News, July 2008

200th anniversary of 2nd May uprising

2nd May, 1808, was a key historical day for Madrid, but also for Spain. Local citizens rose against the occupation of the city by the French army of Napoleon. Remembered above all because of the paintings of Goya Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo), depicting the uprising and subsequent bloody repression, Madrid celebrates its regional day today. For Spain the uprising meant not only a revolt against a foreign usurper of power, but also an attack on the modernising liberal ideas arriving from France. It ushered in 150 years of (occasional) civil war and even today, political parties in some respects represent the two (actually three) sides in the original struggle for independence.

Spaniards were split over the French occupation of 1808. Those at first most in favour were the most liberal, who looked to enlightened France to lead the reforms necessary to rid their country of the 'black legend' of superstition and the Inquisition. Against them, evidently, stood the 'old regime': a monarchy related to the former French royal family, the Roman Catholic Church and other vested interests, but in fact the main opposition for some time came from even more liberal Spaniards who rejected the foreign dictatorship (including the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte as king, soon after the 1808 uprising) and wanted to introduce representative government. This faction eventually formed the Cortes de Cadiz government in 'free' southern Spain, which produced Spain's first constitution in 1812.

During most of the 19th century there was fighting or at least argument between conservatives and liberals, with an ultra conservative element, the Carlists, being a strange forerunner of the modern day (so-called left wing) Basque liberation movement ETA.

British people will above all remember this time for the battle of Trafalgar (1805) and the victorious Peninsular War campaign of Wellington marching from Lisbon, across Spain, in support of the Spanish rebels and on to Paris.
For evangelicals the main memory is the presence of José María Blanco y Crespo, later known as Blanco White, in the Cortes of Cadiz parliament, a liberal who later took refuge in Britain and became an Anglican clergyman.