Kingdom of Spain Reino de España
1820–1823
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto: Plus ultra (Latin) (English: "Further Beyond")
Anthem: Himno de Riego Anthem of Riego
Capital	Madrid
Common languages	Spanish
Religion	Roman Catholic Church (official)
Demonym	Spanish
Government	Unitary parliamentary semi-constitutional monarchy
King
• 1820–1823	Ferdinand VII
Secretary of State
• 1820–1821	Evaristo Pérez
• 1821–1822	Ramón López-Pelegrín
• 1822	Francisco Martínez
• 1822–1823	Evaristo Fernández
• 1823	José María Pando
Legislature	Cortes Generales
Historical era	Revolutions during the 1820s
• Established	1 January 1820
• Restoration of the Constitution	7 March 1820
• First general election	April – May 1820
• Second general election	October – December 1822
• Disestablished	1 October 1823
Currency	Spanish dollar
Preceded by Succeeded by Sexenio Absolutista Ominous Decade

The Trienio Liberal, ([ˈtɾjenjo liβeˈɾal], lit. 'Liberal Triennium') or Three Liberal Years, was a period of three years in Spain between 1820 and 1823 when a liberal government ruled Spain after a military uprising in January 1820 by the lieutenant-colonel Rafael del Riego against the absolutist rule of king Ferdinand VII. Del Riego's uprising forced Ferdinand VII to restore on 9 March the Constitution of Cádiz of 1812.

It ended in 1823 when, with the approval of the crowned heads of Europe, a French army invaded Spain and reinstated the King's absolute power. This invasion is known in France as the "Spanish Expedition" (expédition d’Espagne) and in Spain as the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis."

The Triennium is framed within the European period of the Revolutions of 1820, of which it constituted the trigger. The Constitution of Cádiz was adopted by the Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolutionaries and taken as a model by the Portuguese.

After returning from captivity in France, King Ferdinand VII abolished in May 1814, through a coup d'état, the Constitution of 1812 approved by the Cortes of Cádiz, and restored absolute monarchy. The liberals, defenders of the constitutional monarchy, were imprisoned, exiled, or forced into exile.^[1] During the following six years (the Sexenio Absolutista), the king and his ministers failed to resolve the crisis of the Old Regime that had begun in 1808 and had worsened notably with the Peninsular War (1808–1814). The conflict destroyed the main pillars of the economy, and trade with the Americas declined as a consequence of the process of emancipation of the colonies that had begun in 1810. The result was a brutal economic depression manifested in falling prices (deflation). As a consequence, the treasury of the Monarchy went bankrupt: American revenues no longer arrived in the amounts seen before 1808 (with the resulting decline in customs income as well), and it was no longer possible to resort to issuing more vales reales, since they had become completely depreciated due to the accumulation of arrears in annual interest payments.^[2][3] There was an attempt at treasury reform carried out by Martín de Garay, but it did not succeed due to opposition from the two privileged estates, the nobility and the clergy, and also from the peasantry (which rejected the tax because it meant an increase in burdens they were already bearing at a time when "agricultural product prices were beginning to collapse").^[4][3]

Faced with the inability of Ferdinand VII's ministers to resolve the crisis,^[5] the liberals (many of them integrated into Freemasonry in order to act clandestinely) attempted to restore the Constitutional Monarchy by means of pronunciamientos. The aim was to seek support among "constitutionalist" military officers (or simply those dissatisfied with the situation), so that they would raise a regiment in arms whose uprising would provoke the rebellion of other military units and thus force the king to recognize and swear to uphold the Constitution of 1812. "The pronunciamientos were led by military men, men who had participated in the War of Independence, gaining prestige and rising in rank, soldiers who found themselves immersed in the current of political change that had emerged during the conflict, in the shadow of the work of the Cortes in Cádiz. [...] The defense of sovereignty and freedom implied a fundamental change of mentality, from the moment that the soldiers who led or participated in the pronunciamientos began to feel like soldiers of the nation, members of the national army and not of the royal militia".^[6]

During the Sexenio Absolutista (1814–1820), there had been an attempt to return to the estate-based army, "in which the higher ranks were held by members of the nobility, while the troops came from forced conscription, volunteers, and those sentenced by courts to military service." The reforms introduced by the Cortes of Cádiz—which had led to the formation of a national army "based on the citizen as a soldier of the nation, included both in the standing army and in the National Militia"—were annulled. In particular, the decree of 8 August 1811, which had allowed free access for any citizen to military colleges and academies and to cadet positions (thus ceasing to be a privilege of the nobility), had been abolished. On the other hand, the very dynamics of the Peninsular War had also contributed to breaking the structures of the estate-based army that had existed in 1808, since in the guerrilla the command of troops was no longer a noble privilege, and most partisan leaders came from the common people, such as Espoz y Mina, Porlier, or "El Empecinado".^[7][3]

The annulment of the reforms introduced by the Cortes of Cádiz caused discontent among many officers, compounded by delays in the payment of their salaries (at times they had to accept reductions to obtain regular payment) and the lack of prospects for promotion due to the surplus of officers produced by the war. Moreover, the thousands of unemployed officers blamed their situation on the policy of the Secretaries of War, which sidelined those who had come from the guerrilla, those who had risen from the ranks, and those regarded as liberals. Thus, "many officers became receptive to liberal ideas as a consequence of the absolutist policy, which alienated many of its supporters. Economic and promotional difficulties did the rest," according to Víctor Sánchez Martín. The bankruptcy of the treasury forced successive reductions in military personnel. The last took place in June 1818, and the absolutist authorities once again took advantage of the occasion to ensure that the officers who lost their posts were mostly those who had come from the war.^[8]

Between 1814 and 1820 six pronunciamientos took place (the first five failed) until the last one (that of Riego) succeeded.^[9] The first occurred in Navarre in September 1814 and was led by the guerrilla hero Francisco Espoz y Mina, who, after failing to take Pamplona, fled to France. The second took place in A Coruña in September 1815 and was led by another war hero, General Juan Díaz Porlier, who was sentenced to death and hanged. In February 1815 the preparation of a pronunciamiento (known as the Conspiracy of the Triangle) was discovered; it was led by a former guerrilla fighter, Vicente Richart, who was sentenced to death and executed by hanging, along with his companion Baltasar Gutiérrez. In April 1817 the fourth attempt took place in Barcelona (this time with broad bourgeois and popular participation), led by the prestigious General Luis Lacy, who was tried and executed. On 1 January 1819 the fifth pronunciamiento occurred, this time in Valencia, led by Colonel Joaquín Vidal, and ended with his execution by hanging and that of twelve other non-military participants, including the well-known bourgeois citizens of the city Félix Bertrán de Lis and Diego María Calatrava.^[1][10] Víctor Sánchez Martín has noted that although the aim of the pronunciamientos was to end absolutism, not all of them sought to restore the Constitution of 1812 in its entirety. Porlier’s aimed to convene extraordinary Cortes to amend the Constitution, and Vidal’s advocated establishing a constitutional regime different from that of 1812 and with Charles IV (unaware that he had just died in Naples) on the throne. By contrast, Lacy’s was unequivocal: it referred to "the Constitution." The same was true of Riego's.^[8]

King Ferdinand VII provoked widespread unrest, particularly in the army, by refusing to accept the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812. The King sought to reclaim the Spanish colonies in the Americas that had recently revolted successfully, consequently depriving Spain of an essential source of revenue.

