En busca del orden internoEspaña, 1789- 1898

Abstract

The construction of the liberal state in 19th-century Spain was conditioned by various factors; some of them adjusted to the European context and others turned out to be singularities of their own. The weight of some of them is estimated, such as the difficult imbrication of Catholicism in the New Regime, since liberalism defended a secularization in all areas of politics and society that caused conflicts about its scope and means to achieve it, as well as resistance on the part of an important sector of the population. In relation to this, the persistence of counterrevolutionary forces in Spain is explained, unlike some of their European counterparts such as Jacobitism and Miguelism. In this manner, to face an armoured counterrevolution, the liberal state had to rely on the army, whose role was decisive both for its victory on the battlefields and for trying to maintain the remains of the overseas empire. The fight against Carlism, however, did not eliminate internal divisions of liberalism that also decisively marked the pace of construction for the New Spanish Regime.