Abstracts issue 9

Francesco Tamburini, Michele Angiolillo e l’assassinio di Cánovos del Castillo

On the afternoon of August 8, 1897, the Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was shot four times at point blank range in Santa Agueda’s spa in the Western Pyrenees. Cánovas, mortally wounded, died within an hour. The killer was Michele Angiolillo, a young Italian anarchist, who claimed the shooting was a vengeance’s act for torturing and executing five anarchists in Barcelona’s noto­rious Montjuich prison. But, who really was Angiolillo? Did he act alone or was he part of a larger conspiracy led by the international anarchist movement or by the Paris Cuban delegation, run by Ramón Emeterio Betonces? To this day, nearly a century after the assassina­tion, the matter has not been studied, and any likelihood of clearing it up has faded away with the passing of time. This study tries to reply to all these controversial and unanswered questions, investigating Angiolillo’s long travels through different European countries, his personal relationships with several anarchist leaders and Cuban inde­pendence supporters, and focusing on the supposed effects Cánovas’ sudden death brought to the agonizing Spanish empire, on the edge of its 1898 final breakdown.

 Alberto Gil Novales, "El patriota" de  José Mor de Fuentes. Segunda etapa (1813).

This is the second part of an essay (the first instalment was pu­blished on “Spagna contemporanea” last issue) devoted to studying “El patriota”, a magazine edited and published during the War of Independence by the well-known poet and writer José Mor de Fuentes. This part takes into consideration the period after the departure of the French from Madrid, and precisely the bi-weekly issues of “El patrio­ta”, published from July 13, 1813 to the end of the same year. Going into details on the magazine’s contents, the Author clarifies Mor de Fuentes’ political and cultural stance, critical both of the liberal and servil sides, far away from the Jacobin positions and hoping for on alliance between Spain and England. The study is but a part of a far wider research devoted to the Spanish press during the 1808-1814 War of Independence.

Antonio J. Carrasco Álvarez, Colaboración y conflicto en la España antinapoleónica (1808-1814)

After having stated the obvious impossibility far guerrilla warfare to be successful without popular support and aid, the Author looks in­to how guerrilla really was conducted in Spain during the Napoleonic period. The result of his research is that the support offered by the people varied according to places and situations, and was not so uni­versally spread and total as usually thought. This was due to a mix of different reasons, and also to the guerrillas way of operating, which had a heavy influx on popular attitudes. The essay gives also inte­resting data on the many conflicts about the guerrillas and their ope­rations between civil and military authorities.

Isidro Sépulveda Muñoz, Instrumentalización nacionalista del irredentismo: Gibraltar y el nazionalismo español