On 1 January 1820, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Asturias Regiment, which was stationed in Las Cabezas de San Juan, near Cádiz, awaiting embarkation to the Americas as part of the expeditionary army tasked with suppressing the uprisings in the colonies, were angry over infrequent pay, bad food, and poor quarters. They mutinied under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael del Riego.^[11] Pledging fealty to the 1812 Constitution, they seized their commander. Riego addressed the officers and soldiers newly under his command with the following speech in support of the Constitution of 1812—Riego pronounced (se pronunció), hence the Spanish-language term pronunciamiento ("pronouncement"), which originated at that time:^[12]

Spain is living at the mercy of an arbitrary and absolute power, exercised without the slightest respect for the fundamental laws of the nation. The king, who owes his throne to those who fought in the War of Independence, has not, however, sworn to the Constitution; the Constitution, a pact between monarch and people, the foundation and embodiment of every modern nation. The Spanish Constitution, just and liberal, was drafted in Cádiz amid blood and suffering. Yet the king has not sworn to it, and it is necessary, for Spain to be saved, that the king swear to and respect the Constitution of 1812, the legitimate and civil affirmation of the rights and duties of Spaniards, of all Spaniards, from the King to the humblest farmer. [...] Yes, yes, soldiers, the Constitution. Long live the Constitution!

After failing to seize Cádiz, the troops raised by Riego began on 27 January a difficult and lengthy march through Andalusia, proclaiming the Constitution of 1812 and removing absolutist authorities in the towns they passed through. They encountered little resistance, but received no news of other garrisons joining the uprising.

To maintain morale, one of the officers, the future general Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel, composed a patriotic hymn that soon became known as the Himno de Riego (which, 111 years later, would become the official anthem of Spain during the Second Spanish Republic). The refrain read:^[12]

Soldiers, the fatherland calls us to the fray, let us swear by it to conquer or to die.

The rebel forces moved to nearby San Fernando, where they began preparations to march on the capital, Madrid, but this plan would never be executed. Instead, they wandered through Andalusia for nearly two months, and when on 11 March they were heading toward Portugal, considering the cause lost—the column had been reduced to about fifty men—they received news that King Ferdinand VII had, two days earlier, agreed to restore the Constitution after the absolutist government had proven incapable of suppressing the uprisings of several peripheral garrisons that had followed Riego’s example.^[13]

In a royal decree promulgated on 7 March, Ferdinand VII declared: “being the will of the people, I have decided to swear to the Constitution promulgated by the General and Extraordinary Cortes in the year 1812.”^[14][15] As Emilio La Parra López has noted, “what returned was that Constitution and those Cortes which on 4 May 1814 the king had ordered removed. The language of the revolution also returned: Ferdinand VII justified his oath to the Constitution because that was 'the will of the people.'"^[16] "The second liberal experience in Spain had begun."^[17] One of the reasons that finally led the king to take that step was learning—according to information provided by General Ballesteros, recently appointed head of the Army of the Centre—that the troops in Madrid and even the Royal Guard were in favor of the Constitution.^[18] Ferdinand VII was the second European sovereign to swear to a constitution (the first had been Louis XVI during the French Revolution).^[19]

On 8 March all political prisoners were released and the return of all those banished or exiled because of political reasons was permitted. The following day, 9 March, the king ordered the reinstatement of the constitutional city council dismissed in 1814, and its members, together with six commissioners appointed by the citizens of Madrid, presented themselves at the Royal Palace. There Ferdinand VII swore to the Constitution for the first time (the formal oath would take place in July before the newly elected Cortes, as required by the Constitution), and that same day he abolished the Inquisition and appointed a Provisional Junta, replacing the government, presided over by Cardinal Borbón, Archbishop of Toledo and cousin of the king, who had already headed the constitutional regency in 1814.^[20][21][22] "Finally, the king had to dispense with some of his trusted men closely linked to the camarilla, a measure that served to save the king after the revolution and to construct the official explanation of what had happened: it was not the king but his bad advisers who had led the country to that situation, which made it possible that, after the revolution, the monarch could remain on the throne without having to assume responsibility for the past."^[23]

The thesis maintained by the liberals of a king deceived by his advisers and ministers appeared in theatrical works (such as the one entitled Fernando VII desengañado por los héroes de la nación en 1820), in speeches delivered in the patriotic societies (in one he was referred to as “our involuntary despot” deceived by his entourage), or in songs (“Vile condemnation dragged Spain along / and deception clouded her king,” said one, referring to the situation of 1814). Emilio La Parra López has pointed out that it was above all the Exaltados (left-wing radical) liberals who sustained the fiction that Ferdinand VII acted under deception, due to their determination to “preserve in its entirety the Constitution.” He cites Deputy Juan Romero Alpuente, who wrote that after the triumph of the revolution "the perfidious advisers who had blindfolded him so that he would not see disappeared from his side."^[24]

On 10 March the king made public a manifesto announcing that he had sworn to the Constitution, of which he would be "always its firmest support." The manifesto ended with a paragraph that would become famous (because Ferdinand VII failed to keep the promise it contained and "almost the day after swearing to the Constitution he began to act to overthrow it"):^[25][26]

You have made me understand your desire that that Constitution promulgated in Cádiz in the year 1812, amid the thunder of hostile arms while you fought with the astonishment of the world for the freedom of the fatherland, be restored. I have heard your wishes, and as a tender Father I have condescended to what my children deem conducive to their happiness. I have sworn to the Constitution for which you longed, and I shall always be its firmest support. [...] Let us proceed frankly, and I the first, along the constitutional path; and by showing Europe a model of wisdom, order, and perfect moderation in a crisis which in other nations has been accompanied by tears and misfortunes, let us make the Spanish name admired and revered, while we forge for centuries our happiness and our glory.

