Thank you for your very kind words Linese. They are very much appreciated as our your ideas. I will be honest with you, I would have liked to keep the Tl updated regularly. However, my life has been quite busy and hectic lately. Additionally the other reason is that I have had tremendous difficulty finding sources in English (as I am not fluent in Spanish), on both Spain and her colonial possessions during this time period. As you seem quite knowledgeable, perhaps you could recommend some sources?
As such, I didn't want to write about things I didn't know enough about. In retrospect, there are several things in the TL I would change, particularly writing a completely new constitution. Part of the problem was I couldn't find good translations of the OTL constitutions. In the future, I hope to do a reboot of this TL, once I have the time to give it the attention it deserves and I am able to find good enough sources.
You raise several interesting points and I shall to address each of them adequately:
1. I realize Espartero was unpopular OTL. However, due to events in this TL is quite popular among the people, such as the crushing of the traitors who murdered young Queen Isabel II, the implementation of a new liberal constitution, and the refusal to sign the free-trade with Great Britain. Thus the liberals, desiring electoral victory are hesitant to cast him aside. As for his dictatorial style, I am aware of it and I planned on him being quite frustrated with the lessening of his power as he moved from regent to "mere" prime minister and making unpopular moves as a result.
2. The idea of a national Spanish Church is a fascinating one. However, I think it makes more sense to use as a threat than to actually implement. It would hand the Carlists the support of the Vatican, and would alienate many pious Spaniards from the regime.
3. I admit that I hadn't thought of Pedro as a potential match but he would certainly make things more interesting than any of the suitors I previously had in mind. Although a wonder if the union of the two countries would be supported both at home or tolerated by Britain and France. However, I must say it is a fascinating idea.
Thanks again Linese. I do truly appreciate your thoughtful feedback and intriguing ideas
.
I understand your position, Patton, and I hope you can return to write your AH very soon.
About some sources in English, I have to say I have not found any decent about this period of contemporary history of Spain. However, the Wikipedia in Spanish is quite good with regard to information relating to him and his terms in office (the Regency and the Progressive Biennium), but there isn't a translation of its content into Wikipedia in English.
In terms related to the different constitutions Spanish sources, the following link takes you to a catalog with all these constitutional provisions, in Spanish:
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/con...n=fechapublicacionoriginal&paginaNavegacion=1
As for the numbered points:
1. Espartero was very unpopular in OTL... in the political class. But Espartero was very very popular among the working and middle classes. The Spanish people loved him. And as for the implementation of the free trade policy, I think he could be convinced to not sign a free trade agreement with Great Britain by the statements of one or more technocrats of its time (as you do with Ramon de Santillan), but in exchange he would encourage a fall in tariffs to force a continuous modernization of the emerging Spanish industry, preventing its lethargy before the great boost that would keep the Spanish captive market (and its overseas provinces and colonies) for the Spanish industry (well, it was completely impossible because of the huge smuggling from Gibraltar that existed since its capture by the British in 1704; it had become the largest nest of smugglers in Europe), encouraging business competition to force the continuous modernization of the Spanish industry (and incidentally, to avoid the concentration of most of the Spanish industry in Catalonia, Basque Country and Asturias; ie, achieve the survival and further development of the industry pioneers in other regions, as was the case in OTL with industries located in Malaga and its surroundings, that disappeared because of high tariffs to English coal, much cheaper and better quality than Asturian coal -and the port of Gijon was not yet ready to transport Asturian coal in industrial quantities-, and delays in obtaining official permission to build a railway connecting the Malaga industries with coal mined in the towns of Belmez (Jaen province) and Peñarroya (Córdoba province)).
2. I recognize that this idea is very attractive (above all, by its likely relations with Latin American Catholicism through Cuba and Puerto Rico), but certainly would not apply at all (it will surely arise Carlism again, much stronger than in 1833), although it could perhaps be a measure of pressure to Rome for the Spanish State obtain higher privileges on the Spanish hierarchy (for example, taking advantage of the power vacuum after the French Revolution of 1848 to occupy Andorra, an independent principality whose heads of state were the French head of state and the Spanish bishop of La Seu d'Urgell), claiming false Carlists proclamations transmitted from Andorra (a likely possibility, due to the fact that during the Liberal Triennium, the head of the diocese of La Seu d'Urgell proclaimed and chaired an absolutist Council of Regency against Madrid's liberals authorities put in place in 1820).
