The holistic understanding on the emergence of republicanism in Portugal, as on the rise of republican movement and its expressions on the public sphere have long benefited from a transnational perspective, namely the recognition of the irrefutable influences exerted by European political evolution, especially occurred in the Mediterranean region, in the Portuguese context. Among these, the contributions emanating from the French and Spanish dynamics stood out, which could assume an ambivalent dimension, taking into account the forms of projection in the national space during the 19^th century. Whether these influences originated directly, as a result of the presence or action of external powers, or subliminally, through the attentive internal observation of the phenomena and political realities in progress in the areas of greater linguistic, cultural, social and historical proximity. Thus, without disdain for the relevance given to the advent of the so-called Great Republic, the Portuguese insertion in the perimeter of political modernity operated as a result of the transformations that emerged in the Old World and, more specifically, of the French revolutionary dynamics, soon exported to neighbouring countries.

In this context, the Spanish Republic, established in February 1873, proved to be a decisive influence on the configuration of Portuguese republicanism and, consequently, on its reformulation into a political party. Instead of a conjunctural expression, the Spanish republican regime of 1873-1874 assumed a structuring dimension, as demonstrated in the selected sources analysed, both of a pedagogical nature and concerning different chronological scopes, namely the historical understandings elaborated by Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso and Victor Ribeiro. Both works emphasized the close correlation between Portuguese political evolution and the immediate and long-term repercussions of the proclamation of the republican regime in Spain.

This structuring matrix, evident during the process of affirmation and consolidation of Liberalism —to which the peripheral national position and, consequently the loss of external relevance and international prestige, was not indifferent— was appreciated as a preferential operative formula in the dissemination of republican ideas in Portugal. The close correlation between the exogenous dimension and the endogenous modernizing aspirations —also understood as an indelible factor of Europeanization— was widely analysed by Joel Serrão, Maria Manuela Tavares Ribeiro, Amadeu Carvalho Homem, Fernando Catroga and António Ventura, among others. If, as Robert Gildea put it, “republicanism, religion and socialism were all inherent in the revolutionary doctrine of fraternity”, the paths of ideological development took on similar projection formulas —a similarity gauged in the role played by the elites, whether in the original incorporation of the ideas or in the adaptation to national realities or even in the respective dissemination in the public space. Certainly, one of the intrinsic characteristics of the spread of republicanism in Portugal was the ability to mobilize social strata disregarded by census suffrage adopted following the implementation of the liberal system.

Thus, the fundamental desideratum of these elites implied the politicization of the masses, a process largely conditioned by different factors, namely, the very low literacy of the Portuguese population, the correlation between the settlement structure, the performance of economic activities and the relevance of agriculture, consequently the significance of rural areas. On the other hand, the inadequacy of circulation structures and the absence of an integrated economic logic, ensured the prevalence of a considerable disparity, maintained in spite of the intentions and purposes of the liberal state, gradually conceived from 1820 onwards. Therefore, the republican ideals found an atmosphere conducive to their respective growth among the less favoured layers of the urban population, simultaneously those who found themselves far from the spectrum of political intervention, in accordance with the canons of the constitutional monarchic regime. Indeed, to the interest of these population segments was due, according to João Bonifácio Serra, the distinction between the more progressive wing of Portuguese Liberalism and the national republican current, which emerged as a political movement as a disruption of the consensus generated by the Regeneration government, following the coup d’état led by Marechal de Saldanha, in 1851.

Paradoxically, or not, in the same year, a foundational analysis for Portuguese republicanism was published, by José Félix Henriques Nogueira, conceived in a holistic approach to national structural problems. The diagnosis delivered contemplated both urban and rural areas, granting to the last a large prominence under a new institutional and political formulas, the republic, defined as “from the people to the people”. Attending to foreign affairs policies, Nogueira’s programme and aspirations were consistent with restoring the national prestige of the country, “poor and oppressed but conscious and zealous of its dignity”, through the pursuit of a “Federation with the other peoples of the Iberian Peninsula” —understood as a source of strength, importance and “true independence” missing. An attentive reader of Raspail, whose ideas he corroborated and quoted as an introductory preamble to the analysis of international relations in Europe, Henriques Nogueira shared the federalist aspirations of the founder of L’Ami du Peuple, published between 27 February and 14 May 1848, regarding the desirably near future— “One day, Europe will be the natural aggregation of several republics, as numerous as its great basins”.