Despite the rebels' relative weakness, Ferdinand accepted the constitution on 9 March 1820, granting power to liberal ministers and ushering in the Trienio Liberal. However, political conspiracies of both right and left proliferated in Spain, as was the case across much of the rest of Europe. Liberal revolutionaries stormed the King's palace and seized Ferdinand VII, who was a prisoner of the Cortes in all but name for the next three years and retired to Aranjuez.

The Progresista (progressive) liberal government reorganized Spain into 52 provinces, and it intended to reduce the regional autonomy that had been a hallmark of Spanish bureaucracy since Habsburg rule in the 16th and 17th centuries. Opposition of the affected regions, in particular, Aragon, Navarre, and Catalonia, shared in the king's antipathy for the liberal government. The anticlerical policies of the Progresista government led to friction with the Catholic Church, and attempts to bring about industrialisation alienated old trade guilds. The abolishment of the Spanish Inquisition, which had been abolished by both Joseph Bonaparte and the Cortes of Cádiz during the French occupation, led to accusations of the new government being nothing more than afrancesados (francophiles), who, only six years earlier, had been forced out of the country.

More radical liberals attempted to revolt against the entire idea of a monarchy, regardless of how little power it had. In 1821, they were suppressed, but the incident served to illustrate the frail coalition that bound the government together.

The elections to the Cortes Generales in 1822 were won by Rafael del Riego.

Ferdinand's supporters set themselves up at Urgell, took up arms and put in place an absolutist regency, the Urgel Regency. In 1822, Ferdinand's supporters, accompanied by the Royal Guard, staged an uprising in Madrid that was subdued by forces supporting the new government and its constitution. Despite the defeat of Ferdinand's supporters at Madrid, civil war erupted in the regions of Castile, Toledo, and Andalusia.

As the moderate liberals were discredited by the ambiguous attitude that they had maintained during the absolutist attempt at coup d’état^[27][28], the king was forced on 5 August to appoint a cabinet made up of radical liberals.^[29][30] "If the king’s relationship with the moderates had been difficult, the coexistence now opening with advanced liberalism was going to be even more complicated."^[31]

The election of a radical liberal government in 1823 further destabilized Spain. The army, whose liberal leanings had brought the government to power, began to waver when the Spanish economy failed to improve, and in 1823, a mutiny in Madrid had to be suppressed. The Jesuits, who had been banned by Charles III in the 18th century, only to be rehabilitated by Ferdinand VII after his restoration, were banned again by the government. For the duration of liberal rule, Ferdinand (still technically head of state) lived under virtual house arrest.

The Congress of Vienna, ending the Napoleonic Wars, had inaugurated the "Congress system" as an instrument of international stability in Europe. Rebuffed by the Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in his request for help against the liberal revolutionaries in 1820, by 1822, the "Concert of Europe" was so concerned by Spain's liberal government and its surprising hardiness that it was prepared to intervene on Ferdinand's behalf.

As soon as the revolution triumphed, many peasants stopped paying tithes and feudal dues, about which the nobility and the clergy complained to the Cortes.^[32] In August 1820, the provincial deputation of Córdoba submitted to the Cortes seven petitions that revived the reforms approved by the Cortes of Cádiz and in practice meant the abolition of the Ancien Régime in Spain:^[33]

That the secular and regular clergy be limited to a fixed number; that superfluous convents be suppressed; that ecclesiastical and civil amortization be extinguished; that the owners of lordships present, within a fixed period, the titles to their properties and privileges; that reversion lawsuits [to the Crown] be expedited; that tithes be extinguished; and, finally, that two channels be opened between the rivers Guadalquivir, Guadajoz, Genil and Guadalimar.

The Provisional Consultative Junta had already approved several decrees aimed at dismantling the Ancien Régime, such as incorporating jurisdictional lordships into the nation, abolishing exclusive, private, and prohibitive privileges, demolishing the signs of vassalage (such as the pillory), or establishing freedom of industry.^[34] The Cortes continued that work, and the first major measure they approved was the disentailment of estates by suppressing, through a decree published on 27 September 1820, "all entailed estates, fideicommissa, patronages and any other kind of entailment of real property, movable goods, livestock, censuses, juros, foros, or of any other nature, which are henceforth restored to the class of absolutely free property" (an issue not addressed by the Cortes of Cádiz).^[35] With the abolition of the entail, the “properties” of a noble house included in it (inherited exclusively by the firstborn, with the obligation to keep them intact) could now be alienated (sold, mortgaged, or seized when claimed by creditors).^[36] They became “free” property.^[37] Disentailment, together with confiscation and the abolition of seigneurial rights, formed part of the liberal project, rooted in the Spanish Enlightenment (with its criticism of "dead hands"), to "clear the Spanish countryside of obstacles and foster its production and development."^[38]

The following month, on 25 October 1820, the Cortes approved the reform of the Regular clergy, which included the suppression of the monastic orders and military orders and the closure of many convents of the Mendicant orders. The main aim of this measure was to reduce the numbers of the Regular clergy, since liberals regarded regular clergy as basically useless in the new society, very different from the positive value they attached to parish priests as the "first support of the new institutions". By 1822, nearly half of Spain’s convents had been closed. Their communities would thereafter depend on bishops, appointed on the government’s proposal, and not on the superiors of each order; there could be no more than one convent of the same order per town, and only where it had at least 12 religious ordained in sacris, with the Piarists excluded from the measure.^[39][40] Monks and friars were also given an easier path to secularization—that is, transfer to the Secular clergy.^[41] Previously, following the Enlightenment legacy, they had suppressed the Jesuits (27 September).^[42][43]

