Juan Álvarez Mendizábal

Juan Álvarez Mendizábal
President of the Council of Ministers of Spain (acting)
In office September 25, 1835 – May 15, 1836
Preceded by	Miguel Ricardo de Álava
Succeeded by	Francisco Javier de Istúriz
Minister of Finance
In office June 13, 1835 – May 15, 1836
Preceded by	José María Queipo de Llano
Succeeded by	José Ventura Aguirre Solarte
In office September 11, 1836 – August 18, 1837
Preceded by	Mariano Egea
Succeeded by	Pío Pita Pizarro
In office May 19 – June 30, 1843
Preceded by	Mateo Miguel Ayllón Alonso
Succeeded by	Mateo Miguel Ayllón Alonso
Minister of State (acting)
In office September 25, 1835 – May 15, 1836
Preceded by	Miguel Ricardo de Álava
Succeeded by	Francisco Javier de Istúriz
Personal details
Born	(1790-02-25)February 25, 1790 Cádiz (Spain)
Died	November 3, 1853(1853-11-03) (aged 63) Madrid (Spain)
Party	Progressive Party
Spouse	Teresa Alfaro
Profession	Politician and economist

Juan de Dios Álvarez Méndez, Mendizábal (Cádiz, February 25, 1790 – Madrid, November 3, 1853) was a Spanish liberal politician and businessman. Of relatively humble origins, he became the main protagonist of the Spanish Liberal Revolution.

Biography

Origins and change of his second surname

The son of Rafael Álvarez Montañés, a merchant, and Margarita Méndez, he learned modern languages and received commercial training in his father's business. During the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain, he served in the Army of the Center and, having been captured on two occasions, managed to escape both times. On February 21, 1812, he married Teresa Alfaro, and from then on he decided to change his second surname, Méndez, to Mendizábal, in order to conceal the apparently Jewish origin of the Méndez family, according to the most widespread opinion, even though, in 1811, while serving as Minister of Finance of the Army of the Center, he was already signing his documents as Mendizábal, as can be found in the Provincial Historical Archive of Albacete, so that his renown as "Mendizábal" preceded his marriage.

The house of the Méndez, devoted to the rag trade, to which his mother belonged, was known in Cádiz as a family of New Christians of Jewish origin. That would explain, according to the historian Juan Pan-Montojo, his decision to «change his second surname to that of Mendizábal, with which he gave himself a Basque origin, and to pass himself off as an Old Christian. The new identity was all the more useful for fashioning his image inasmuch as the trading house of Miguel Mendizábal was one of the most important in eighteenth-century Cádiz». Furthermore, in the marriage record he declared himself a native of Bilbao.

With this historian's contribution, the two theories about why he changed his maternal surname to Mendizábal are unified: to conceal the Jewish origin of his maternal family, or to obtain the greater prestige and commercial weight of a Basque surname for the time. In any case, Juan Álvarez Mendizábal, like his parents and grandparents, was a baptized Catholic Christian, despite the use of his supposed Jewish origin against him.

The epithet «Jew» to refer to Mendizábal once he came to power was frequently used in the anti-liberal press of his time, and in some cases he was even depicted with a tail, an appendage supposedly characteristic of Jews —and of the devil—, for which reason they also used the nickname «rabilargo Juanón» (long-tailed Big John) — as well as «rabino Juanón» (Rabbi Big John).

Mendizábal emphasized on various occasions the fact that he did not come from one of the great aristocratic or bourgeois lineages, as in the speech of April 6, 1836, that he delivered as President of the Government before the Cortes of the Royal Statute, in which he said that his education had been «literary», because he had «always been devoted to work in order to acquire a fortune», or when shortly afterwards, in another speech, he called himself a «son of the people», whom «it will never be looked upon kindly that the nation should owe me a good government that would provide it with prosperity in the future». «In Mendizábal's life, business and politics are practically inseparable: he always insisted that politics cost him money, that it had made him sacrifice his fortune four times, a figure that must be increased because he died in poverty».