For Henriques Nogueira, if the republican regime constituted a civilizational advance, the federation of peoples meant the liberation of weak nations from the predominance of strong states. Unmistakable with any merger processes, the federative dynamic was based on maintaining the independence of each national sovereignty involved, a characteristic likely to become advisable in movements for the formation of large states in Europe in gestation in the mid-19^th century. The model proposed for Europe, but transversal to all human communities, without exception, “more or less advanced”, assumed a dimension especially relevant in the Mediterranean context as it favoured the collective affirmation of sparsely industrialized societies and, tendentially, subordinated by those provided higher levels of development. According to Henriques Nogueira’s ideas, the premises, the Republic and the Federation, interacted in order to promote the principles underlying the considered Glorious Republic of 1848 and certainly contributed to the respective pursuit. Thus, the defence of federalism represented subliminally advocating a gradualist methodology tending to the consecration of the republican regime in the national context; conversely, the promotion of the Republic meant sponsoring the means of consubstantiating the Federation.

Henriques Nogueira’s assumptions initiated one of the primacies of Portuguese republicanism, structuring the ideology and consolidation of this ideology from the formation to the implantation of the Republic, in October 1910. Similarly considered by the multiple sensibilities of Portuguese republicanism, it acquired a differentiated relevance depending on the orientations adopted by each group. However, the correlation between the republican regime and the emergence of a Latin bloc, of a diplomatic, political, economic and cultural nature, exclusively embodied by republics, capable of bringing about the revival of Mediterranean Europe, prevailed as a dimension of transversality among national republican understandings.

As such, the Portuguese federalists stood out in the defence of a renewal of the European diplomatic system in the light of the principles of fraternity resurfaced in Paris, in February 1848. In the wake of Henriques Nogueira, in the pages of Rebate, newspaper published by the Federal Republican Centre of Lisbon during 1873 and 1874, the Portuguese federalists nurtured the ideals of community based on the strength of cohesion conceived by the links of shared historical heritage, parallel to the purposes later advocated by Louis-Xavier Ricard, in 1878.

Refuting the accusations of being Iberian federalists, connoted with anti-patriotism, attributed by Jornal de Lisboa, following the manifestations of rejoicing by the editors of Rebate for the proclamation of the republic in the neighbouring country, the newspaper of the Federal Republican Centre of Lisbon clarified its convictions about the desirable forthcoming in Portugal, in the Iberian Peninsula and in Europe: “it is possible the two federal republics, once established, will consider, sooner or later, the formation of a single Iberian federation; just as it is possible all peoples of the Latin race – Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, etc., constitute a Latin federation or The United States of Europe”.

The same perspective was widely defended by the Grupo Republicano de Estudos Sociais/Republican Group for Social Studies, constituted in 1896 with the purpose of relaunching the Portuguese Republican Party, after the recess felt following the frustrated attempt to implant the republic, which occurred in January 1891. With the aim of rebuilding the party and recovering the social influence of republicanism in the national context, the Grupo moved away from federalism, as a state organizational formula, replaced by a logic of decentralization of institutional competences. However, the principles of proximity between Latin societies prevailed, understood as the primordial foundation for the formation of the future pan-Latin bloc, a corollary of a process of political transformation characterized by the triumph of republican regimes in these countries.

Indeed, one of the perennial consequences of the revolt of 31 January 1891 consisted of the programmatic redefinition of the Portuguese Republican Party such as the expressed option for the unitary model, under the broad influence of the guidelines issued by the French Third Republic. Certainly, the Portuguese republican movement resented the discomfort caused by the failure of the revolutionary initiative, the result of the express will and first action of the Porto federalist republicans, which would later be sponsored by the Lisbon Directory. The changes observed in the composition of the governing body of the republicans, immediately before the revolutionary outbreak, in particular, the removal of José Elias Garcia, whose reformist political orientation, did not prevent the support to the revolutionary intentions of the northern counterpart. Similarly, the manifest programme published by the newly appointed directory, a few days before the insurrectionary movements, laid the foundations for criticism and subsequent republican condemnation of the revolutionaries.

