Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A traditionalist movement that originated in 1830, when Ferdinand VII of spain abolished Salic Law and named his only child Isabella as heir. Her succession in 1833 (initially under a regency) outraged supporters of his more conservative brother Don Carlos. The resulting Carlism drew strongly on anti-revolutionary and especially Catholic ecclesiastical support, opposing what then developed as the more liberal “Alfonsine” branch of the bourbon dynasty and embracing the slogan “God, country, community, and king.” There ensued a series of Carlist Wars (1833–40, 1847–9, and 1872–6). Though Isabella was declared deposed in 1868 and Spain briefly became a republic in 1873–4, it was her son who, as alfonso xii , then retrieved the throne. National humiliation and colonial losses due to the Spanish-American War of 1898 eventually reinvigorated the Carlist dissidents. Under the second republic and during the spanish civil war of 1936–9 they supported franco's Nationalists, and helped to consolidate his subsequent authoritarian regime. However, this did not prevent him from preparing a royal restoration that, after his own death in 1975, favored juan carlos i , grandson of alfonso xiii , rather than the Carlist claimant. ... log in or subscribe to read full text