Juan Álvarez Mendizábal, copperplate engraving signed by José Gómez, 1845, after a drawing by José Balaca. National Library of Spain

Social and political rise (1817–1834)

During the war he took charge of supplying the army, through which he came into contact with the Valencian Bertrán de Lis family, devoted to supplying the troops and whose patriarch was Vicente Bertrán de Lis, from whom he accepted a job at the end of the war. In 1817, Mendizábal and his wife moved to Madrid, and there their first son was born, whose godparents were his employers Vicente and Luis Bertrán de Lis. That same year he became a partner in the firm, taking charge of supplies for the troops in Lower Andalusia, together with his employer's son, also named Vicente. The latter was the one who put him in contact with the group of liberals with whom the Bertrán de Lis family was connected —the Patriarch Vicente Bertrán de Lis was an important liberal leader in Valencia and for that reason was imprisoned for some time after the restoration of absolutism in 1814 by Ferdinand VII; one of his sons, Félix Bertrán de Lis, was executed in Valencia in January 1819 for having taken part in an allegedly Masonic military conspiracy against the absolute Monarchy.

Thus, by the autumn of 1819 Mendizábal was already part of the liberal conspiracy, in which Francisco Javier Istúriz and Antonio Alcalá Galiano, among others, took part, and which would culminate in the pronunciamiento of Rafael del Riego at the beginning of the following year. Likewise, he joined the Masonic lodge that organized the conspiracy in Cádiz, according to the testimony of Alcalá Galiano, although according to Juan Pan-Montojo this source is not entirely reliable, so Mendizábal's status as a Freemason is not clear. He is believed to have been a Mason of the «Taller Sublime» (Sublime Workshop) of Cádiz together with Francisco Istúriz and Antonio Alcalá Galiano.

He played a very active role in the organization and development of Riego's pronunciamiento, begun in Cabezas de San Juan on January 1, 1820, and was a member of its governing junta together with Riego himself, Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel, Fernando Miranda and others. His main role was to finance the uprising, as recorded in a testimony written by Riego at the request of Mendizábal himself:

This citizen, daunted by no danger, was present at every action that took place in that interval... who, not sparing his private interests, despite the critical nature of those circumstances, constantly encouraged the soldier, now providing four reales per man, now two reales, now a quartillo of wine, not counting that every day he was rewarding now some, now others, and particularly those who distinguished themselves in some actions.

He advanced money for Rafael del Riego's conspiracy and joined his troops from January 27 to March 4, 1820. At that time he devoted himself to importing tortoiseshell from Birmingham to make combs.

During the Liberal Triennium he obtained no public office despite his close relationship with Rafael del Riego and, although he did not abandon political activity, he devoted himself to business on his own account or for the Bertrán de Lis company, of which he was a partner, among which army supply contracts continued to figure. There were those who accused him of owing his enrichment during those years to his contacts with the political class in order to carry out large business deals. When the invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, sent by the Holy Alliance to restore the absolute power of King Ferdinand VII, took place, Mendizábal and the Bertrán de Lis firm financed the transfer of the court and the Cortes from Madrid to Cádiz, and the army that withstood the siege by the French troops. He also took part in organizing its defenses. When the city finally surrendered, Mendizábal went into exile to escape a death sentence handed down against him. On September 30, 1823, he escaped to Gibraltar and from there made his way to London.

In the British capital, unlike most of the Spanish liberals exiled there, who were devoted to conspiratorial meetings and political activities, Mendizábal threw himself into business, thanks to his contacts with the representatives of the trading houses of Cádiz, especially those devoted to the export of Jerez wines, which were in ever greater demand in Great Britain. The Mendizábal family itself ended up founding its own firm under the name Antonio Álvarez y Cía. However, his dedication to business —which he extended to the financial world and the London Stock Exchange— did not draw him away from political life, and he remained in close contact with other exiled liberal politicians such as Espoz y Mina, José Canga Argüelles or José María Torrijos.

In London he was imprisoned for debts, although he soon managed to get back on his feet by trading in the import of Spanish wines. There he built up a large network of friends and partners who would prove very useful to him in the future. His business took him to France at least in 1828 and in 1830.

Portrait of Pedro I of Brazil, who led the liberal side in the Portuguese Civil War in defense of the rights of his daughter Maria da Glória against the Miguelists.

In 1830, after the triumph of the July Revolution in France, he went to Paris with other Spanish liberals —among them Vicente Bertrán de Lis— to organize and finance the pronunciamiento led by Espoz y Mina that same year. «He himself went to Bayonne, from where he followed the liberal incursion into Navarre and Guipúzcoa». Apparently Ardouin and other financiers took part in this Vera expedition.