What liberals sought in passing the law of 25 October was to apply Article 12 of the Constitution, which, after proclaiming the confessional nature of the state ("The religion of the Spanish Nation is and shall be perpetually the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman, the only true one"), stated that "the Nation protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other." Liberals interpreted this to mean that only the Nation, represented in the Cortes, was legitimately empowered to determine religious policy—linking, in this respect, to the Bourbon regalism of the previous century—whereas the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Pope read Article 12 in the opposite way, holding that it obliged the civil power to safeguard the "rights of the Church." This was the root of the conflict that set an important part of the clergy—especially the bishops supported by the Pope—against the liberal regime, whose religious policy, largely inspired by Enlightenment proposals,^[45] was branded by them as Jansenist.^[46] As Ángel Bahamonde and Jesús A. Martínez have emphasized, the ecclesiastical reform carried out by liberals "was guided, more than by anti-clerical guidelines—present in some sectors of radicals liberalism—, by a desire to integrate the clergy within the constitutional framework... After all, the Constitution, by its confessional nature, was perfectly compatible with the Catholic religion".^[47] But liberals failed to create a constitutional ecclesiastical hierarchy because the Holy See (supported by the majority of bishops) refused to appoint the government’s nominees to vacant bishoprics—mostly vacant due to the banishment or flight of their incumbents—^{[note 1]} calling them Jansenists—and threatened any cleric who accepted appointment exclusively by the political power with being considered "an intruder, schismatic, murderer of souls, disturber of the peace". Between July 1820 and October 1822 the government selected candidates for fifteen bishoprics and only three were confirmed by Rome.^[48]

The assets of the suppressed monasteries and convents, and those of the Inquisition and the Jesuits, were "disamortized" (they passed to the state and were sold at public auction).^[49][50] Disamortization affected 25,000 estates, with an overall value of between 500 and 1000 million reales, brought in by some 7,500 buyers, who were allowed to pay with public-debt securities—"so that, given their depreciation, the real value of purchases was below the high bids reached at auction".^[51] Nothing was done to facilitate peasants’ access to ownership of these disentailed assets, which were purchased mostly by the wealthiest owners. Many peasants' situation even worsened when the new owners demanded higher rents from peasants who leased the plots (by virtue of the "freedom of leases" decreed by the Cortes) or even evicted them, invoking the "right of property" they had acquired.^[52] Diego González Alonso, an agrarianist who served as a deputy in the Cortes, wrote years later in his book La nueva ley agraria:^[53]

Millions of inhabitants, thousands of towns, were left at the mercy of a cruel proprietor, to whom it matters little, as we saw in 1820 and thereafter, that entire families, who rested in the homes of their elders... should wander orphaned, seeking connections in order to find shelter for themselves and a place and protection for their scattered and weakened herds. [...] If property had been divided with regularity... the number of serfs would not be so great. The revolution in France increased by millions the number of proprietors, and ours, in 1822... did not exceed four thousand new creations.

The disamortization of the assets of the monastic orders and of an important part of those of the mendicant orders was one of the reasons—if not the principal reason—why the majority of the clergy (especially the Regular clergy, the group most harmed by liberal policy) joined the camp of the counter-revolution, forming with part of the peasantry "the great anti-liberal alliance" (whose fullest expression would be the partidas realistas, which began to operate especially from 1821 onward).^[54][55]

On the other hand, disamortization was closely tied to the bankruptcy of the treasury inherited from the War of Independence and the Sexenio Absolutista^[56]—the public debt exceeded 14,000 million reales—^[51][56] since the liberals of the Triennium addressed it by resorting to foreign loans—"a tangential solution, apparently ingenious"—,^[57] "using disentailed assets first as collateral and later as an amortization fund for the new debt contracted".^[58] In this sense, Triennium governments adopted "a perspective that was to some extent short-term", pressed by the state’s severe financial problems. Resorting to loans negotiated with major European financial groups, including the Rothschild bank, "was the fastest way to fill the state’s coffers, but also the most costly, to the point that the Council of State... described as 'scandalous and inadmissible' the conditions imposed by the Laffitte group in the 300-million-real loan signed by the liberal government in November 1820".^[59]

The liberals approved a fiscal policy based on monetary taxation, preferring payments in cash over payments in kind, in order, among other objectives, "to energize the national economy by monetizing its most traditional sector—agriculture".^[51] But this change dealt a hard blow to peasants at a time of falling prices. According to Josep Fontana, "this led to two consequences of similar gravity. First, the peasants' confrontation with liberalism, which resulted in their rapprochement with an equally discontented clergy, which gave coherence to that opposition, legitimized it ideologically, and organized it. Second, tax collection failed and the regime had to struggle with serious financial difficulties", which was one of the reasons for its defeat in the face of the French invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis.^[60] The French ambassador Marquis de Talaru who accompanied those troops acknowledged as much in a letter sent to the Count of Villèle in October 1823, when the absolute monarchy had already been restored: “It is for this reason that the government of the Cortes has just fallen; the disorder of the finances and the total lack of means prevented it from organizing any means of defense against France”.^[61]

The demand for payment in cash explains the paradox that reducing the tithe by half (decreed on 29 June 1821)^[50] not only failed to relieve peasants’ burdens but actually made them worse. This measure, taken as opposed to the complete abolition of tithes, "ran counter to the peasants' spontaneous revolution, as in many parts of Spain they were refusing to pay tithes and first fruits".^[62] Liberal governments reasoned incorrectly, thinking that by cutting the tithe in half peasants would accumulate larger surpluses that they could sell on the market, and with the money obtained they could meet the state's new taxes (which on paper would be lower than half of the tithe they had previously delivered in kind), thereby increasing state revenues.^[63][38] But for peasants, as Josep Fontana has noted, "the half-tithe may have meant more grain for their own consumption, but not more money ―the increase in supply was immediately counterbalanced in these local markets [dominated by the speculation of large landowners] by falling prices―; when the tax collector arrived with new demands, they found themselves without the means to pay and identified the new regime with greater fiscal oppression".^[64] Moreover, paying the tithe in kind offered peasants more opportunities for evasion and fraud than cash payment, which was demanded relentlessly by the liberal administration.^[65] The French ambassador Marquis de Talaru also recorded this in the letter he wrote to the Count of Villèle in October 1823: "Tax in kind is nothing here; what weighs is tax in money. One of the greatest errors of the government of the Cortes is having wanted to establish it, at the same time as it is one of the principal causes of the hatred that the mass of the nation feels toward this government".^[61][66] In effect, peasant discontent was exploited by the counter-revolution. In a royalist proclamation of August 1821 addressed to the farmers of Zaragoza it was said: "You will tell me: 'They have reduced tithes by half', but to that I will reply that they have also imposed greater taxes on you".^[61]

