, 1936, would have lasted a few weeks.
But some resistance will continue for more than a decade and the
regime, between 1939 and 1945, fucilerà more than 100 thousand prisoners
and suspects.
As is known, in fact Franco does not restore the Bourbon monarchy, but
creates a personalistic system, hostile to each claim and popular
anti-centralist. During the Franco regime emerges in combative form, in the literal sense, widespread opposition in the Basque Country. Here, for a few months during the Civil War, he had seen the light of the Statute of Autonomy.
The armed struggle of ETA Basque separatist aspirations indicates that
they are, in the decades of dictatorship, is still living and
irreducible.
In Catalonia there are no conflicts comparable to that beret, but
continues to claim language and identity through the mesh of tough
uniformity imposed by the regime.
Franco in 1969, which designates the future King Alfonso XIII's
grandson, Juan Carlos, after having learned about the methods of
government.
In 1975, with the departure of the Caudillo, the young monarch is to
manage a country in turmoil and with veins revolutionary and republican.
The Colonel Tejero coup of February 1981 operetta less than it might
seem, it gives the opportunity to present to the king as the guarantor
of democracy: Juan Carlos, educated by the Franco regime, rejects him
officially.
Only in recent years, the House of Bourbon, in the center of well-known
scandals, it seems weakened by the loss of the general consensus of
where, according to opinion polls, he had enjoyed for decades. Certainly in the two regions where it is most entrenched the independence movement can be seen growing republican sympathies.
The progress of the Catalan separatist sentiment suggests that the
objectives anticentralisti you are merging with those anti-monarchist.
In the end, the same designation of the historic party of the ERC, now
growing strongly, is the intertwining of the two institutional problems.
On the 9th of November, the Catalonia should celebrate a referendum on
independence, but various power centers intend to boycott it. The match between Barcelona and Madrid back to pressing current.
Claudio Venza
