From the surrender of a Napoleonic army at Bailén and the Constitution of Cádiz through Riego's pronunciamiento, the loss of the mainland American empire at Ayacucho, the Carlist Wars and Mendizábal's disentailment, the reign of Isabella II, the Glorious Revolution and the First Republic, the Cánovas Restoration and the turno pacífico, the rise of socialism and anarchism, to the Cuban war and the Disaster of '98. Slide across the nineteenth century when Spain lost an empire and tried to remake itself as a modern liberal nation.
On 19 July, in the olive groves of Andalusia, the Spanish general Francisco Javier Castaños forces the surrender of an entire French corps under General Dupont — the first capitulation of a Napoleonic army in open battle and the spark of European hope against the Empire.
From the surrender of a Napoleonic army at Bailén and the Constitution of Cádiz through Riego's pronunciamiento, the loss of the mainland American empire at Ayacucho, the Carlist Wars and Mendizábal's disentailment, the reign of Isabella II, the Glorious Revolution and the First Republic, the Cánovas Restoration and the turno pacífico, the rise of socialism and anarchism, to the Cuban war and the Disaster of '98. Slide across the nineteenth century when Spain lost an empire and tried to remake itself as a modern liberal nation.
On 19 July, in the olive groves of Andalusia, the Spanish general Francisco Javier Castaños forces the surrender of an entire French corps under General Dupont — the first capitulation of a Napoleonic army in open battle and the spark of European hope against the Empire.
On 19 March — the feast of Saint Joseph, from which the constitution would take its nickname La Pepa — the extraordinary Cortes assembled at Cádiz proclaims a sovereignty resting in the nation, a single-chamber parliament, equal rights for Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic, and freedom of the press.
On 1 January, in the town of Cabezas de San Juan in Andalusia, Lieutenant-Colonel Rafael del Riego raises his troops — mustered for embarkation to fight the colonial rebels in America — and proclaims the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. The Liberal Triennium is born.
On 9 December, on the high plain of Ayacucho in the Peruvian Andes, the patriot army of Sucre destroys the last royalist force under Viceroy La Serna. The mainland empire of three centuries is gone; only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines remain to Spain.
Ferdinand VII dies on 29 September leaving the throne, by the contested Pragmatic Sanction, to his three-year-old daughter Isabella under the regency of her mother Maria Christina. The king's reactionary brother Don Carlos proclaims himself Carlos V — and the First Carlist War begins.
Prime Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal nationalises and auctions the lands of the monastic orders — the famous desamortización. Within a decade nearly two thirds of monastic estates are in lay hands.
On the plain of Vicálvaro east of Madrid, Generals Leopoldo O'Donnell and Domingo Dulce face the loyalist forces of Isabella II in an indecisive skirmish, but the political movement they spark — the Vicalvarada — sweeps Espartero into power and opens the Progressive Biennium of 1854–1856.
On 17 September Admiral Topete pronounces at Cádiz; on 28 September Generals Prim and Serrano defeat the royalists at the bridge of Alcolea. Isabella II, swimming at Lekeitio on the Biscay coast, crosses the French frontier on 30 September — and the throne of Spain is empty.
On 11 February the Cortes proclaim the First Republic. Within months Spain is dismembered by the Third Carlist War in the north, the Ten Years War in Cuba, and the cantonalist rising of Cartagena in the south.
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, architect of the Restoration of Alfonso XII, promulgates a moderate constitution and inaugurates the turno pacífico — the orderly alternation in power of his Conservative and Sagasta's Liberal parties, sustained by managed elections.
On 2 May in a tavern in Madrid, the typesetter Pablo Iglesias and twenty companions found the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party — el PSOE — the oldest left-wing party of southern Europe still in existence.
On 25 November, Alfonso XII dies of tuberculosis at twenty-seven. His pregnant Habsburg widow María Cristina becomes regent; in May 1886 she gives birth to a posthumous son, Alfonso XIII, born King of Spain.
On 24 February the call to arms is raised at Baire in eastern Cuba and the war of independence begins under the leadership of José Martí, Máximo Gómez, and Antonio Maceo. Martí dies in battle on 19 May; the rebellion deepens.
On 1 May, Commodore Dewey destroys the Spanish Pacific squadron at Manila Bay. On 3 July, Admiral Cervera's Atlantic fleet is shattered off Santiago de Cuba. By the Treaty of Paris in December, Spain cedes Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam — and the empire of Charles V is finally extinct.