When on 9 March 1820 Ferdinand VII swore to the Constitution, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the jewel of the Crown, since most of the remittances of precious metals for the Crown came from there, and the Viceroyalty of Peru continued loyal to the monarchy, although some insurgent strongholds persisted, but at that time the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, self-proclaimed as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, and most of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, self-proclaimed as the Republic of Gran Colombia, under the presidency of Simón Bolívar, had already become independent.^[67] In general, news of the restoration of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 was received with jubilation by the populations of the American territories that remained under the authority of the Spanish monarchy and, after the civil and military authorities swore to uphold the Constitution—often not without offering strong resistance—the town councils and provincial deputations were established and deputies to the Cortes were elected. As for the rebels, the Provisional Consultative Junta of Madrid had ordered officers of the royalist armies to reach armistice agreements with them and, thus, Joaquín de la Pezuela in Peru and Pablo Morillo in Venezuela met respectively with José de San Martín and with Simón Bolívar.^[68]

In the metropolis, where the uprisings in the American colonies and the situation of the Spanish Americas in general were being followed with enormous expectation by both the Government and the Cortes as well as by public opinion,^[69][70], the idea spread that the proclamation of the Constitution of 1812 would put an end to the insurrections and independence movements, thus ending the war―"the pacification of America is now more a work of politics than of force and… only the Constitution can restore the fraternal bonds that united it with the mother country", stated a declaration of the Provisional Consultative Junta―.^[71] In fact, once the Constitution entered into force "the American territories ceased to be Viceroyalties and Captaincies General dependent on the king and became integrated as provinces with equal rights to those of the peninsula, and their inhabitants passed from the category of subjects of the king to citizens of the Spanish nation. Thus, the liberalism of the Constitution of 1812 transformed the empire into a nation-state of 'both hemispheres'".^[72] But the problem that arose was that, "despite the attempts at conciliation and the alternative projects considered during the Liberal Triennium", "overseas policy was always determined by the king's desire not to renounce his rights over the Americas territory".^[73]

The Provisional Consultative Junta immediately dealt with the "American question" and when on 22 March 1820 it called elections to the Cortes it reserved thirty seats for deputies from America, who would be chosen from among residents in the Peninsula until elections could be held there. Protests from Americans soon followed over the small number of seats assigned to the Americas since the Constitution established that there would be one deputy for every seventy thousand inhabitants and recognized in Article 1 as members of the "Spanish Nation" "all Spaniards of both hemispheres". The Junta responded by threatening that they might have no representation at all and maintained the number at thirty.^[74] Shortly after the Cortes opened on 9 July, the thirty American deputies again insisted that their representation should be increased.^[75] In the second half of 1820 elections for deputies to the Cortes were held in the American territories but of the 168 seats corresponding to them only 85 could be filled due to the independence process unfolding in the Americas.^[76] The American deputies arrived in Madrid in the first months of 1821 and in the end there were 77, including alternate and elected members. The largest delegation was that of New Spain.^[77]

On 31 March 1820 a proclamation by King Ferdinand VII to the inhabitants overseas set out the official position on the "American question" once the Constitution guaranteed their rights: the insurgents were to lay down their arms and in return would obtain royal pardon; otherwise, the war would continue ("although without the ferocity and barbarity seen until now, but in accordance with the law of nations", stated the opinion of the Council of State). The Secretary of the Overseas Department, Antonio Porcel ―"who trusted that the full implementation of the Constitution would suffice to smooth over the inconveniences and calm the resentments harbored by Americans toward the metropolis"―^[71] arranged for the dispatch to the Americas of several "commissioners" with Instructions to seek the pacification of the territories.^[78] "It was a detailed political plan to convince the territories at war to return to the bosom of the monarchy, but it came too late. After almost ten years of fighting against the king's armies, it did not seem that these conciliatory measures could have any effect. Above all, because Ferdinand VII had no credibility as guarantor of a Constitution he had abolished six years earlier, for which he had persecuted its defenders―including Americans―and whose repeal had given way to the 'war to the death' from 1814", has stated Ivana Frasquet.^[79] Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust maintained a similar thesis: the proposal arrived too late because "the coup d’état of 4 May 1814 [which] restored absolutism and with it colonialism... meant for many Americans the abandonment of a third way between absolutist colonialism and insurgency, represented by the 1812 autonomist option".^[72] Indeed, among peninsular liberals there were some, such as the radicals Antonio Alcalá Galiano, Moreno Guerra, and Romero Alpuente, who considered the independence of the American territories to be an irreversible fact (Alcalá Galiano was even challenged to a duel for defending this position, although it did not take place due to the intervention of a royal officer from Cádiz).^[80][81]

Shortly after the second session of the Cortes began on 1 March 1821, the American deputies presented a proposal to establish a provincial deputation in each of the American intendancies. This formed part of their strategy to deploy all the possibilities for autonomy offered by the Constitution in order to achieve greater self-government.^[82][83] Until a provincial deputation was established, "the dissenters would not be pacified", warned a deputy from the Captaincy General of Guatemala. The proposal was approved and promulgated by a decree dated 8 May.^[84]

However, other proposals by the American deputies were rejected as "federalist" (which at that time was synonymous with "republican"), such as the proposal that the jefe político superior ("chief political officer", the highest political and administrative official in each of the provinces into which the 1812 Constitution divided the Spanish territory) not be appointed by the government but by the provincial deputations, or that these deputations have the authority to collect and manage all taxes.^[85] They also raised several demands not included in the Constitution, such as citizenship for blacks and mulattoes (which was granted on an individual basis according to Article 22)^{[note 2]} or the abolition of the indigenous tribute (which they regarded as belonging to the colonial period and not to the new era opened by the restoration of the Constitution).^[86]

Everything changed when news arrived of the proclamation of the Plan of Iguala by Agustín de Iturbide in February, declaring the independence of New Spain (now Mexico). According to Ivana Frasquet, the news reached Madrid on 18 May,^[87] while according to Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust it arrived on 4 June.^[88]

Around the same time, specifically on 14 May, two commissioners from the self-proclaimed Republic of Gran Colombia, sent by its president and founder Simón Bolívar, arrived in Cádiz. They carried a letter from Bolívar to Ferdinand VII requesting negotiations on the basis of recognition of independence.^[89] They met in Madrid in early June with the Secretary of State, Bardají (also arriving in Madrid was Francisco Antonio Zea with his Plan de reconciliación y proyecto de confederación hispánica between Colombia and Spain, which in his view was the only way to keep Colombia united to the Spanish monarchy).^[90] The talks did not proceed, however, because news reached Madrid that Bolívar had broken the armistice and defeated the royalist troops at the Battle of Carabobo (24 June). The two commissioners and Francisco Antonio Zea were then invited to leave.^[91]

