215 years have passed since the Spanish people rose up against the invading French troops. It happened on May 2, 1808, and this compendium of bloody events went down in history as that “May 2nd Uprising”. Like every year, This historical episode is commemorated in the capital of Spain with various acts. This time, however, it will be overshadowed by controversy and political warfare ahead of local and regional elections.
However, this event became the central theme of numerous artistic fields, especially in the pictorial field with the portraitist Francisco Goya as the greatest exponent who captured the aftermath of this brawl in works such as The Onslaught of the Mamelukes on the Puerta del Sol and El tres de Mayo, these two of his best-known works of art. In addition to canvases, May 2, 1808 was reflected in various attachments in the world of culture, from cinema to literature various works commemorating the uprising have multiplied.
The fight against the French invader was the main argument that fascinated various filmmakers in our country for creating great cinematic works. One of the most famous is the film “Sangre de Mayo” directed by the Asturian filmmaker Jose Louis Garci.
The film commissioned by the then President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid to commemorate the uprising Hope Aguirrewas released on May 3, 2008 and stars the actors Quim Gutierrez And Paula Echevarria. The lineup was rounded off by artists such as Miguel Relan, Augustine Galiana, Tina Sainz, Manuel Tejada either Natalia Millan.
Still from the film “Sangre de Mayo”.
Another film that depicted the fight against Napoleon’s army was Carmen la de Ronda, starring the singer from La Mancha Sarah Montiel And Jorg Mistral. This was one of the cinematic gems of the fifties. In the film, the diva plays a gypsy torn between the love of a French officer and a Spanish rebel.
Another film that reflected the Revolutionary War was La Venta de Vargas. The film directed by Enrique Cahen Salaberry, was played by the Bailaora the main role Lola Flores, Ruben Rojo, and Maria Esperanza Navarro either Antonio Gonzalez “El Pescailla”. “La Faraona” puts herself in the role of an artist who does not hesitate to support the rebels in their fight against the invading army.
Years later, in 1963 to be precise, the film “Los Guerrilleros” directed by was released Pedro Luis Ramirez. Inside the singer manolo escobar He played one of the insurgents in a group of rebels fighting French troops and he played to several French soldiers ‘porompompero’one of the most successful songs in his musical repertoire.
Still from the series ‘The Ministry of Time’.
It should also be noted that the battle against the French army was shown not only on the big screen, but also on television. The series ‘El Ministerio del tiempo’, broadcast on Spanish television and directed by Salvador Martin, was one of them. Exactly in the first chapter of the first season of the series, the patrol was formed from the characters played by the actors Rodolfo Sancho, Aura Garrido And Nacho Fresnedaprevent a French officer from finding out the data to win the war.
The fight against the French invader and the writers
In the research I did for elcierredigital.com, in addition to Benito Pérez Galdós and his well-known “Episodes of the Country”, I also found other famous writers who spoke about it:
Angel Ganivet He saw it clearly: “The Spaniard wants to carry a clear ID in his pocket that says: This Spaniard has the right to do or say what he wants.”
Amadeus of SavoyKing of Spain: “Gentlemen, I don’t understand anything… This country is a cage of madmen… I renounce and I go!”.
Stanislaus Figuerasfirst President of the First Republic: “Your Honor, I’ll be honest: I’m fed up with all of us… and I’m leaving!” (and went to Paris).
Gentlemen, May 2nd is here and there is no choice (Historical Memory) but to remember this other May 2, 1808 that appears in the roll of honor of our history and what it meant for the future as the Spaniards rose up against the French invaders and faced the almighty Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Yes, it is true that the Spaniards charged into the mountains that day, arming themselves with knives, axes, sickles, razors, scissors, bielgos, forks, hunting rifles, four rifles and two cannons of the then strongest army and better and lord Europe just to defend the independence of the fatherland, that is Spain … and “that”, that was initially “The Battle of the Puerta del Sol and the fight against the Mamluks” and “On the 3 executions of Mount Príncipe Pio ” by Goya, turned into hours, perhaps electrified by the cry of the mayor of Móstoles: “Spaniards: the fatherland is in danger. Madrid is perishing, victim of a French perfidy. Spaniards, come to save it “, in a war of independence , which would last 6 long years and would restore hope to the peoples of Europe who were on their knees and without faith before the “Blitz of War” and the “invincible god” of battles, General-Kaiser Napoleon
Through the courage of some almost ragged “Spaniards”, the name of Bailén, a small Andalusian town in the Sierra Morena, resounded not only in Madrid, where a French king had already settled, Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of the “monster”, but also in Vienna, in Prague, in Berlin, in Warsaw, in Riga and even in Moscow as a miracle for history.