The subsequent years were characterized by monarchical repression, exercised in multiple ways, by the exile of those involved in the insurrection, including illustrious defenders of federalism, such as Sampaio Bruno or Alves da Veiga, or even by the consolidation of the unitary path, strengthened by the negative internal reception of the Badajoz conference, held on 25 June 1893. The pa- triotic intentions of the Portuguese republicans participating in this meeting aimed at promoting federal ideas in the Iberian Peninsula deserved a fierce chorus of criticism in the monarchist press and inspired satirical readings in political magazines in the capital. As a paradigm, observe O Occidente’s understanding of the performance of Portuguese republicans in this conference:

In Portuguese parliament, the representatives elected by the Republican Party, especially Jacinto Nunes, defended themselves against imputations of levity, national betrayal and political as well as economic nihilism:

For Jacinto Nunes, the approaches of Pi y Margall, head of Spanish delegation in Badajoz, on the peninsular political future, under the republican order, as exposed in the aforementioned meeting, were elucidative about the clarity of the purposes of the Spanish politician and the integral preservation of Portuguese sovereignty. However, far from consensus, the conflicting convictions of Pi y Margall and Nicolas Salmeron raised reservations and inspired the Republican Party to adopt precautionary measures.

Such was the meaning of the proposal presented and unanimously approved at the meeting of the Grupo Republicano de Estudos Sociais, held in February 1897. According to the initiative addressed by João de Menezes, the Grupo refuted old disagreements between Portugal and Spain, fostered by the monarchical regimes of both countries. Simultaneously, any attempts at an Iberian pact in which the independence and integrity of the future Portuguese republic were not explicitly enshrined were considered unpatriotic. In defence of this premise, Basílio Teles underlined the intrinsically endogenous nature of the political decision-making process of the Portuguese Republican Party. Thus, the author disagreed with the aspirations expressed by Nicolas Salmeron, during the Alicante meeting held on 5 January 1897, regarding the reconstitution of Old Spain, through the reintegration of all the former provinces —a category also applied to Portugal. On the opposite, considered “the Portuguese Republic can and should be built without dependence on the neighbouring nation’s politicians. In the Republican Party there are those who understand that the Portuguese Republic is only viable when Spain is already republican. This is a mistake, to be repudiated with energy”.

The specificity of the Portuguese republican path was also emphasised in the intervention of Brito Camacho, to whom Nicolas Salmeron’s convictions were unrealizable and offensive to Portuguese sovereignty as Pi y Margall’s positions seemed as unrealistic. In his words,

Such premises, the full assumption of a specific dynamic and the alliance with the promoters of republicanism in Spain, without loss of broad freedom of action, were considered constant until the establishment of the Republic in Portugal, which occurred on 5^th October 1910. The insurrectionary purposes assumed at the Republican Congress of Setúbal, in 1909, were supported by the resolution to prepare the European powers, directly or indirectly, for the Portuguese institutional change in preparation. Thus, one of the decisions resulting from the republican meeting, held in Porto in April 1910, consisted of organizing a mission aimed at informal contact with the French, Belgian and English governments.

In June 1910, José Relvas and Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, assisted by Alves da Veiga, then still exiled, carried out the task of persuading the Allied executives of the benign nature of the planned revolution. According to the notes left by José Relvas, the approach to the French and English executives was based on three postulates, the non-sectarian nature of the revolution; the absence of solidarities between financial backers and the revolutionary movement; the complete alienation of Portuguese republicans from their Spanish counterparts. These assumptions acquired particular relevance in view of the articulation established between Paris and London in view of the eventual change of regime in Portugal. If France insisted on neutral position in close correlation with United Kingdom, this power underlined the need to avoid any pretexts for Spanish intervention in Portugal. Preventing this eventuality implied carrying out a revolution as peaceful as possible and fully safeguarding the members of the Portuguese royal family.

Those European states, and subsequently all the others with exception of Switzerland, officially recognised Portuguese new political institutions after the approval of the republican constitution, on the 23^rd August 1911, and the election of the President of the Republic, three days later. However, the normalization of the new structures, through their full insertion within the scope of relations between states, proved to be difficult. Monarchical resistance to the new status quo was evident in the insurrectionary attempts carried out by Paiva Couceiro, in October 1911 and June 1912, the reason for prevailing tensions between Portugal and Spain. This issue converged with the resumption of negotiations between the United Kingdom and the German Empire regarding African borders and, especially, the future of the Portuguese presence in the African and Asian contexts.

