Francisco Pi Y Margall - Political Life Under The Monarchy

Political Life Under The Monarchy

Pi was involved in the revolution of 1854 that brought the liberal caudillo Baldomero Espartero, Count of Luchana back to power. He published La reacción y la revolución in that year, influenced by G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy of history and the thinking of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. In 1856 he established a new journal, La Razón, that was closed when the moderate O'Donnell government was overthrown by the reactionary Ramón María Narváez y Campos, Duke of Valencia. Pi fled to Guipúzcoa in the Basque country until 1857, when Nicolás María Rivero asked him to return to Madrid to contribute to the Republican newspaper La Discusión. At La Discusión, Pi became acquainted with a number of leaders of the Spanish republican movement, including another future president of the First Republic, Estanislau Figueras i de Moragas. In 1864 he became the director of the newspaper.

After the sergeants' revolt at San Gil in 1866, Pi fled to Paris, where he gave lectures and translated several of Proudhon's works and became familiar with French positivism. He developed ideas about revolutions and the philosophy of history, including a belief in an inevitable, progressive, and permanent movement in history toward greater freedom, embodied in federal constitutions. Throughout his life he would promote republicanism and social objectives through the federal idea.

Pi returned from Paris in 1868 after the success of the Glorious Revolution. He was elected deputy on behalf of Barcelona and was part of the Cortes that wrote the Spanish Constitution of 1869. During this time Pi became respected as a leader of the Republican party in the Cortes; he is officially named the head of the party in March 1870. He was replaced shortly thereafter by internal strife over the party's policy toward the Paris Commune, conciliatory policy toward opposition groups, and electoral setbacks. He continued to adamantly promote the establishment of a federal republic in place of a monarchy. He opposed the liberal monarchy of King Amadeo I of Spain during its short rule.