"The memory of the Carlist Wars has been neglected"

Barcelona"For more than 50 years, towns like Berga and Cervera, along with their town festivals, commemorated the Third Carlist War," explains David Cao, a professor in the Department of History and Archaeology at the UB. "The struggles over the memory of Carlist commemorations within public spaces were very present until the Civil War; after that, they were completely buried, because the memorial landscape changed radically. This neglect leads to the maintenance of biased stereotypes or simplified visions," adds the historian who, together with the Patronat de la V y X, leads the Institut Ramon Muntaner, a research project on the material and symbolic memory left by the Third Carlist War in Catalonia. Cao does not consider Carlism to be an anecdotal or marginal movement, but rather a widespread phenomenon also in urban environments, since there were armed Carlist groups that operated in Mataró, Igualada, Terrassa, and Granollers. "The Carlist Wars are not only dynastic conflicts, but are part of a dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution that accompanies the construction of the contemporary world. Studying them helps us understand the politicization of the working classes, the construction of the liberal Spanish state, and the creation of collective imaginaries with the capacity for endurance," he adds.

The Third Carlist War involved the armed mobilization of 25,000 people, and it is estimated that at least 5,000 people died in the clashes between 1872 and 1875. It is difficult to date the beginning of the Carlist movement, but a turning point came in December 1832, when Ferdinand VII repealed the Salic Law, thus allowing his daughter Isabella to succeed him to the detriment of Carlos María Isidro, the monarch's brother. It was not just a dynastic conflict; The discontent of a large part of the population had begun long before, when Ferdinand VII had ascended to the throne and decided to establish an absolutist regime. Furthermore, these were times of poverty, as the loss of the colonies had caused an economic crisis. Not even the clergy was happy, as the confiscations had stripped the Church of many of its lands. In present-day Catalonia, there were revolts, such as that of the Malcontents in 1827, which ended with their leaders shot, deported, or exiled. Revolts broke out again in 1833, when Ferdinand VII died. The supporters of his daughter, Isabella, belonged to the official, liberal bloc. The supporters of Charles belonged to the insurgent bloc, the Carlists. It ended with the defeat of the Carlists and with the leader of the Maestrazgo region, Ramon Cabrera, known as the Tiger of the Maestrazgo, fleeing to France in 1840.

After seven years of relative peace, Carlos María Isidro's son, Carlos VI, took up arms again. In September 1846, Father Benet Tristán rose up in Solsona and the Second Carlist War began, which lasted until 1849. Many Catalans joined the revolt because Spain had reinstated compulsory military service away from home, imposing a price - that is, one that had to be paid to enter the cities for certain goods. The Carlists occupied Cervera, Terrassa, Lleida, and Terres de l'Ebre, but were defeated again in May 1849. The Third Carlist War began in May 1872, and the Carlists occupied places such as Berga, Vic, La Seu d'Urgell, and Olot. They became more organized and even created a military academy, but they still didn't make any progress. They were defeated at the end of 1875, and from that moment on, the movement, which brought together socially and economically diverse sectors, began to lose strength. Little by little, it ceased to be a powerful option, given the one it already had.

Festivals and commemorations recovered in the 21st century

The memory of these confrontations, despite the long hiatus during the Franco regime, has been preserved in very few cases. "Some monuments, some commemorative birthdays, and urban toponyms, that is, several roads, streets, etc., that adopted names reminiscent of these confrontations with Carlism, are preserved, and some still exist," explains Cao. The case of Puigcerdà is very unique because it preserves two monuments. This town suffered two Carlist sieges: one in 1873 and another in 1874. "It was commemorated continuously from 1874 to 1936, and the two monuments are quite ambitious, especially for a Pyrenean town like Puigcerdà, which had around 2,000 inhabitants. Their dimensions were absolutely unprecedented in the Catalan context," assures Cao.

One of the monuments was inaugurated in 1880 and pays tribute to Brigadier Josep Cabrinetty, who died in an ambush after helping to protect the town with his column. The anarchists removed the monument in August 1936, and it was reinstated in 2012. In both 1880 and 2012, the sculpture was paid for by public subscription. The second monument was inaugurated in 1883 and is a marble obelisk dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Carlist sieges. In Puigcerdà, the town council was involved in the commemoration from the very beginning: "This made it an increasingly popular and transversal celebration," says Cao. In Llaés (Ripoll), there is a monument in memory of seventy-five liberal carabinieri shot by order of the Carlist leader Savalls in 1874, inaugurated in 1879. In San Juan de las Abadesas there is also a monument commemorating how on July 17, 1874 the Carlists went to the Carlists. municipality, next to the Olot road. There, every year, on November 2, the religious festival of the Dead is still celebrated, in which the Spanish army pays a brief and solemn tribute of just over five minutes to the soldiers of Alfonso XII's army.

A "neglected" memory

Another preserved monument is the Carlist cross of Collformic, in El Brull, at the starting point of one of the most common routes to climb Matagalls. The inscription on the cross reads: "Pray, brothers, for the victims inhumanly sacrificed by a Carlist party in that area of Collformic on January 10 and 11, 1874." In Cervera, the names of the streets Burgos, Soria, Combate, Victoria, and Rondas, which were decided by the City Council the year after the skirmish, in 1876, still commemorate the Third Carlist War. In this town, until 1936, the 48 dead at the end of the battle of February 16, 1875, were commemorated with the Procession of the Cigar. It was a secular procession, with a route from the City Hall to the cemetery, and in which some men carried a lit cigar, unlike in religious processions. This tradition was revived at the beginning of the 21st century. Terrassa's 22nd of July Walk also commemorates the Third Carlist War, and every July a reenactment of the events is held.

Cao believes that Carlist heritage should be documented, protected, and signposted. "The memories of the 19th century have been largely forgotten, and what has been most present are the events that have to do with national memories, such as the Peninsular War in Spain, for example, but not those that have a closer relationship with specific political cultures and certain civil wars and other violent and traumatic episodes—those of war," he states, "have been neglected." Literature has, however, remembered the Carlist Wars with novels such as Natural histories (Ediciones 62), by Joan Perucho; The strangers, by Raül Garrigasait (1984 Editions), or The Nordic company(Column), by Albert Villaró.