The Liberal Press as a Mobilizing Agent during the Liberal Revolution in Spain (1808–1843)

Abstract

During the liberal revolution in Spain (180–1843), the press mobilized groups excluded from the exercise of sovereignty. This article offers an analysis of the mobilizing capacity of the press based on two examples. The first is the publication of newspapers in Madrid written in French, whose objective was to influence European parliaments through the community of diplomats and French public opinion in order to counteract the perception that circulated around Europe of a violent and radical Spanish revolution. However, one of the consequences of the diffusion of these newspapers was the reinforcement of transnational liberal discourse. The second example focuses on the competition between two political satirical newspapers featuring cartoons, with different political cultures, to mobilize the collective of weavers, which shows how moderantism involved a wide participatory political system. The cartoons evoked and were directed towards the collective of weavers and were responsible for how a section of them participated in the 1842 uprising against the trade unions that represented them. The press promoted the political agency of individuals belonging to excluded groups or those represented corporatively in the different constitutional frameworks during the most progressive stages of the Spanish liberal revolution (1820–1823 and 1840–1843).