Thus, the spectre of territorial dispossession reappeared as well as fears of the threat to national sovereignty. Indeed, despite the relative normalization of relations between Portugal and the United Kingdom. republican governments resented the possibility, later confirmed, of contacts between the great empires of the Old World regarding the prevalence of Portugal in extra-European space. Such assumptions explained the willingness shown by the executive led by Bernardino Machado to join the war effort of the allies of the Entente Cordiale, in the summer of 1914. This availability remained unchanged, especially after the German attacks on southern Angola and northern Mozambique. The uncertainties about the priorities and interests of the British ally led to the return of pan-Latin postulates among the republican elite, especially that of the Democratic Party, which were part of the legitimizing articulation of Portuguese participation in the Great War.

This constituted the core of the exercise presented by José de Macedo, in 1916. In an analysis published in a volume edited by Renascença Portuguesa, the author established a close correlation between European belligerence and the future of small nations. As he argued, the fate of Serbia, threatened by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, like that of Belgium, attacked by the German Empire, could not be indifferent to any small European state. Strictly speaking, given the situation in the African theatre of war, such realities were not different from the Portuguese context, which was why José de Macedo called for national participation in the European war. According to this ideology, the conflict should lead to the construction of a new world order, based on the principles of association and the eradication of war, to be replaced by arbitration. This regulation process would imply the construction of a Latin block, formed by Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium, led by France, and expanded to the contexts of influence or presence of the aforementioned European powers. Therefore, it was intended to constitute a block capable of matching the influence of Germanic and/or Anglo-Saxon societies, of a broad spectrum. Macedo sought to construct a diplomatic response, in the political, economic and social aspects, to the decadent image of Latin societies, in the wake of other republican authors such as Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, an enthusiast of the federalist solution, or Consiglieri Pedroso, a supporter of the European federalist path, based on the prevalence of the republican regime.

The news of the proclamation of the Spanish republican regime was received with prudence and apprehension in Portugal. Whether it was the impact of the fall of the monarchy, preceded by the search for a crowned head, a hypothesis even suggested for D. Luís and D-Fernando, or the emergence of the republican regime as well as the effects of the Cantonalist movement, which lasted for a long time in the Portuguese context. Consequently, and not surprisingly, in April 1875, Comte of Rio Maior expressed his deep sorrow for the “tragedies” suffered by the “heroic Spanish people”; nevertheless, the happenings occurred in Spain

Early on, the federalist republican periodical O Rebate became the apo- logist of the defence of the Spanish revolutionary dynamics whose evolution was widely reported. This periodical, linked to the Republican Federalist Centre of Lisbon, ceased publication in February 1874 and was replaced by a new newspaper, República, which brought together a considerable group of Portuguese activists, complemented by Spanish republicans exiled in Portugal, namely Paul Angulo, Ramon de Casa, Eduardo Benot, Nicolao Estebanez, Fernando Garrido, Gumersindo de la Rosa, Romualdo Lafuente, widely praised by Portuguese colleagues for their performance, spirit of sacrifice and attachment to the republican cause in both peninsular countries.

Such evocations formulated by Carrilho Videira, a federalist republican in frontal antagonism with the unitary group, appeared in a moment characterized by the internal crisis in the republican movement. The essential motivations for the dispute lay in the careless treatment granted by republican deputies to the issue of royal endowment. The aforementioned topic, as well as the criticism of republican members of parliament, in this matter attracted the Almanach Republicano’s attention. In an extensive article, the periodical was dedicated to a comparative exercise on how republicans, Portuguese and Spanish, dealt with the issue of funding for the Royal Houses of the respective countries. This work would not lack the almost complete transcription of Pi y Margall’s intervention in the Spanish parliament, nor the broad defence of the Spanish republican experience of 1873-1874.

