Alfonso xiii consort

His mother, Maria Christina of Austria , was regent until May , when he turned sixteen and took the oath of office under the Constitution of , when he began his personal reign, which lasted until 14 April , when he had to go into exile after the proclamation of the Second Republic. This was known as the "Pardo Pact", because although in reality the meeting of the party leaders took place at the seat of the Presidency of the Government and not at the Palacio del Pardo, the term is justified because the last residence of Alfonso XII was of decisive importance.

Many meetings and agreements were held at El Pardo; all the ministers and Sagasta arrived there; the most representative generals arrived there; the Nuncio was spoken to in order to facilitate the "pact" with the Church. In April , five months after forming the government and one month before the birth of the future Alfonso XIII, the liberals called elections to gain a solid majority in the Courts and thus be able to develop their government programme, although they had already been able to begin to implement it thanks to the benevolence of the conservatives.

This period was known as the Long Government of Sagasta or the Long Parliament because of its duration, almost five years, during which "a series of reforms were carried out that definitively shaped the social and political profile of the Restoration as a historical epoch ", which is why some historians have considered it the "most fruitful period" of the Restoration.

The second major reform was the law of the jury , an old demand of progressive liberalism that had always been resisted by conservatism, and which was approved in April Trial by jury was established for those crimes that had the greatest impact on the maintenance of social order or that affected individual rights, such as freedom of the press.

Alfonso xiii family tree

According to the law, the jury would be in charge of establishing the proven facts, while the legal qualification of the facts would be the responsibility of the judges. The third major reform was the introduction of universal male suffrage by a law passed on 30 June This satisfied a long-standing demand of the liberal and democratic left and was a "political event".

However, the extension of suffrage to all men over the age of twenty-five —some five million in — regardless of their income, as was the case with census suffrage , did not democratise the political system, because electoral fraud continued, only now the cacique networks were extended to the population as a whole, so that governments continued to be formed before the elections, and not after, since the government of the turn was able to build up a solid majority in the Courts with the encasillado —during the Restoration, no government ever lost an election—.

Thus, "although formally it amounted to the establishment of democracy, [the approval of universal male suffrage] in practical terms made no difference".

Alfonso xiii grandchildren

Moreover, the Constitution was not reformed, so that the principle of national sovereignty was still not recognised, and only one third of the Senate was elected, nor was freedom of religion , another of the principles of a democratic system, recognised. On the other hand, proof that the aim of the law was not to establish democracy lies in the fact that no guarantees were adopted to ensure the transparency of suffrage and thus prevent electoral fraud, such as the updating of the census by an independent body, the requirement of accreditation for the person who was going to vote or the control of the whole process, which remained in the hands of the Minister of the Interior, known as the "great elector", as it was he who ensured that his government had a large majority in the Courts.

After these five years of relative stability, during which the shift between conservatives and liberals was normalised, the regime had to face "several problems that were not on its political agenda : the workers' problem , the crystallisation of a peripheral nationalism and, finally, the colonial question itself, which led first to the Cuban War of Independence and then to the Spanish-American war , the defeat that marked the final crisis of the century".

Two tendencies of conservatism coexisted in the government, embodied by Francisco Romero Robledo , who had rejoined the party ranks after his failed experience with the Liberal-Reformist Party, and Francisco Silvela.