But what did that May 2, 1808, that War of Independence and that great victory of 1814 that we remember today mean for Spain?… That was the question that the men of the ’98 generation and in general the whole These are the thoughts posed by heads of state in Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the question this apprentice historian is trying to answer at the request of his good friend Juan Luis Galiacho, director and founder of this triumphant newspaper elcierredigital.com.
Difficult task. So I had to drink from the best possible source, which is none other than the “National Episodes” of Don Benito Perez Galdos (A work that should be required reading in all educational centers in Spain and a compulsory subject for MPs and Senators before entering Congress or Senate). Episodes just reading their titles already answer the director’s question
Well I’m sure if you read these episodes you would better understand what he meant Don Benedict when he said: “It is clear, my friends, that we Spaniards know how to make the “machada” of May 2, 1808, but we do not know how to make 3, nor 4, nor 5… the work , which comes later when peace comes, and there is nothing left to verify what was that 19th century ending now”.
Or as the respected Doctor Marañón said: “Spain is the pendulum that swings out from the heroic words of this brave one Admiral Casto Mendez Nunez, knowing that he faced a certain defeat when the Battle of Callao in the waters of the Pacific said: “Mr. Minister, don’t worry, we will go to battle, although we are aware of our inferiority, but honor without ships is better than ships without honor'”.
Or at Traitor and criminal Fernando VII when he ceded the Spanish crown to Napoleon: “My venerable father and lord: in order to give Her Majesty a token of my love, obedience and submission, and to comply with the wishes Her Majesty has repeatedly repeated to me, I renounce my crown On Her Majesty’s behalf and wish Her Majesty may enjoy it for many years”.
The consequences of May 2, 1808
But let’s review the aftermath of that May 2nd and that war. The first was the loss of the colonies, as the economic and political weakness of the “motherland” allowed those countries across the Atlantic, which had been formed as Spanish provinces since discovery and conquest, to lift their heads and want to fly They free from dependence on the Spanish kings and the government of Castile. So it was not surprising that they became independent over the next 40 years, although not without costly wars that left the state coffers empty in the end.
The first were Colombia and Venezuela, with Simon Bolivar as leader, and Argentina doing so even during the years when mainland Spain was trying to throw the Napoleonic armies off its soil (1809-1815). Then came all the others: Chile (1818), Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru (all between 1820 and 1825), Bolivia (1826), Ecuador (1830), Nicaragua (1838 ), Paraguay (1842), Uruguay (1870), and lastly Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, lost to the United States in 1898 after the war. Which means that Spain started the century as a great power and ended it as a third-order power.
More serious than the independence of the colonies, however, was the economic and political situation left behind by the Six Years’ War, as it was a catastrophe experienced during the Six Years’ War Reign of Charles IV Worse was what the war years and those that followed saw, for between the general corruption of the nobility, the state administration, the army and the church and the judiciary, and even the royal family itself, the Spaniards were plunged into the most appalling misery and despair.
The march of the French armies through the fields, the villages and the towns, ravaging everything in their path or taking all possible wealth, had left a country on the brink of disappearance… and it was even less with the return of Ferdinand VII, the king “Felón”, who had remained in exile in France during the war since, on his return, he launched a “self-coup” to regain the absolute monarchy that the Cortes of Cádiz had removed from the center.
The Spanish city
He wrote about the situation that the Spanish people would experience Thomas of Araluce: “… and meanwhile the needy classes, the majos and the majas, the manolos and the manolas, the common folk, lived beside the bushes and many rags begging for alms in the streets; similarly, the armies had to parade barefoot, the weapons were still those of Carlos V, the famous Tercios de Flanders had become units without quarters, the navy had no ships, the seas were already English, the generals achieved their stars not on the battlefields but in the beds of famous ladies (a countess could give you five stars, a marquise three and a duchess who loves the prince could make you captain general).