After the failure of this rebellion, Mendizábal launched himself into a new political and financial undertaking: intervening in the Portuguese Civil War in support of the exiled Portuguese liberals, who were led by Dom Pedro, who had returned from Brazil to restore the Portuguese Crown to his daughter Maria da Glória, who had lost it to the absolutist Miguel I of Portugal, Dom Pedro's brother, all of this as a prelude to the Iberian union of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal under a single crown. Thus in September 1831 Mendizábal obtained a loan from several bankers with which he acquired two frigates with their crews commanded by English officers. This enabled Dom Pedro's supporters to land in Porto in June 1832, although the city was besieged by the «Miguelists», until Mendizábal, together with the moderate Portuguese liberal Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Duke of Palmela, organized a second fleet with English troops that lifted the siege a year later. From there an expedition set out that landed in the Algarve in southern Portugal, and shortly afterwards, on July 24, 1833, the «Pedroist» troops entered Lisbon, and on September 22 Queen Maria da Glória landed in the capital —a voyage Mendizábal had organized— and received the title of Maria II of Portugal.

Liberal revolution (1835–1837)

After the liberal triumph in Portugal, Mendizábal attained a key position in that country, among other reasons because he became the kingdom's financial agent in London. That was how he strengthened his ample credit in the British —and also French— financial world, which would be very important on his return to Spain in September 1835, two years after the death of King Ferdinand VII and the assumption of the regency by his widow María Cristina de Borbón in the name of her daughter, the future Isabella II, which had unleashed a succession dispute transformed into a civil war similar to the Portuguese one, pitting the «Isabelinos» or «Cristinos», mostly liberals, against the «Carlists», who defended the rights to the throne of Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, brother of the late King, and who supported absolutism.

In Spain, the Government, headed by the moderate liberal Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, appointed by the Regent in June 1834, found that it had no resources to pay the Isabelino Army, which was fighting in the First Carlist War, so from London Mendizábal offered his services to the Minister of Finance, the Count of Toreno, to make representations to British and French bankers and to their respective governments so that they would grant a loan to the Kingdom of Spain. Thus, when the Count of Toreno replaced Martínez de la Rosa at the head of the government in July 1835, he appointed Mendizábal Minister of Finance even though he was an exaltado liberal who did not please «the people at court», as Espoz y Mina relates.

José María Queipo de Llano, 7th Count of Toreno.

During his return journey to Spain —via Paris, Bordeaux and Lisbon, in order to settle business matters and obtain the support of the French and Portuguese governments— liberal uprisings broke out in Spain against the narrow political framework established by the Royal Statute, a kind of granted charter promulgated by the Regent María Cristina that did not recognize the principle of national sovereignty. So when he arrived in Spain on September 1, Mendizábal published a manifesto in which he challenged the authority of the Count of Toreno; the latter ended up yielding to the pressure, and on September 14 Mendizábal took over the presidency of the government, accompanied by only two ministers, which «underlined the exceptional and personalist character» of his administration.

He immediately set about «channeling» the summer's «revolution of the juntas», taking a series of measures that responded to their aspirations while at the same time restoring the authority of the government. Some of the decisions were symbolic, seeking to identify the government with the Liberal Triennium, such as the rehabilitation of the memory of Riego, the transformation of the Urban Militia into the National Guard, or the reinstatement of liberal clergy in their parishes. He then convened the Cortes of the Royal Statute, suspended during the Toreno government, before which he set out his program, which in summary sought to bring the Spanish political system closer to the parliamentarism of the British monarchy (extension of suffrage, freedom of the press, responsibility of the government before the Cortes), in addition to announcing the suppression of the religious orders and the confiscation of their property, thereby legalizing the initiatives of the revolutionary juntas, which had already begun the process on their own —something the Count of Toreno had also done when he suppressed the convents with fewer than twelve professed members—. And the ultimate aim of all this was to win the war, «which is only waged quickly and successfully with men and money in abundance».

File:Cortes1843-1-.jpg

Former convent of the Holy Spirit, whose church was used as the session hall of the Estate of Procurators of the Royal Statute (view from 1843).