Alternatively, regarding the national context, the Almanach evidenced deep regret for the conduct of the republicans in parliament, “since Mr. Elias Garcia did not say a word about such scandalous extortion, Consiglieri Pedroso, as always, spoke a lot, heaped banalities and nonsense upon nonsense, full of benevolence towards the progressives (the government), to whom he owes his triumph and only Mr. Latino Coelho reacted, in the Chamber of Lords, and saved the dignity of the republican party”.

Accordingly, one of the criticized, Consiglieri Pedro, replied with an essay regarding Spanish First Republic, based on a different perspective on this political experience and, consequently, on federalism.

A specific mention should be added of the political and ideological path of the author in question. Co-founder of the republican newspaper República – Liberdade – Egualdade – Solidariedade, with Carrilho Videira, in 1874 and 1875, such as collaborator in Almanach Republicano, directed by Videira, during the year of 1875, the author would assume a dissimilar understanding on the relevance of the federalist solution, attending the national context. Without rejecting the federalist principles, Consiglieri Pedroso became an apologist of the evolutionist formula and the conversion of the national fabric to republicanism through instruction and propaganda, with an evident distance from the revolutionary solution. These divergences turned out to be evident, insurmountable even, at the end of 1876, the date on which Carrilho Videira saw himself removed from the Republican Democrat Centre in Lisbon. For this fact, the expelled element found justification in the options and procedures assumed by the previous fellow who had gradually disowned the purity of the republican ideals shared by both in the previous years and maintained by Videira, despite the setbacks.

In this sense, the Spanish Republic acquired a specific content in the context of the confrontation between the different sensibilities of Portuguese republicanism which appealed and understood the political experience of the neighbouring country as an instrument of political confrontation in the republican movement. Consiglieri Pedroso responded to the evocation of the elevated purposes of the Spanish Republic and the political performance of Pi y Margall, to the discredit of the Portuguese republican parliamentarians, according to the position expressed by Carrilho Videira, with a critical historiographical reading of the events that took place in Spain. The use of historical narrative and reconstitution were not indifferent to the intellectual work of the author, member of the faculty of the Superior Course of Letters since January 1879, as professor of Portuguese History and Universal History.

Conceived as a resource for informing public opinion, and simultaneously, a means of propaganda aimed at the general public, as well as at the different sensitivities of the republican movement, the brochure entitled History of Spanish Republic was published in 1887. Characterized by linear historical temporality, the work reflected a clear influence of the positivist methodological perspective, current in which the respective author pontificated. Moreover, it was part of the dominant historiographical trends at the time among republican authors, according to the guidelines adopted in the historical analysis works of Teófilo Braga, who was also a professor of the Superior Course of Letters.

To that extent, Consiglieri Pedroso introduced two primary key premises, present as preambular part, namely “the cry of Cadiz and the victory of Alcolea were to have as an immediate consequence the proclamation of the Republic in Spain” and “the revolution started against the queen and against the Bourbons assumed proportions unforeseen by its initiators”; to which the author tested a proposal for a plausible response, by assessing the political and social conditions of the neighbouring country as well as successive approximations to the framework of options accessible to Spanish republicans, between 1868 and 1874. In this way, the internal organization of the brochure, segmented into 24 parts, of variable size but succinct in nature, fulfilled the function of explaining the main fundamentals, previously selected by the author. Moreover, this analysis, based on the subliminal assumption of analogous parameters regarding the institutional, political and economic dimension of the two Iberian countries, hinted at the failure of a possible revolutionary action in Portugal, similarly to what happened in Spain.

According to Consiglieri Pedroso, the adoption of the republican regime, in September 1868, would ensure general tranquillity in the country and would contribute decisively to bringing together national forces in favour of ending “Carlist banditry”, eradicating the “intrigues of the Bourbons” and correcting the “exaggerations of communalism”. Nevertheless, as considered by, there was a lack of direct correspondence between the first phase, the revolution, as well as the purposes desired by the agents acting in the same, and the second phase, which was characterized as “a democratic monarchy which, being a monarchy, was absolutely incompatible with the country’s aspirations for freedom”.