On 25 June 1821, with only three days remaining before the end of the second session, 51 American deputies, led by those from New Spain—with José Mariano Michelena and Lucas Alamán at the forefront—presented a proposal to structure the monarchy as a federation. It consisted of creating three sections of the Cortes, the Government, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State in Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogotá and Lima (the "sections" of all these institutions would have the same powers as the central ones, except for foreign policy, which would remain reserved to the Cortes in Madrid). At the head of each of the three executive branches there would be a prince of the House of Bourbon or "a person freely appointed by His Majesty from among those most distinguished for their qualities" under the authority of Ferdinand VII. In addition, internal trade would be declared free and therefore exempt from customs duties, and the Americas territories would assume their corresponding share of the public debt and contribute to the maintenance of the common navy.^[92][93][94] "The proposal was somewhat chimerical, because it was not known whether at that stage the American countries would be willing to accept it... But even so, it might have served as the basis for an amicable negotiation which, preserving appearances and many interests, would have granted the independence to the Americas", commented Alberto Gil Novales.^[95] According to Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust, "by 1821 it was already a utopian proposal. The Americans knew it, the peninsular liberals also knew it. Ferdinand VII would never accept it".^[96]

The Cortes rejected the proposal of the American deputies—arguing above all that implementing it would require reforming the Constitution—^[97] and instead approved the proposal presented by the Count of Toreno which left the measures to pacify America in the hands of the government.^[62][98] According to Ivana Frasquet, "the possible negotiated solution to American independence through the establishment of Bourbon princes had been defeated. The king had triumphed... In his closing speech to the Cortes, Ferdinand VII was emphatic: the only alternative for America lay in the indissoluble unity of the monarchy".^[99]

During the summer of 1821 events in the Americas accelerated. The commissioner sent to Santa Fe de Bogotá reported the defeat of royalist troops on 24 June at the Battle of Carabobo by Simón Bolívar’s forces.^[100] It was later learned that on 15 July General José de San Martín had proclaimed in Lima the independence of the Viceroyalty of Peru and that a month later, on 24 August 1821, Juan O'Donojú, chief political officer appointed by Madrid, and Agustín de Iturbide, leader of the independence movement of New Spain, had signed the Treaty of Córdoba by which the independence of Mexico was recognized under a Bourbon monarch.^[101][62] "Thus, in the summer of 1821, the Americas were at war, from north to south”.^[101] "The Cortes and the Spanish government had missed a good opportunity", concludes Alberto Gil Novales.^[62] "The political solution that the Americans demanded did not fit within the mental universe of most liberals", noted Ivana Frasquet.^[102]

In November the Council of State left no room for negotiation, as desired by the king, when in its ruling it proposed strict "observance of the Constitution sanctioned for the entire Spanish monarchy and therefore the absolute integrity which it itself establishes". It then proposed sending naval forces, starting from a very optimistic and distorted view of reality across the Atlantic, trusting that America could still be recovered for the Crown.^[103] However, some councillors issued dissenting opinions in favor of a "federal solution" along the lines of the American deputies' proposal. The most radical was Gabriel Ciscar, who advocated organizing the Americas into "four or more independent states, linked to one another and to peninsular Spain by means of federations adapted to the circumstances of each of them".^[103]

The ruling of the Council of State was debated by the extraordinary Cortes between January and February 1822. Deputy Francisco Fernández Golfín proposed as an alternative the formation of a Hispanic-American confederation in which each state would have its own constitution and King Ferdinand VII would serve as the keystone of the entire structure, holding the title of Protector of the Great Hispanic-American Confederation.^[104] A radically opposed position was defended by the Count of Toreno, who accused O'Donojú of treason for having signed the Treaty of Córdoba, demanded that it be declared null and void (a proposal that was approved), and urged the government to defend the American provinces that remained loyal to the monarchy. Ultimately, it was agreed only to send new commissioners to America.^[105]

Most of the American deputies did not participate in these debates, as they had gradually left the Cortes in the preceding weeks. "Here, practically, ended the American autonomist trajectory in the Cortes of the Triennium", noted Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust.^[96]

The new Spanish government's policy in the Americas themselves changed the political repression of the former absolutist period into negotiation. Sending troops was replaced by commissioners to attract pro-independence leaders, who were invited to submit to royal authority in exchange for recognition by Spain. With that in mind, the government announced a ceasefire for negotiations with the rebels until the 1812 Constitution, which ironically, had been superseded by Ferdinand's actions, were accepted.

According to the ceasefire offer, Spain would end the persecution and would issue a blanket amnesty for the insurgents; otherwise, the war would continue. The 11 commissioners failed, since the patriots demanded recognition of their independence from Spain.

A decisive event initiated a civil war between royalist conservatives and liberals (or gave it its definitive impetus) during the Trienio Liberal: the seizure of the fortress of La Seu d'Urgell on 21 June 1822 by the leaders of the royalist bands Romagosa and El Trapense, commanding a force of 2,000 men. The following day the Provisional Superior Junta of Catalonia was established there, which strove to create a regular army and to set up an administration in the interior areas of Catalonia occupied by the royalists. A month and a half later, on 15 August, what would become known as the Urgel Regency was also installed there, "established at the request of the towns" and "desirous of freeing the Nation and its King from the cruel state in which they find themselves".^[106][107] The idea of establishing a Regency had been defended by the Marquess of Mataflorida—indeed, in June he had received powers from the king to establish it—and it was also one of the demands of the French government in order to lend support to the royalists.^[107] The Regency was composed of Mataflorida himself, the Baron of Eroles, and Jaime Creus, Archbishop of Tarragona, advised by a small government made up of Antonio Gispert in charge of State, Fernando de Ortafà for War, and Domingo María Barrafón, responsible for the remaining Secretaries of the Despacho.^{[108][109][110][111][106]} The Regency began publishing the newspaper Diario de Urgel.^[106]

The creation of the Regency was justified by the idea, defended by the royalists, that the king was "captive", after having been "kidnapped" by the liberals, in the same way that he had been held by Napoleon during the Peninsular War.^[112] Indeed, the Regency’s first proclamation began by stating that it had been constituted "to govern [Spain] during the captivity of His Catholic Majesty King Ferdinand VII". Another argument employed was the alleged lack of popular support for the constitutional regime. This appeared in the Manifesto that the Lovers of Monarchy Address to the Spanish Nation, to the Other Powers, and to the Sovereigns by the Marquess of Mataflorida, which circulated throughout Europe: "The people, motionless and terrified, took no part in such treason [the revolution], which they always condemned with silent indignation repressed by force."^[113] The Manifesto concluded with an appeal to the European powers to intervene in Spain and restore absolutism.^[114]