To obtain the men he recruited the «levy of the hundred thousand», which also served him to raise money inasmuch as exemption from conscription could be purchased, which on the other hand spared well-to-do families from sending their sons to the war —the redemption from conscription was a step backward in liberal thought because it was contrary to the principle of equality—. As for financing the war, he obtained full powers from the Cortes through the Law of the Vote of Confidence approved on January 16, 1836, which made it possible to carry out various financial operations and contract loans, and in February 1836, with the Cortes dissolved, he approved a royal decree for the sale of the property of the religious orders abolished by the Toreno government and by the «revolutionary juntas» —which on March 8 was extended to all religious orders— with which he would thus achieve a reduction of the debt in the medium term and a rise in its market price in the short term, since in the auctions payment was permitted with debt securities at their face value.

Contrary to what had been maintained, Mendizábal himself did buy land in his confiscation, although it was not very significant and he had to sell it, probably to meet his debts.

The purpose of the confiscation decrees of February 19 and March 8, 1836, which constituted the so-called Confiscation of Mendizábal, was also that the unproductive properties held by the church and the religious orders should pass to a middle class or bourgeoisie that would truly enrich the country. The procedure followed to prevent the properties from passing to the common people was to auction the properties in large lots that small landowners could not afford, although the most decisive factor was that payment of the final price of the bids was permitted with debt securities at their face value, then far below their real market value.

Mausoleum of Agustín Argüelles, José María Calatrava, Juan Álvarez Mendizábal, Diego Muñoz Torrero, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa and Salustiano Olózaga. Built by Federico Aparici; the upper statue by Ponciano Ponzano represents «Liberty» and the lower statues by Sabino Medina «Purity», «Government» and «Reform». Originally located in the San Nicolás Cemetery in Madrid (1857), it was moved to the cloister of the Pantheon of Illustrious Men in 1912.

Because of the opposition of the Cortes to the new Electoral Law, Mendizábal got the Regent to dissolve them and call new elections, which were won in the Chamber of Procurators by the government's supporters —the former exaltado liberals, who would soon be called progressive liberals— while those who opposed him were the moderate liberals, who had one of their main supports at court. As the liberal daily El Eco del Comercio put it on February 18, 1836, the government majority was made up of:

those who wish all privileges to end, those who call for reforms without hesitation, those who work so that we may have a constitutional charter that sets out the authority of the Crown and the rights of the Nation, those who condemned and condemn the Martinist system and long for Mendizábal's program to be carried out.

However, the majority obtained in the Chamber of Procurators did not prevent the Regent from replacing him with Istúriz at the head of the government on May 15, 1836. But he did not abandon the political struggle for that reason; instead he increased his presence in the press and supported the secret societies that were preparing a revolutionary movement like that of the previous summer. Thus in July and August 1836 the «revolutionary juntas» returned, openly advocating the restoration of the Constitution of 1812, which they achieved when the Mutiny of the Sergeants of La Granja took place, forcing the Regent María Cristina to promulgate it. Then, on August 14, 1836, a new progressive liberal government was formed, headed by José María Calatrava, in which Mendizábal, its real strongman, held the Finance portfolio. During the year it was in power, the Calatrava-Mendizábal government brought the Spanish Liberal Revolution to completion by putting back into force all the revolutionary legislation of the Cortes of Cádiz and of the Liberal Triennium, which put an end to the Ancien Régime in Spain.

In this second period in government he was not as successful in financial matters, so the Public Treasury had to suspend payment of the interest on the debt falling due on November 1, 1836, and this «lack of resources would be a cause of constant complaint on the part of the liberal generals». On the political level, in addition to the laws and decrees that put an end to the Ancien Régime, the Constituent Cortes undertook the reform of the Constitution of 1812, which resulted in a new Constitution, intended to be a consensus between the two great currents of Spanish liberalism, moderates and progressives. After the promulgation of the new Constitution of 1837, a plot by the moderates with the support of certain military sectors brought down the Calatrava-Mendizábal government on August 18, and the following month they called new elections that gave them a sufficient majority to be able to govern for the following three years —from 1837 to 1840—.

Decline (1837–1853)

During the Moderate Triennium (1837–1840) he ceased to be the undisputed leader of the progressive liberals, although he continued to exercise great influence over them. After the progressives returned to power at the end of 1840 with the first government of the Regency of Espartero, Mendizábal did not join it but placed several of his associates in it, although his political weight diminished over the following two years. In January 1843 he was appointed Mayor of Madrid, and between the end of May and the end of July of that same year he again held the Finance portfolio. But with the return to power of the moderates, which put an end to Espartero's regency, Mendizábal had to go into exile.

