"At the beginning of the Malaga park, near the square to General Torrijos there is a statue, which causes a ridiculous illusion due to its shape and face, inaugurated on January 1, 1901 by the royal family, the government and other authorities, forged in bronze. It is a sculpture in which tribute is paid to one of the main statesmen of the nineteenth century, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Of Barcelona being exhibited at the Paris Exhibition.
This sculpture was the victim of the wrath of an anarchist group that tried to set it on fire without success."
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Antonio Canovas del Castillo
Spanish politician, architect of the Restoration regime (Málaga, 1828 - Santa Águeda, Guipúzcoa, 1897). Graduated in law from the University of Madrid, the concerns of this young man of modest origin were initially directed towards literature (in which his uncle, the writer Serafín Estébanez Calderón, sponsored him) and above all towards history, the latter dedication he did not abandon even in the peak moments of his political life; He wrote notable works on the Habsburgs and the Spanish decadence, which earned him admission to the Academy of History (1860). He was also a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (1867), the Moral and Political Sciences (1871) and the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy (1887).
Antonio Canovas del Castillo
"His intellectual concerns were also channeled through the Ateneo de Madrid, which he presided over in 1870-74, 1882-84 and 1888-89. He came to politics through journalism, working since 1849 in the newspaper of Joaquín Francisco Pacheco, leader of the "puritanical" group that represented the most conciliatory wing of the Moderate Party. That centrist vocation was confirmed when he joined the Liberal Union, a party created by Leopoldo O'Donnell to stand between moderates and progressives.
His first political responsibility was the drafting of the Manzanares Manifesto, which made public the positions of the military participants in the so-called "Revolution of 1854" (Leopoldo O'Donnell, Francisco Serrano and Domingo Dulce). Later he held political positions of increasing importance, such as deputy in the Constituent Cortes of 1854-56, agent of prayers in Rome, civil governor of Cádiz, general director of Local Administration, undersecretary of the Interior, minister of the same branch (1864). and Overseas (1865-66). His attitude in the face of the insurrection of the sergeants of the San Gil Barracks (1866) cost him exile in Palencia, remaining away from any political role until the Revolution of 1868 broke out, which dethroned Isabel II .
During the Revolutionary Sexennium of 1868-74, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo assumed the leadership of a conservative minority in the Parliament, standing out in the debates against universal suffrage and freedom of worship. He attacked both the democratic regime of Amadeo de Saboya and the First Republic that succeeded him, taking advantage of the failures of both trials to consolidate his option to restore the Bourbon monarchy, but not in the person of the former Queen Elizabeth II -whose discredit had provoked the revolution-, but in that of his son, whom he would reinstate as king with the name of Alfonso XII .
Once the Queen Mother in exile abdicated (1870), Antonio Cánovas obtained full powers to lead the monarchical cause (1873), while guiding the prince's education in England and making him proclaim the so-called Sandhurst Manifesto, in which he outlined the guidelines of a future parliamentary, liberal and moderate monarchy, calling on all Catholics and dissatisfied with the revolutionary situation unrelated to Carlism in support (1874).
Cánovas del Castillo gradually strengthened the Alfonsine cause in political means and increasing the viability of the monarchical restoration as the republican option was discredited; but, against his will, General Arsenio Martínez Campos went ahead of him, proclaiming the king through a military pronouncement in Sagunto (1874). However, for the first time in the history of the Spanish pronouncements, the military did not want to take power, but rather put Cánovas in it, as leader of the supporters of the Monarchy: on the last day of that year, Cánovas formed a government that He would exercise the regency until the arrival of Alfonso XII, who confirmed the cabinet in 1875.
Owner of practically uncontested power, Cánovas carried out an enormous work in the following two years, which laid the foundations of the Restoration regime, which would last until the coup d'état by Miguel Primo de Rivera .(1923). He prepared and had the Constitution of 1876 approved, establishing a liberal monarchy modeled on European parliamentary practices. The key was to put an end to the political violence and military pronouncements that had marked the reign of Elizabeth II, establishing the primacy of civil power. But for this, a peaceful alternation in power had to be guaranteed; Cánovas designed a two-party model in the British style, forming himself a great Conservative Party from the extinct Liberal Union; and he looked for a figure that would bring together the alternative political option, finding it in Sagasta , who would assume the leadership of the Liberal Party, with which the conservatives in power would take turns.
After ruling almost without interruption until 1881, Cánovas left power to Sagasta that year, recovering it in 1884. When Alfonso XII died in 1885 and to consolidate the regency of María Cristina de Habsburgo , he sealed with Sagasta the so-called "Pact of El Pardo" , by which both parties would succeed each other without facing each other in the government of the country. And it is that, indeed, the peculiarity of the Canovista regime was that the elections constituted a farce managed by the oligarchic networks of caciquismo, while Parliament and the government were formed with their backs to public opinion, based on pacts between the leaders of the two dynastic parties and with a decisive intervention of the Crown.
Cánovas returned to preside over the Council of Ministers in 1890-92 and in 1895-97. To his credit as ruler must be noted the pacification of the country, putting an end to the cantonal uprising (1874), the Third Carlist War (1875) and the Ten Years' War in Cuba (1878). Inspired by the historical "lesson" of Spanish decline, he tried to spur a national resurgence, fostering a new Spanish patriotism with acts such as those commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America (1892 ) .
But he proved impotent in the face of the new conflicts that Catalan nationalism, the labor movement, anarchism, the internal dissidences of his party ( Francisco Silvela ) and the reappearance of the independence movement in Cuba (1895) aroused. Unable to open channels for the political participation of new groups and aspirations, when he was assassinated by an Italian anarchist during his summer stay in a spa, he left the regime facing a crisis situation that would last since the defeat in the Cuban War (1898). ) until its extinction (1923)."
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