From the establishment of the Urgel Regency, which "provided the counter-revolution with a centralized leadership and a certain ideological coherence", the royalists consolidated their control over broad areas of northeastern and northern Spain, establishing their own institutions to administer the territory they controlled: Juntas of Catalonia, Navarre, Aragon, Sigüenza, and the Basque Country, the latter presided over by General Vicente Quesada and including one member for each of the three provinces.^[106] On the other hand, the formation of the Regency was received with enthusiasm by the European courts, though less so by the French one because the Regency had proclaimed as its objective the restoration of absolutism, whereas France continued to favor the establishment in Spain of a regime based on a Charter, like its own.^[115] A representative of the Regency, the Count of Spain, attended the Congress of Verona, while the Spanish Government was not invited.^[116] For his part, King Ferdinand VII continued corresponding secretly with the European courts to ask them to come and "rescue him". In a letter sent to the Tsar of Russia in August 1822, the same month in which the Urgel Regency was constituted, he wrote: "Let Your Majesty compare the pernicious results which the constitutional system has produced in two years with the very advantageous ones produced by the six years of the regime they call absolute".^[117]

To confront the critical situation unfolding in the northern half of Spain, extraordinary Cortes were convened and opened on 7 October. There, a series of measures were adopted to halt the royalist offensive.^[109] For its part, the government led by Evaristo San Miguel decreed in October 1822 an extraordinary general conscription intended to recruit 30,000 soldiers and succeeded in obtaining authorization from the Cortes to replace at its discretion military commanders it considered disaffected to the constitutional cause.^[118] It also agreed to send reinforcements to Catalonia, Navarre, and the Basque Country.^[119]

The military measures adopted by the Cortes and by the Government—which were added to the declaration of a state of war in Catalonia on 23 July—^[120] bore fruit, and during the autumn and winter of 1822–1823, after a harsh six-month campaign, the constitutional armies, one of whose generals was the former guerrilla leader Espoz y Mina, turned the tide and forced the royalists of Catalonia, Navarre, and the Basque Country (around 12,000 men) to flee to France and those of Galicia, Old Castile, León, and Extremadura (around 2,000 men) to flee to Portugal. The Regency itself had to abandon Urgell—whose siege by Espoz y Mina's army had begun in October after the capture of Cervera the previous month—and cross the border into France.^{[119][109][110]}

After the defeat it became clear that the only option remaining was foreign intervention.^[121] The Count of Villèle, head of the French government that had given considerable support to the royalist bands, would say: "The Spanish royalists, even if aided by other governments, will never be able to carry out the counter-revolution in Spain without the assistance of a foreign army." With this declaration, the first step was taken toward the approval of the invasion of Spain by the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis.^[122]

In 1822, Ferdinand VII applied the terms of the Congress of Vienna, lobbied for the assistance of the other absolute monarchs of Europe, in the process joining the Holy Alliance formed by Russia, Prussia, Austria and France to restore absolutism. In France, the ultra-royalists pressured Louis XVIII to intervene. To temper their counter-revolutionary ardour, the Duc de Richelieu deployed troops along the Pyrenees Mountains along the France-Spain border, charging them with halting the spread of Spanish liberalism and the "yellow fever" from encroaching into France. In September 1822, the cordon sanitaire became an observation corps and then very quickly transformed itself into a military expedition.

The Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria and Prussia) refused Ferdinand's request for help, but the Quintuple Alliance (United Kingdom, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria), at the Congress of Verona in October 1822, gave France a mandate to intervene and restore the Spanish monarchy. Louis XVIII was only too happy to put an end to Spain's liberal experiment, and a massive army, the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, was dispatched across the Pyrenees in April 1823. The Spanish army, fraught by internal divisions, offered little resistance to the well-organised French force, who seized Madrid and reinstalled Ferdinand as absolute monarch. The liberals' hopes for a new Spanish War of Independence were dashed. On 22 January 1823, a secret treaty was signed at the congress of Verona, allowing France the invasion of Spain to restore Ferdinand VII as an absolute monarch. With that agreement from the Holy Alliance, on 28 January 1823, Louis XVIII announced that "a hundred thousand Frenchmen are ready to march, invoking the name of Saint Louis, to safeguard the throne of Spain for a grandson of Henry IV of France".

"The restoration of Ferdinand VII as absolute king opened a new period of blind and vengeful counter-revolution that drove liberals into exile or prison, and that made even his allies fear the worst, forcing them to leave a significant part of their troops in the country to help the monarchy control the unstable situation resulting from an uncompromising restoration."^[123]

Repression had already been initiated by the Provisional Junta and its successor, the Urgel Regency, through the creation of various specific bodies (Superintendency of Public Surveillance, the Corps of Royalist Volunteers, Purification Boards, Regimental Boards in Catalonia, Flying Columns and Armed Civilians in Biscay, etc.)^[124], providing cover for the arbitrary violence unleashed against liberals by royalists. As Emilio La Parra has emphasized, "repression in the territory controlled by the Regency was extremely harsh and indiscriminate."^[124]

The first formal measure agreed by the Regency was to declare on 23 June the deputies who had approved in Seville the king’s temporary incapacitation guilty of lèse-majesté, as well as to sentence to death the three members of the constitutional Regency who had assumed his powers during the journey from Seville to Cádiz (Císcar, Valdés, and Vigodet; all three saved their lives by going into exile).^{[125][126][127]}

At almost the same time, freedom of expression, established during the Triennium, was brought to an end by an order from the press judge stating: "No printer shall print or reprint books, pamphlets, newspapers or other papers of any kind, except invitation notices, without prior permission from the council or from this court."^[127]

These repressive measures were "accompanied by an opinion campaign that codified as infamous crimes almost everything that in the previous regime had formed part of the normal functioning of the system. Clergymen played a very important role in spreading the idea of political crime, adding a moral judgment to the actions of liberals and demanding the corresponding punishment."^[128]

As soon as Ferdinand VII recovered his absolute powers on 1 October and broke his promise of an amnesty ("a complete and absolute general oblivion of everything that has passed, without any exception"), he ratified what had been agreed by the Regency and continued the harsh repression.^[125][129] The Duke of Angoulême failed in his attempt to persuade Ferdinand VII to end "arbitrary arrests and banishments, measures contrary to all ordered government and social order."^[130]

During the following years, the French troops that remained in Spain under the agreement signed between the two monarchies intervened on numerous occasions to protect liberal sympathizers from harassment and repressive excesses by absolutists.^[131]

