Emilio Castelar
(Emilio Castelar Ripoll; Cádiz, 1832-San Pedro del Pinatar, Murcia, 1899) Spanish politician, last president of the First Republic.Editor of El Tribuno (1854), La Soberanía Nacional (1855) and La Discusión (1856-64) and professor of History at the University from Madrid since 1858, his frank opposition to the government of Queen Elizabeth II, manifested through the anti-dynastic newspaper he founded and directed in 1864, La Democracia , cost him the chair.In 1865 he was sentenced to death, but managed to flee abroad and remained in Paris until the revolution of 1868.Returning home, he became head of the republican party opposed to Generals Serrano and Prim, who sought to establish the constitutional monarchy and the Duke Amadeo I of Savoy, who held the throne of Spain for three years.Minister of Foreign Affairs after his abdication, president of the Cortes and then of the Republic in 1873, his influence gradually diminished and he left power the following year.At the end of 1874 King Alfonso XII was elected; Castelar, who until then had thought of establishing, together with the head of the liberal party, Sagasta, a republican regime of a conservative nature, initially opposed the monarchy; but after several years he was reconciled to the new order of things.
Emilio Castelar
After studying Law and Philosophy at the University of Madrid, Emilio Castelar obtained a chair of Philosophical and Critical History of Spain (1858) and he devoted himself to political struggle, channeled through journalism (he went through various newspapers until founding his own in 1864: La Democracia ).He defended a democratic and liberal republicanism, which confronted him with the more socializing tendency of Francesc Pi y Margall.
From these positions he fought tenaciously against the regime of Elizabeth II, coming to directly criticize the conduct of the queen in his article "The trait" (1865).In retaliation for that writing, Castelar was dismissed from his chair, dragging the rector of the University of Madrid in his fall; the student protests against his dismissal were repressed by the government in a bloody way (the "Night of San Daniel").Then he took part in the frustrated insurrection of the San Gil Barracks of 1866, also repressed by the government; he managed to flee to France at the same time that he received a death sentence.
He participated in the Revolution of 1868 that dethroned Elizabeth II, but did not succeed in leading to the proclamation of the Republic.He was a deputy in the immediate constituent Cortes, in which he stood out for his oratorical ability, especially as a result of his defense of freedom of worship (1869).He continued to defend the republican option inside and outside the Cortes until the abdication of Amadeo de Saboya caused the proclamation of the Republic (1873).
During the first republican government, presided over by Estanislao Figueras, Emilio Castelar held the State portfolio, from which it adopted measures such as the elimination of noble titles or the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico.But the regime for which he had fought so hard was rapidly decomposing, torn by ideological dissensions among its leaders, isolated by hostility from the Church, the nobility, the army and the wealthy classes, and beset by cantonal insurrection, the resumption of the Carlist War and the resurgence of the independence rebellion in Cuba.
The Presidency passed from hand to hand-from Figueras to Francesc Pi y Margall in June and from him to Nicolás Salmerón in July-until it reached Emilio Castelar in September.To try to save the regime, he dissolved the Cortes and acted with the diligence of a dictator, mobilizing men and resources and entrusting the command of operations to professional soldiers, although of doubtful loyalty to the Republic.
When The sessions of the Cortes resumed at the beginning of 1874, Castelar resigned after losing a parliamentary vote, which led to the immediate intervention of General Pavía, who gave a coup, dissolving the Cortes and creating a power vacuum that General Francisco took advantage of.Serrano to proclaim himself president of the Executive Power.Thus liquidated the First Republic, the pronouncement of Arsenio Martínez Campos came to reestablish the Monarchy proclaiming King Alfonso XII.
After returning from a long trip abroad, Emilio Castelar returned to politics, embodying in the Courts of the Restoration the option of the "possibilist" republicans who aspired to democratize the regime from within; When, in the nineties, the laws of the jury and universal suffrage were approved, Castelar retired from political life, advising his supporters to join the Liberal Party of Sagasta (1893).
His bombastic and arrogant oratory and the movement and musical rhythm of his prose made Emilio Castelar the most illustrious Spanish tribune of the 19th century.On the other hand, his open temperament and quick to enthusiasm, and the influence he received from the Krausista group of Giner de los Ríos, in which he had formed spiritually, made him an eminent personality in the field of philosophy, history, literature and art, and one of the most interesting men of his time.He was intensely religious and, although rationalist, he always remained Christian; nor did his European character diminish his Spanishism one iota.
Castelar had an exceptional capacity for work, and even during his fertile old age he devoted himself for up to eight or ten hours a day to the composition of various works on history, philosophy, narrative and travel, and to collaboration in national and foreign magazines.Worth mentioning are Civilization in the first five centuries of Christianity (1859-62), Chronicle of the war in Africa (1859), Historical portraits (1884), Historical Gallery of Famous Women (eight vols., 1886-89) and, among the narrative works, Ernesto (1855), The sister of La Caridad (1857) and The Moor's Sigh (1885).Also interesting are the books written on Italian themes during travel and exile, such as Memories of Italy and the one dedicated to the painter Fra Filippo Lippi.
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