During this second exile he settled in Paris, where his business did not go well, leading him to bankruptcy. Thanks to a partial amnesty he was able to return to Madrid in October 1846 and stand in the elections held two months later, in which he was elected deputy. From then on he led the most conservative sector of progressive liberalism, which had no chance of returning to power because of the Crown's exclusive association with the Moderate Party. He died in 1853 leaving many debts.

As early as 1835 Mendizábal had been elected procurator for Gerona, but in 1836 he was elected for Barcelona, Granada, Pontevedra, Málaga, Cádiz and Madrid (he chose Cádiz), which gives an idea of his power. Again in 1836–1837 and in 1838–1839 he was deputy for Madrid. In 1839, elected deputy for Madrid, Albacete and Murcia, he opted for Murcia. He was deputy for Madrid in 1840; in 1841 he was as well, although he was also elected for Albacete, Ávila, Murcia, Cádiz and Toledo. When the regency during the minority of Isabella II was debated, he declared himself in favor of the triple regency against Espartero, that is, he belonged to the faction of the «Trinitarians». He represented Madrid in the first legislature of 1843 and that year became Minister of Finance again, but the counterrevolution made him flee to France, and he did not return until 1846. He was still deputy for Madrid between 1846 and 1850.

Historical memory

«Copy of the statue executed by D. José Gragera / WHICH, CAST IN BRONZE, WILL BE PLACED IN THE PLAZUELA DEL PROGRESO». Lithograph by Domingo Valdivieso y Henarejos. National Library of Spain.

«Mendizábal became a true political myth from the moment of his death [in 1853]. His funeral was a veritable demonstration of progressivism». In February 1857 his remains were moved to a mausoleum in Madrid's San Nicolás cemetery, erected by public subscription, to which the remains of José María Calatrava and Agustín de Argüelles were also moved, thus becoming the personal triad of reference of the progressive liberals and of the Spanish Liberal Revolution. The erection of a statue in his honor, already cast, had to wait ten years because the government prevented it by means of a legal ruse —since authorization for the erection of the statue had already been granted, it had the Cortes pass a law prohibiting the placement of statues in public places before 50 years had elapsed since the death of those honored—. Finally, during the Democratic Sexennium, the monument could be placed in Madrid's Plaza del Progreso, which, incidentally, had been laid out after the demolition of a confiscated Mercedarian convent.

Main article: Monument to Mendizábal (Madrid)

Thus was born the myth of Mendizábal the revolutionary and statesman, who died in poverty, which the men of the Sexennium would take up and which liberal historians and writers would magnify, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, who devoted one of his Episodios nacionales to him. But at the same time the negative myth of Mendizábal was born, which had as much force as the positive one, and which portrayed him as the foremost representative of anticlericalism, as the confiscator who had seized the Church's property for the benefit of his speculator, stockbroker and public-debt-holder friends.

As Julio Caro Baroja recalled in his pioneering book on anticlericalism in Spain, «when the triumphant forces of General Franco entered Madrid [on March 29, 1939], one of the first symbolic acts they carried out was to pull down the statue of Mendizábal and change the name of the Plaza del Progreso, where it stood. The good part was that they replaced the name and the statue with those of a friar who did not shine for the austerity of his ideas: I am referring to the master Tirso de Molina, creator of Don Juan, Don Gil de las calzas verdes and other figures of our theater, not very saintly in general». The statue was subsequently destroyed, and the Madrid street that bore his name was renamed Víctor Pradera, a Carlist traditionalist.

See also

• Confiscation of Mendizábal

Bibliography

• Caro Baroja, Julio (2008) [1980]. Historia del anticlericalismo español (in español). Madrid: Caro Raggio. ISBN 978-84-7035-188-4.
• Gil Novales, Alberto (1991). Diccionario biográfico del trienio liberal (in español). Madrid: Ediciones El Museo Universal. ISBN 84-86207-37-1. OCLC 28153363.
• Pan-Montojo, Juan (2000). "Juan Álvarez y Mendizábal (1790-1853). El burgués revolucionario". In Burdiel, Isabel; Pérez Ledesma, Manuel (eds.). Liberales, agitadores y conspiradores. Biografías heterodoxas del siglo XIX (in español). Madrid: Espasa Calpe. ISBN 84-239-6048-X. OCLC 45619844.