On 7 September, in a private conversation with General Miguel Ricardo de Álava, sent by the constitutional government to negotiate a ceasefire, the Duke of Angoulême confessed that it was necessary "to restrain Ferdinand, without which nothing good could be expected from him," and that "the servile party in general," on which Ferdinand VII relied, "is the worst in the nation. I am accustomed to their stupidity and immorality. The employees of the [absolutist] Regency are concerned only with stealing and making business."^[132]

The symbol of the repression unleashed by Ferdinand VII—despite French advice to mitigate it^[133]—was the hanging of Rafael del Riego in Madrid's Plaza de la Cebada on 7 November 1823.^[134][133] The prosecutor argued that he had committed so many crimes that "many days and volumes would not suffice" to describe them, but he was sentenced to death for a single one: the "horrendous attack committed by this criminal as deputy of the so-called Cortes, voting for the transfer of our lord the king and his royal family to the city of Cádiz."^[134] The execution of Del Riego, "the Spanish George Washington," provoked a wave of indignation throughout Europe (in London it was proposed to erect a monument to him, and the activist John Cartwright said that he represented better than anyone "the common cause of humanity").^[135] Domestically, as Juan Francisco Fuentes has noted, "if the pronunciamiento of Riego in January 1820 opened this three-year period of constitutional rule, his execution in Madrid, in the Plaza de la Cebada, on 7 November 1823, symbolized the end of that revolutionary experience and the beginning of the second absolutist restoration in Spain."^[136] According to Josep Fontana, Ferdinand VII did not wish to return to Madrid before Riego had been executed.^[134] Emilio La Parra does not rule out that motive and notes that the king took twice as long to travel from Cádiz to Madrid as he had taken on his outward journey, remaining 15 days in Seville (8–23 October).^[137]

The king entered Madrid on 13 November, six days after Riego's execution,^[136] mounted on a "triumphal carriage" drawn by "24 men dressed in old Spanish style and 24 royalist volunteers."^[138]

Another case exemplifying the harshness of repression was that of Juan Martín Díez (“El Empecinado”), guerrilla fighter and hero of the Peninsular War.^[133] On 21 November 1823 he was captured by royalist volunteers in Roa and taken prisoner tied to the tail of the mayor’s horse. After months in inhumane prison conditions, he was hanged on 19 August 1825. Ferdinand VII wrote to his confidant Antonio Ugarte: "It is time to dispatch El Empecinado to the other world."^[139][140]

Military commissions sentenced 152 people to death—some for shouting "Long live Riego!"—and imposed arbitrary punishments, including imprisonment and forced labor.^[141] The Juntas de Fe assumed part of the functions of the Spanish Inquisition, which was not formally restored. A French diplomat described them as "fearsome tribunals."^[142]

The liberal clergy also suffered persecution, often carried out by the Church itself.^[143]

European pressure forced Ferdinand VII to decree a "general pardon" on 11 May 1824, but its many exceptions rendered it largely ineffective and prompted further departures into exile.^[144]

The harsh repression led many liberals into exile—some even committed suicide out of fear of arrest—.^[145] It was the largest political exile of Restoration Europe.^[146] An estimated 15,000–20,000 people left Spain.^[140][147] Their main destinations were France (77%), the United Kingdom (11%), Gibraltar, and Portugal.^[148]

In Britain, sympathy among Whigs and radicals led to the creation of several Spanish Committees to aid refugees, with donations from figures such as David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham, and support from newspapers such as The Times. Around 1,000 Spanish families settled in Somers Town in London.^[147][149]

In France, by contrast, refugees were subject to constant surveillance and control. Many were military officers confined to "depots" under government supervision.^[150]

Juan Luis Simal has highlighted that Spanish liberal exile, together with Neapolitan, Piedmontese, and Portuguese exile, "was central to the development of a European liberal politics," fostering an emerging "liberal internationalism."^[151]

Liberals began returning to Spain after amnesties in October 1832 and October 1833, following the death of Ferdinand VII and the accession crisis that led to the government of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa.^[152]

The Triennium was "an event of the first magnitude in the history of international politics in a Europe that, barely five years earlier, had emerged from twenty years of wars against France's hegemonic attempt".^[153] "During these years the Hispanic world stood at the center of international attention, observed at once with hope and with fear, as a myth for the peoples and as a stigma for the absolute monarchies, with the hope of a first wave of liberty capable of breaking borders and with the impatience of those who did not see the moment arrive to end an experience as destabilizing as that one," stated historians Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust. They also emphasized that during the Triennium there occurred "the independence of practically all the continental American territories".^[154]

According to Josep Fontana, the Liberal Triennium is a historical stage "of exceptional importance because it was then that the reforms published in Cádiz between 1810 and 1814 were put into practice for the first time".^[155] Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust also stress that "during the Liberal Triennium the Constitution was implemented for the first time in a context of institutional normality, that is, in peacetime and with the king present at the head of the monarchy. Under these conditions it was possible to apply the system devised in Cádiz and to test its scope as an instrument for the construction of a new liberal state". Despite all the problems it had to confront, "the Liberal Triennium represented an opening of political life unlike anything that had occurred previously in Spain. [...] The constitutional framework established by the revolution of 1820 allowed the emergence of a public sphere in which citizens began to participate according to their possibilities and interests".^[156]

Alberto Gil Novales, for his part, pointed out the "central position" occupied by the Triennium in the Spanish bourgeois revolution that culminated in 1834–1837, "when it can already be said that Spain was governed by a bourgeois regime". "The Liberal Triennium created the basic legislation, spread the ideas, and shaped the political instruments through which the bourgeoisie would take power."^[157]

Pedro Rújula has also pointed out the "decisive" role played by King Ferdinand VII himself in "the fall of the constitutional regime". "Not only because of his ability to block the functioning of the system from the executive power, or because of his limited attachment to liberty, but also because he was able to construct a convincing narrative of what had happened in Spain and to secure its acceptance by the foreign powers." "In the end the argument of the captive monarch prevailed at the Congress of Verona, and it constituted a central element in the justification offered by Louis XVIII to the French chambers to explain the motives for the invasion [by the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis]."

Fontana has described the Triennium as a "frustrated revolution", but clarified that "it would not be legitimate to say that it failed. It collapsed because of the interference of European foreign policy in Spanish affairs". "The Spanish revolution fell before the coalition of its internal and external enemies and before the division of its own supporters," adds Fontana.^[158]

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• Bienio progresista – Period in Spanish history
• Sexenio Democrático – 1868–1874 period of Spain under a provisional government