Constitutions, wars and a lost empire

De Cádiz al Desastre: liberales y absolutistas

1808–1923. From Napoleon's invasion in 1808 to the coup of Primo de Rivera in 1923, Spain lived through a war of independence, a liberal constitution written under siege…

What happened

From Napoleon's invasion in 1808 to the coup of Primo de Rivera in 1923, Spain lived through a war of independence, a liberal constitution written under siege in Cádiz, the return of absolutism, three civil wars over the succession (the Carlist wars), a short First Republic in 1873 and the long Restoration monarchy after 1874. In the same years it lost almost all of its American empire, and in 1898 the last colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Politics swung between liberal and absolutist, then between two parties that took turns in power, while most Spaniards still lived in the countryside.

Its events

1. 2 May 1808: Madrid rises against Napoleon
2. 19 March 1812: The Constitution of Cádiz
3. 1898: The Disaster of '98

Sources

1. Constitución de 1812 — Congreso de los Diputados
2. Chronology — The World of 1898 — Library of Congress