3. The marriage of Pedro da Braganza Wettin and Luisa Fernanda de Borbon (she being the Spanish Queen) it would be the culmination of a historic aspiration given since the time of the Reconquista: an only state for the entire Iberian Peninsula.
As for the possible inconvenience abroad who would oppose more would be the French, but if the wedding is held at the time of the Second French Republic (1848-1852), they have very little to say. As for Great Britain, on the one hand it would run against its historic policy with regard to Spain and Portugal, but on the other hand, considering that marriage would unify the Iberian countries on a side branch of his own future dynasty (the Braganza Wettin was a branch of the dynasty Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, dinasty of the children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert), the British government did not intervene against that dynastic unification. And if they are much more prone to this marriage, they could deliver Gibraltar to Spain as a wedding gift in return for keeping intact its status as a port for supplies for British ships (just kidding,
. Without Gibraltar, the British will fail to have some influence on Western Mediterranean until Malta).
By the way, I also believe that the new government out of the 1843 elections or of the first elections after the ending of Espartero Regency (as established in the 1837 Constitution, the maximum period of a parliament term of Congress is of three years, while that with each new election of the Congress of the Deputies, a third of the Senate is renewed), this new government (which will chaired by a Progressive, but not akin to the authoritarian policies of General Espartero) propose an amnesty for those conspirators against Espartero not directly involved in the events in Madrid that caused the assassination of Isabel II, as General
Leopoldo O'Donnell (in the 1840s he was a Moderate without political aspirations, which sought to establish a healthy bipartisanship in Spain) and General
Ramon María Narvaez (during the 1st Carlist War he became a Moderate because of his enmity with Espartero, who had recently declared Progressive himself). After all, the failed uprising of 1841 had an almost absolutist outlook, due to the political claims of Maria Cristina de Borbon and her husband about the Spanish Crown.
Thus, it would seek a final political reconciliation between Progressives and Moderates (the latter could have evolved into what was the Liberal Union led by General O'Donnell in the 1850s and 1860s, a new party which brings together left-wing Moderates and right-wing Progressives; while the more right-wing Moderates could join with former Carlists to form a new fundamentalist party, the Neocatholics), without removing opportunities for the Spanish colonial expansion, as the outdoor adventures approved by the governments of General O'Donnell in OTL (
Cochinchina Campaign,
Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859-1860, Franco-British-Spanish military expedition to Mexico, Annexation of the Dominican Republic and
Chincha Islands War).
For example, Espartero could take advantage of the political chaos caused after the assassination of Isabel II to strengthen his government, improve the economy, make a small constitutional reform (to establish the majority of the monarch to a older old age, as at 18; then Espartero could remain as Regent until January 30, 1850, a more approximate date of her upcoming wedding date with the groom chosen by the Regent, probably Pedro da Braganza Wettin in order to unify Spain and Portugal in an only state) and start a war against Morocco (claiming the kidnapping of some Spanish merchants by the Rif tribes, something very common in those times) to distract officers from the old Carlist army and the Church hierarchy in a new crusade against the old enemy, the Moors (which could see the Spanish conquest of Morocco as a crusade against the Islam, as in the times of the Reconquista) in the 1840s (after all, the French began the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s).
And as for the later development of Spanish foreign policy (after the Spanish conquest of Morocco), I not surprise me that after a period of Spanish-British approach, Spain is redirecting towards an alliance with the emerging Prussia led by Bismarck (because of the British refusal of return Gibraltar to Spain), leading to the Spanish participation in the Franco-Prussian War to recover Roussillon (lost in the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659) and get the French Algeria and Andorra (if there has not been annexed in 1848, taking advantage of the power vacuum in France because of the 1848 Revolution). And if that were the case, the Kingdom of Italy could follow the Spanish example and fight against France to recover Nice, Savoy and Corsica; significantly altering the European and global political context of the last third of the 19th century (especially if the Spanish politicals don't hinder the great technological progress made in the country, such as the invention of the electric submarine by
Isaac Peral).
What do you think about it?
PS: My previous post was incomplete. Besides, my nick is
Linense, not Linese.