Emilio Castelar Y Ripoll - Castelar and The Church

Castelar and The Church

Castelar next turned his attention to the Church. He renewed direct relations with the Vatican, and at last induced Pope Pius IX to approve his selection of two dignitaries to occupy vacant sees as well as his nominee for the vacant archbishopric of Valencia, a prelate who afterwards became archbishop of Toledo, and remained to the end a close friend of Castelar. He put a stop to all persecutions of the Church and religious orders, and enforced respect of Church property. He attempted to restore some order in the treasury and administration of finance, with a view to obtain ways and means to cover the expense of the three civil wars, Carlist, cantonal and Cuban. The Cuban insurgents gave him much trouble and anxiety, the famous Virginius incident nearly leading to a rupture between Spain and the United States. Castelar sent out to Cuba all the reinforcements he could spare, and a new governor-general, Jovellar, whom he peremptorily instructed to crush the mutinous spirit of the Cuban militia, and not allow them to drag Spain into a conflict with the U.S. Acting upon the instructions of Castelar, Jovellar gave up the filibuster vessels, and those of the crew and passengers who had not been summarily shot by General Burriel. Castelar always prided himself on having terminated this incident without too much damage to the prestige of Spain.

At the end of 1873 Castelar had reason to be satisfied with the results of his efforts, with the military operations in the peninsula, with the assistance he was getting from the middle classes and even from many of the political elements of the Spanish revolution that were not republican. On the other hand, on the eve of the meeting of the federal Cortes, he could indulge in no illusions as to what he had to expect from the bulk of the republicans, who openly dissented from his conservative and conciliatory policy, and announced that they would reverse it on the very day the Cortes met. Warnings came in plenty, and no less a personage than the man he had made captain-general of Madrid, General Pavia, suggested that, if a conflict arose between Castelar and the majority of the Cortes, not only the garrison of Madrid and its chief, but all the armies in the field and their generals, were disposed to stand by the president. Castelar knew too well what such offers meant in the classic land of pronunciamientos, and he refused so flatly that Pavia did not renew his advice. The Cortes met on 2 January 1874. The intransigent majority refused to listen to a last eloquent appeal that Castelar made to their patriotism and common sense, and they passed a vote of censure. Castelar resigned. The Cortes went on wrangling for a day and night until, at daybreak on 3 January 1874, General Pavia forcibly ejected the deputies, closed and dissolved the Cortes, and called up Marshal Serrano to form a provisional government.

Castelar kept apart from active politics during the twelve months that Serrano acted as president of the republic. Another pronunciamiento finally put an end to it in the last week of December 1874, when Generals Campos at Sagunto, Jovellar at Valencia, Primo de Rivera at Madrid, and Laserna at Logrono, proclaimed Alphonso XII king of Spain. Castelar then went into voluntary exile for fifteen months, at the end of which he was elected deputy for Barcelona. He sat in all subsequent parliaments, and just a month before his death he was elected as representative of Murcia. During that period he became even more estranged from the majority of the republicans. Bitter experience had shown him that their federal doctrines and revolutionary methods could lead to nothing in harmony with the aspirations of the majority of Spaniards. He was elected, to use his own words, "to defend and to seek the realization of the substance of the program of the Spanish revolution of 1868 by evolution, and legal, peaceful means." Hence the contrast between his attitude from 1876 to 1886, during the reign of Alphonso, when he stood in the front rank of the opposition, to defend the reforms of that revolution against Señor Canovas, and his attitude from 1886 to 1891. In this latter period Castelar acted as a sort of independent auxiliary of Sagasta and of the Liberal party. As soon as Castelar saw universal suffrage re-established he solemnly declared in the Cortes that his task was accomplished, his political mission at an end, and that he proposed to devote the remainder of his life to those literary, historical, philosophical, and economic studies which he had never neglected even in the busiest days of his political career. Indeed, it was his extraordinary activity and power of assimilation in such directions that allowed him to keep his fellow-countrymen so well informed of what was going on in the outer world.

His literary and journalistic labors occupied much of his time, and were his chief means of subsistence. He left unfinished a history of Europe in the 19th century. The most conspicuous of his earlier works were: A History of Civilization in the First Five Centuries of Christianity, Recollections of Italy, Life of Lord Byron, The History of the Republican Movement in Europe, The Redemption of Slaves, The Religious Revolution, Historical Essays on the Middle Ages, The Eastern Question, Fra Filippo Lippi, History of the Discovery of America, and some historical novels. Castelar died near Murcia on 25 May 1899, at the age of sixty-six. His funeral at Madrid was an imposing demonstration of the sympathy and respect of all classes and parties.