This discrepancy was defined by Pedroso as an error, with paradoxical consequences, materialized by the emergence of the anarchy and, no less relevant, by the “decapitation of the revolution which, in fact, had left the old traditions of divine right buried under the bridge of Alcolea, and which in the conscience had engraved in indelible characters a protest of justified hatred against the Bourbon race, which so enslaved, debased and dishonoured the noble homeland of Cervantes”. Rehearsing an outline of theoretical reflection on the revolutionary processes, Consiglieri Pedroso reasoned about the necessary conditions for the pursuit of a successful movement, refuting a singular and simplistic perspective. Instead, as appreciated,

Consiglieri Pedroso’s approach did not ignore the external repercussions of Spanish events. On the contrary, the author emphasised the effects of the seeking for a crowned head for the throne of Spain on Franco-German relations and, ultimately, on the European balance. Thus, the publicist attributed the candidacy of Leopold Hohenzollern to the Spanish crown, sponsored by the German Empire and Portuguese Monarchy, the immediate motivation for the belligerence between Germany and France, with relevant consequences in the political reconfiguration of the Old World. The conflict also was described as the basis for the French sentiment of revanche, for the vigorous affirmation of the bloc Pan-Germanic and for the permanent state of war prevailing in Central Europe.

According to Consiglieri Pedroso’s perceptions, the determining causes for the failure of the Spanish Republic had endogenous and exogenous dimensions, which had interacted in a context of evident fragility of the new institutions. Therefore, the inability to reach consensus among the republican elite, namely between the federalist perspective and the centralist model, as within the scope of priorities and political objectives, had made the newly implemented regime permeable to the actions of General Pavia, to whom the dissolution of the constituent assembly was due. However, the fall of the Spanish Republic could also be explained by the performance of European monarchies, a segment in which the German Empire stood out as an active player in the political redefinition of the Old World.

In summary, Consiglieri Pedroso found in the 1868 revolution and in the Spanish republic proclaimed in 1873 topics for intense reflection on the revolutionary processes and the capacity to implant and strengthen republican regimes in Monarchic Europe. According to the author’s reasoning, and given the tendency to parallelism between the Iberian countries, the legacy of the Spanish republic proved to be antagonistic with the pursuit of the revolutionary path. It also raised considerations about the vulnerable nature of the political elites’ ability to act, whose action would succumb due to the mobilization of conservative forces, with broad popular acceptance. A similar premise would incorporate the perceptions of Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, as demonstrated in the author’s memorialist evocations on the Iberian republican experiences. As stated, retained the recommendations of Emilio Castelar “Portuguese republicans should never forget what happened in Spain. It was a useful lesson for everyone”, assertions bitterly confirmed by the Portuguese interlocutor, in the aftermath of the implementation of the republican regime in Portugal.

Far from appeasing disagreement, Consiglieri Pedroso’s work kept the controversy surrounding the Spanish Republic within the Portuguese republican framework. Unsurprisingly, the publication was received and understood as another phase of the quarrel between Portuguese moderate and radical republicans, maintained until October 1910. For example, the death of Nicolas Salmeron, which took place on 20 September 1908, constituted an opportune moment to evoke the respective political and institutional path, in the pages of Archivo Democrático, by the writing of Augusto José Vieira.

According to the author’s views, the disappearance of Salmeron constituted a huge lost for Spanish democratic ideals, equally felt among the Iberian democrats. Appealing to his own memory and experience, he recalled this “sincere friend of Portugal”, when traveling to Paris, during one of Nicolas Salmeron’s exiles. Remembered him residing on Odeón Street, in the French capital, and unlike Ruiz Zorrilla, “who, although a sincere democrat and revolutionary, although polite and affable in his dealings, had not forgotten the formalities of other times and was not without a certain aristocratic sign and a certain haughty air, Salmeron began by putting those who visited him at ease in his modest house, in the heart of the Latin Quarter”.

Vieira also evoked the ideas of Salmeron regarding the future of the Iberian Peninsula, characterized by an “Alliance of the two peninsular peoples, under the aegis of two republics, each of which absolutely respects the integrity and independence of its neighbour, so both can enter later, each as an autonomous factor in the precursor Latin Federation of the United States of Europe, which will, in turn, be the precursors of a broader federation that, abolishing borders, proclaim humanity all one, in a world also all one”.