For his part Salvador of Madariaga He describes Ferdinand VII thus: “Without a doubt, this villain was the most despicable king that Spain ever had. Hypocrite, coward (his own mother came to call him cowardly Mako) petty, suspicious, vile, unscrupulous, spiteful, miserable, sneaky, pathetic, criminal, cynical, conceited, stubborn, arrogant, ungrateful, disloyal, vindictive and even insidious Exile, of roses and delights in Valencay (France), writes to Joseph Bonaparte I, that is, his “successor” in the Spanish crown:
“Sir, allow me, both on behalf of my brother (referring to Carlos María Isidro, the “Carlist”) and my uncle, and on my own behalf, to present to Your Majesty the role that we have assumed in your accession to the throne of Spain. As the happiness of the generous nation they are called to rule has always been the constant goal of all our desires, we have fulfilled it by the accession to the throne of Spain of a prince whose virtues have made him so popular with the Neapolitans (José I came as King of Naples).
We trust, Lord, that you will accept our wishes for the sake of your happiness, with which that of our country is bound, and that you will be kind enough to grant your friendship, to which we are entitled by virtue of the one that we criminally Your Majesty pursue.”
I ask Your Catholic Majesty to accept the oath I owe you as King of Spain and the oath of the Spaniards who are with me at this time.
I remain Your Catholic Majesty the Affmo. brother Ferdinand.
This letter was written on May 22, 1808, a few days after the May 2 massacre and executions in Madrid and while the Spaniards, his subjects, were already fighting the invaders to the death. A prince could never stoop lower!
Well, you could fall even lower, there was no dignity for this felon king. At the end of the war, already knowing that he would return to Spain so that the members of the junta who had ruled in his absence would give him a good reception, he wrote to them in response to their suggestion that he would on the constitution, in order to obtain the crown, the following: “Gentlemen Regents…regarding the restoration of the courts of which you speak to me, and all that has been done during my absence that is useful to the kingdom, it will always deserve my approval as it suits my real interests”
But less than two months had elapsed when, from Spain, Valencia, where he had stopped to organize his triumphant return, he issued a royal decree stating: “I declare that my true spirit is not only in said Constitution not to swear or accede to it, or any decree of the extraordinary courts or the ordinary courts now open, namely those that suppress the rights and prerogatives of my sovereignty established by the constitution and the laws in which the nation has long lived, but to declare this constitution and such decrees null and void and of no value and effect, now or at any time, as if such acts had not happened and removed from the middle of time and without obligation in my cities and my subjects of every class and condition they would have been to be observed and observed”.
And as soon as he arrived in Madrid and regained power, he ordered the arrest, imprisonment or hanging of all the liberals who had distinguished themselves in the Cortes of Cadiz, and blood flowed through every corner of Spain. But he still dragged himself back when, in 1820, the persecuted, who had saved themselves, returned and ruled during the liberal triennium, because without pride, without dignity, he invoked the constitution with dishonorable words: “Let us all march together and I will march first.” on the constitutional path “…although before the cock crowed, and with impunity and treason, he permitted the entry into Spain of “the 100,000 children of San Luis” to regain absolute monarchy and his rule until his death in 1833 to keep the “reign of terror”.
And worse was what happened after his death, as the Liberals and the Absolutists faced death in a civil war that lasted 7 years (1833-1840)… and that was all of the 19th century and part of the 20th. Century, the two Spains they never got along. Which made it clear that May 2, 1808 was just a mirage that lived on until 1936 and reappeared 200 years later with the arrival of the new century.
The big one said it very clearly Mariano Jose de Larra: “The Spaniards do not know how to live with freedom or without it, they only know how to live quietly when they do not have to think and are well controlled” … and that’s why I remember the words of the good old Amadeus of Savoy Tired and disillusioned, he decided to abdicate and leave: “Gentlemen, this country is a cage full of lunatics… I resign and I go!” (and he left, 1873) … and those of Catalan Don Estanislao Figueras, first President of the First Republic; “Gentlemen, I’ll be honest, I’m fed up with all of us… and I’m leaving!” (and he walked and didn’t stop until he got to Paris). But on May 2, 1808, he will appear forever and ever on the list of honors in Spanish history.