Abstract
During the spring of 1864, local leaders prepared the mountainous borderlands of Cárdoba, Granada and Málaga for an uprising against the Bourbon regime, to be led by Italian generals, if not by Garibaldi himself. The uprising was aborted once it became clear that the Italians were unwilling to risk a Spanish adventure. Three years earlier 20,000 men from the same region had risen in the revolt behind the Loja blacksmith Rafael Pérez del Alamo. The same towns would join the successful ‘Glorious Revolution’ of September 1868. The article attempts an explanation for this region’s democratic optimism. It focuses on the use made by local Democrat leaders of Carbonari organization and of party newspapers for the spread of political information and news of international affairs, particularly the Italian Risorgimento. Democrat exaltation in eastern Andalucía is placed within a wider analysis of the conspiratorial ties of national Democrat leaders with Progressive Liberals, with the ‘Democratic International’ (Mazzini, Garibaldi etc.), and with Spanish exiles in Portugal.
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