Meanwhile, Vieira did not forget Salmeron’s performance during the Spanish Republic and underlined the ideological coherence that was decisive for the voluntary removal of the Presidency of the Republic, a conduct considered in contrast with the other political leaders. Such as the expulsion imposed to Nicolas Salmeron by Portuguese executive, in October 1894, and the explanations asked by the republican members of parliament, Eduardo de Abreu and Gomes da Silva to the Portuguese government on the matter.

In the aftermath of the Portuguese Revolution and the proclamation of the republican regime on 5 October 1910, the Spanish experience resumed its leading role in the debate on the nature of revolutionary processes. A special mention should be made of the underlying complexity of the context in which new national political institutions emerged. To the aforementioned external pressures, others were added, of an endogenous nature, due to the intrinsic nature of the movement responsible for the end of the Portuguese monarchy.

In fact, despite the commitments assumed by the Republicans before the 5^th October 1910, the period immediately following the revolution was characterized by the outbreak of violence directed towards specific targets, namely those associated with the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the difficulty in controlling the most radical sectors was evident, reason for the reposition, as immediate as possible, of the legislation on religious congregations of 1834. Suddenly, the provisional government was faced with the need for public recognition of the popular sectors, directly involved in the revolutionary movements, to enlarge its public acceptance and, simultaneously, with the necessity of promoting an orderly external image.

The dilemma was increased by the so-called conspiracy against Portugal, which corresponded to potential risk for the new political institutions. Reversing the Jacobin connotation associated with the Portuguese Republic implied a redefinition of the new executive’s governing guidelines, based on containment and/or conversion of radical groups. Likewise, the assumption of differentiating values compared to the recent past was appreciated, namely, the republican ethics was appreciated. One of the intrinsic aspects of that effort was associated with a period of reflection on the revolutionary processes, thus considered from a comparative perspective. Moreover, this exercise had a pedagogical nature and had repercussions on the observation of different eras and historical dynamics.

Those constituted the main objectives of the collection Biblioteca Histórica (Popular and Ilustrada), edited by Casa Alfredo David, in Lisbon. The collection plan sought to cover a representative set of revolutionary realities, of a national nature, such as those concerning the 31st of January 1891 and the revolution of 5th October 1910, volumes subscribed by Jorge de Abreu. Similarly, it contemplated exogenous revolutionary phenomena, such as the French Revolution and the Spanish Revolution and Republic. The analysis subordinated to the Spanish case was assumed by the historian Victor Ribeiro, who published the aforementioned volume in 1912. According to the historiographical approach of Armando Carvalho Homem, Victor Ribeiro was member of the generation of Portuguese historians in the early 20th century; however, Ribeiro distanced himself from the others, due to the performance of functions as museum curator and the lack of higher education, a fact that did not prevent his integration into the Academy of Sciences in Lisbon.

The methodological guidelines adopted in the making of the work were presented in the author’s synthetic preface, a text in which Ribeiro did not hide his distancing from the events and realities analysed in the work. Consequently, resorting to accredited authors, such as the approaches by Consiglieri Pedroso or Teixeira Bastos, seemed pertinent, as much as consulting studies developed by Spanish authors, such as Miguel Morayta or Peres Galdós. Those were the preliminary postulates of this History of the Revolution and the Spanish Republic, conceived with the aim of contributing to the education of the popular masses. Accordingly, and paradoxically, the author declared his intentions to make known a wide research and compilation of outcomes. Far from an unprecedented vision or a disruptive perspective on Spanish political evolution, between 1868 and 1874, Victor Ribeiro opted for an unpretentious but an informative work. As argued, the author intended to

The internal organization of the work gave centrality to temporal pattern, considered as a primordial category on the explanatory exercise. In fact, the relevance of time in the author’s historiographical explanation was evidenced by the need to recede to 1812 as a formula to contextualize the roots of democratic ideas in Spain, the subject of the first chapter. The sequential view still presided over the other chapters, segmented as follows: the reign of Fernando VII, the essential characteristics of the period between 1833 and 1868, with emphasis on the parallelism between the two peninsular countries, the 1868 revolution, the search for a king, Amadeu of Saboia, the Spanish Republic (between 10 February and 1 June 1873); the proclamation of the Federal Republic, Pi y Margall —the Left and Intransigence give way to the triumphant Right, Carlism and Cantonalism, the Salmeron government, the Castelar government, the Pavia coup and the epilogue of the Spanish Republic.

