Opposites Reconciled: Ramiro, Conde De Lucena (1823) and the Liberal Trienio

It often requires some adjustment for the modern reader of historical novels to grasp what motivated authors of past examples of that genre. The first three historical novels in Spanish literature spring from motives that clearly distinguish each work by something more significant than their dates of publication or the Romantic nature of their content. In an attempt to describe these respective unique qualities, I should like to set out first what I believe is an insufficiently observed feature of Rafael Humara y Salamanca's Ramiro, conde de Lucena and its context in 1823. The date of its publication coincided with the year in which an invading French army, sponsored by the Holy Alliance, restored Fernando VII to absolutist authority. The novel, however, had been written during the chaotic three years in which the king was forced to rule as a constitutional monarch. Those three years, 1820-23, often called Trienio liberal or constitucional, began with the declaration of revolt by Colonel--later General--Rafael de Riego in Cadiz. He brought into focus the resentment of troops who had not been paid regularly by the central government and who now refused to embark to fight against the revolutions in Spain's American colonies. Riego, imbued with liberal and Masonic ideas, sought to restore the Constitution of 1812 and thus end the absolutist reign of Fernando. In the ensuing months, Spain's central authority broke down, and government was sometimes conducted by regional juntas. Fernando, supported by traditional royalists and the most conservative elements, schemed to defeat his opponents. These included the exaltados or extremist advocates of liberalism, and the moderates who sought an abridgment of absolutism, but under a constitution modified from that of 1812. Opposition also arose from Masons, as well as from men of letters and public affairs whom the King had exiled after his return to the throne in 1814, but who were now able to return under the more generous terms of the restored 1812 laws. Political groups fell into the morass of petty rivalries, and scrambled to seek their own advantage in guiding the country (Fehrenbach). The national treasury was in effect bankrupt, and provincial authorities were not sending on their tax revenues to the Madrid government. Anti-clericalism increased markedly, and violence against monastic foundations expressed long-held anger against the privileged establishment (Callahan 131-35). In addition, there were riots in the streets of larger cities. Republican sentiments were more openly proclaimed, and throughout, Fernando tried to play one faction against another, and succeeded only in setting all but the most ardent royalists against him. In writing his novel, Humara seems to have looked back to a more remote past, in which the dust of warfare had long since settled and the invective, been silenced. He believed that the main figures of those times might offer an acceptable example of maintaining the country to his troubled contemporaries. The period on which Humara fastened his gaze was the siege of Sevilla undertaken by Fernando III in 1247, and what the novelist adds to the material in the chronicles is the reconciliation of opposing parties. The distinctive nature of the work emerges sharply at the very end of the novel when Ali-Rosai, the defeated but dignified Granadine general, comes by the Seville cemetery where his valiant foe, Ramiro, lies buried. After Vargas, a brave Christian general who was himself a rival and critic of Ramiro, has escorted him to the grave site, the Moor exclaims in the concluding lines of the book: "Quedad en paz," exclamo, "manes sagrados, manes que el destino persiguio en la vida, pero que la virtud ba coronado en la muerte. Proteged la carreta de mis dias, y preservadme del tumulto desenfrenado de las pasiones y de los negros afectos del aborrecimiento. Adios, noble sombra de Ramiro; tu sabes cuanto te admire en la tierra, y que esfuerzo de amistad desplegue para perdonarte el haber subyugado a mi patria. …