Blackwell Reference Online

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Francisco Pi y Margall, born in the Spanish region of Catalonia in 1824, became the president of the first Spanish Republic in 1871. Despite the strong separatist and nationalist character of its leading politicians, Pi never fully identified with the Catalan cause. Pi was a federalist, but a doctrinaire one. His ideas were formed by two main figures, Georg Hegel and Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and by 1875 he had translated four of the latter's works into the Spanish language. Inevitably, his federalism retained many of Proudhon's key ideas about history, society, justice, and order, and the moral conviction with which he expressed his federalist vision echoed throughout the times in which he lived. Pi was a scholar rather than a cunning politician; leading Spanish politics was a matter of principle and doctrine, and while he met with some success, his vision was never realized. Still, his ideas inspired Cuban and Peruvian revolutionary politics in the late nineteenth century, and Philippine anti-colonialism against Spain.Pi was mild mannered and remained largely removed from the populism of public politics. He nevertheless managed to fuse Spanish republicanism with the doctrines of federalism, and saw both to be in the historic interests of the Spanish people. His decentralist and anti-army approach to Spanish problems found a ready audience among the over-taxed working class and peasants ... log in or subscribe to read full text