"The idea of ??erecting a monument or a statue to the distinguished republican began to be considered in 1903 with the intention, even, of opening a popular subscription to defray the expenses that the work would bring with it. However, this issue was not discussed again until in January 1927 the editor of El Liberal D. Luis Rojas cried out in a newspaper article "Castelar does not have a monument in Seville!". But it would take another year for the enthusiasm for the politician and his sculpture to resurface.
In 1929, already counting on some donations, the sculptor Manuel Echegoyán, then a student at the Sevillian School of Arts and Crafts and Fine Arts, carried out a project supported by El Liberal, which published the photograph and a detailed description of it. No location had yet been considered.
The materials used were Monóvar stone, bronze for the bust of the politician and marble for the stairs at the base. The set was made up of a stone block, with a tripartite structure, whose central part, lower and topped by the bust of Castelar, bore a legend alluding to the abolition of slavery. The two lateral blocks served as a support for two allegorical figures, Justice and Eloquence. The very simple architectural structure, of pure volumes, and the sculptures are situated in a classical line in which architectural functionalism and a frequent humanist tendency in the visual arts of many Hispanic artists of that time are mixed. The set recalls, in its approach, the one carried out by Vitorio Macho as a tribute to Ramón y Cajal in Madrid's Retiro Park, inaugurated in 1926. The tripartite distribution, the purity and simplicity of lines and the cleanliness of volumes are the same, although the central part is resolved in a different way.
The monument to Castelar became a reality when, in 1930, it was decided to place it in the still unfinished garden of Cristina , in the corner facing the Puerta de Jerez. The modeling and casting works were carried out in the same Echegoyán workshop, despite the sculptor Joaquín Martín Ruiz having previously offered to carry it out without any interest.
Finally, on July 15 of that year, said construction was completed. 11,485.05 pesetas had been raised through public subscription. Once installed, a parterre made by the arboriculturist and flower grower JP Martín, supplier of the Royal House, was arranged in front of him, as an "exquisite work of garden goldsmithing". Subsequently, this small parterre that surrounds the monument had to undergo continuous repairs, like the rest of the garden, due to the damage caused by a certain public that shows an absolute lack of respect towards everything and everyone."
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PERSON
"(Emilio Castelar Ripoll; Cádiz, 1832 - San Pedro del Pinatar, Murcia, 1899) Spanish politician, last president of the First Republic. Editor of El Tribuno (1854), La Soberanía Nacional (1855) and La Discusión (1856-64) and Professor of History at the University of Madrid from 1858, his open opposition to the government of Queen Elizabeth II, manifested through the newspaper antidynastic by him founded and directed in 1864, La DemocraciaIt cost him his professorship. In 1865 he was sentenced to death, but managed to flee abroad and remained in Paris until the 1868 revolution. Returning to his homeland, he became head of the republican party opposed to generals Serrano and Prim, who sought to establish a constitutional monarchy and at the same time Duke Amadeo I of Savoy, who held the throne of Spain for three years. Minister of Foreign Affairs after his abdication, President of the Cortes and then of the Republic in 1873, he gradually saw his influence diminish and left power the following year. At the end of 1874 King Alfonso XII was elected; Castelar, who until then had thought of establishing, together with the head of the liberal party, Sagasta, a conservative republican regime, initially opposed the monarchy;
emilio castellar
After studying Law and Philosophy at the University of Madrid, Emilio Castelar obtained a chair in Philosophical and Critical History of Spain (1858) and dedicated himself to political struggle, channeled through journalism (he went through several newspapers until founding his own in 1864: The Democracy ). He defended a democratic and liberal republicanism, which pitted him against the more socializing tendency of Francesc Pi y Margall .
From these positions, he tenaciously fought against the regime of Elizabeth II , coming to directly criticize the queen's conduct in his article "The trait" (1865). In retaliation for that writing Castelar was dismissed from his chair, dragging in his fall the rector of the University of Madrid; student protests against his dismissal were bloodily suppressed by the government (the "Night of Saint Daniel"). He then intervened in the frustrated insurrection of the San Gil Barracks in 1866, also repressed by the government; He managed to flee to France while a death sentence fell on him.
He participated in the Revolution of 1868 that dethroned Isabel II, but did not get it to lead to the proclamation of the Republic. He was a deputy in the immediate Constituent Cortes, in which he stood out for his oratorical capacity, especially as a result of his defense of freedom of worship (1869). He continued to defend the republican option inside and outside the Cortes until the abdication of Amadeo de Saboya caused the proclamation of the Republic (1873).
During the first republican government, presided over by Estanislao Figueras , Emilio Castelar held the portfolio of State, from which he adopted measures such as the elimination of noble titles or the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. But the regime for which he had fought so hard was rapidly collapsing, torn by ideological dissensions among its leaders, isolated by the hostility of the Church, the nobility, the army and the wealthy classes, and beset by the cantonal insurrection, the resumption of the Carlist War and the recrudescence of the independence rebellion in Cuba.
The Presidency was passed from hand to hand - from Figueras to Francesc Pi y Margall in June and from him to Nicolás Salmerón in July - until reaching Emilio Castelar in September. To try to save the regime, he dissolved the Cortes and acted with the diligence of a dictator, mobilizing men and resources and entrusting the command of operations to professional soldiers, although of doubtful fidelity to the Republic.
When the sessions of the Cortes resumed at the beginning of 1874, Castelar tendered his resignation after losing a parliamentary vote, which determined the immediate intervention of General Pavia, who staged a coup d'état, dissolving the Cortes and creating a power vacuum that took advantage of the General Francisco Serrano to proclaim himself president of the Executive Power. With the First Republic thus liquidated, the pronouncement of Arsenio Martínez Campos came to reestablish the Monarchy by proclaiming Alfonso XII king .
After returning from a long trip abroad, Emilio Castelar returned to politics, embodying in the Restoration Courts the option of the "possibility" Republicans who aspired to democratize the regime from within; When, in the 1990s, the laws of the jury and universal suffrage were approved, Castelar withdrew from political life, advising his supporters to integrate into the Liberal Party of Sagasta (1893).
His bombastic and arrogant oratory and the movement and musical rhythm of his prose made Emilio Castelar the most illustrious Spanish tribune of the 19th century. On the other hand, his open temperament and quick to enthusiasm, and the influence he received from the Krausist group of Giner de los Ríos , in which he had been spiritually trained, made him an eminent personality in the field of philosophy, history, literature and art, and one of the most interesting men of his time. He was intensely religious and, even though a rationalist, he always remained a Christian; Nor did his European character diminish his Spanishness one iota.
Castelar had an exceptional capacity for work, and even during his prolific old age he dedicated himself for up to eight or ten hours a day to the composition of various works on history, philosophy, narrative and travel, and to collaboration in national and foreign magazines. Civilization in the first five centuries of Christianity (1859-62), Chronicle of the African War (1859), Historical Portraits (1884), Historical Gallery of Famous Women (eight vols., 1886-89) and, among the narrative works, Ernesto (1855), La Hermana de la Caridad (1857) and El suspiro del moro(1885). Also interesting are the books written on Italian themes during his travels and exile, such as Recollections of Italy and the one dedicated to the painter Fra Filippo Lippi ."
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