The MPs of the Basque Country: parliamentary practice (1891–1914)

This article arises from a line of research initiated over a decade ago by the Biography and Parliament Research Group at the University of the Basque Country with the aim of analysing the Parliamentary representation of the Basque Country in the Spanish Parliament throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This consists of a prosopographical analysis of the Members of Parliament (MPs) on the basis of extensive empirical information (a microbiographical analysis of the 610 parliamentarians who represented the Basque districts between 1810 and 1939). Here we analyse the parliamentarians during the Monarchic Restoration in Spain, a period which saw the industrial take-off in the coastal area of the Basque Country, and the establishment of universal male suffrage in 1890. In this work we are not only analysing a group of parliamentarians, but also elaborating a prosopographical working model for the study of Parliament through its actors.