This historiographical approach underlined the precedence of repu- blican aspirations in Spain, the repercussions of Federalism on the Spanish republican experience, the strength of extreme political sectors and the vulnerability of the political institutions of the Spanish Republic, appreciable in the fragmentation of the forces supporting the regime. Strangely, the lasting effects of the Spanish Revolution and Republic were felt in the Portuguese context, in which the influence of the neighbouring country allowed the germination of democratic ideas and, consequently, the formation of the Portuguese Republican Party, favoured by the circulation of ideas and by the parallelism conceived in the anti-monarchical sectors against the ruling dynasties. Without reservations, Victor Ribeiro directly linked the evolution of Portuguese republicanism and the outbreak of the Portuguese regime in the broader framework of the political transformations occurred in the peninsular context. Those, characterised by a similar nature, had generated different results, allowing Portugal to benefit from the triumph of the Republic, instead of Spain. However, according to Victor Ribeiro’s postulates, Portuguese success would imply a detailed analysis of Spanish failure, whose foundations, far from remote from Portuguese reality, lurked at every step, the existence of new institutions.

Between the 1880s and the eve of the Great War, the Revolution and the Spanish Republic of 1873-1874 constituted factors of analysis and reflection in the Portuguese republican movement. In addition to the underlying ideological nature of the Spanish political evolution and the orientations assumed by the Spanish republicans, premises acting in the organic structures applied by the supporters of the Republic in Portugal, the First Spanish Republic, in its intrinsic characteristics and path, raised successive analyses which resulted from the differentiated understanding conceived within the scope of the different sensibilities of Portuguese republicanism. Accordingly, the attachment of the Portuguese federalist republicans to the Spanish political rupture, with which they showed solidarity, contrasted with the distanced formula assumed by the moderate sectors which evolved in the path of the institutional and political guidelines of the Fourth French Republic.

From this perspective, the federalist expression assumed unequivocal relevance for the reconfiguration of the international order of the Old World, given the desirable prevalence of the republican regime and the revaluation of the states directly associated with the Latin legacy —Spain, France, Italy and Portugal— as a formula for breaking the dichotomy between dying and progressive nations and the relegation of agricultural economies in southern Europe to the ascendancy of industrialized societies. In this sense, Pan-Latinism emerged as a structuring and transversal axis in Portuguese republicanism, rather than the understanding of the conception of a federal structure in the peninsular perimeter, cherished by the radicals and refuted by the moderates.

The historiographical readings on the Spanish Republic, conceived in the Portuguese context, in the 1880s or after the establishment of the republican regime in Portugal, were part of this internal debate on the preferential formulas for building a new state capable of corresponding to the values of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity. However, the Spanish Republic, in its origins, vicissitudes and decline, configured also a basis for analysis on the possible routes for institutional rupture in the Portuguese context, the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy and the building of a lasting republican regime. In observance, the historiographical representations of the Spanish republic conceived by Consiglieri Pedroso, in 1887, and by Victor Ribeiro, in 1912, resulted from differentiated levels of perception about the political evolution occurred in the neighbouring country, from the degree of linkage and ideological affinity of the respective authors to the federalist model, the conjuncture underlying the elaboration of the studies and the purposes intended.

For Consiglieri Pedroso, the Spanish republic was seen as an unsuccessful formula, the result of endogenous and exogenous pressures, whose interaction had been successful due to the inability of the republican elite to identify the political objectives appropriate to the social and economic structure of Spain. Thus, it was presented as a case study to be considered in the scope of the analysis of revolutionary processes, of particular interest to Portuguese republicans, advising against revolutionary ruptures, rather showing itself to be paradigmatic of the solidity underlying evolutionary solutions. In Victor Ribeiro’s approach, the Spanish republican experience proved to be of strategic importance in the political context of the recent political rupture. Characterized by its undeniable pedagogical vocation, essential for the formation of republican citizenship, the volume sought to demonstrate the causes of the fragility of Spanish political institutions instituted in 1873, a pertinent assessment of the difficulties felt at the time by the Portuguese Republic, especially those resulting from the actions of foreign powers and the internal antagonism between the radical and conservative sectors of Portuguese society.