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Nanwe's Maps and Graphics Thread

The 2011 Latvian general election was held barely a year after the 2010 election. Then-President Valdis Zatlers dissolved the Latvian Saeima early in October over the assembly's refusal to sanction a search at the home of MP investigated on corruption grounds. Zatlers' decisions had to be validated by referendum, in which over 44% of all eligible citizens voted, with over 90% voting in favour of dissolution.

The 2011 election was marked by the dissolution of For a Good Latvia, a right-wing electoral coalition that already been nearly-destroyed in the 2010 election. The two parties that made up For a Good Latvia, the People's Party and Latvia's First Party/Latvian Way had been the dominant parties of the centre-right and right-wing, respectively, of the Latvian political spectrum since the 1998 election. But more importantly, followers of President Zatlers formed their own political party, the Reform Party (which ran as Zatlers' Reform Party) on an economically liberal anti-establishment (specifically anti-oligarch) platform taking advantage of the country's mood.

The election also saw the Union of Greens and Farmers nearly lose half its members compared to the previous year, while the centre-right Unity coalition, led by Prime Minister Dombrovskis lost 13 out of 33 seats it previously held.

Harmony Centre's victory marked the first time since 1990 that an ethnic Russian party had topped the polls in Latvia.

After the election, a coalition government formed by the Reform Party, Unity and the National Alliance was formed, led by incumbent Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis (Unity). This government replaced the previous Dombrovskis, that had been formed by Unity and the Union of Greens and Farmers.

In 2013, Reform and Unity signed a pact ahead of the 2014 election agreeing to run together, with most Reform MPs just being placed on the Unity electoral lists.

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And since I wanted to use the basemap again, here are the results of the 1981 abortion referendum.

In 1978, an odd coalition of PCI, PSI, PSDI, PLI and PRI (so the Communists plus the secular allies of the DC) pushed through the Italian Parliament a law legalising abortion under certain circumstances and guaranteeing doctors the right to not perform an abortion on moral grounds - this is tricky now since in some parts of southern Italy that's 95% of all doctors.

The law, the "Legge 22 maggio 1978, n. 194" was however challenged by one of those pesky constitutional instruments that had barely ever been used in Italy until the 1980s but would be used massively during the decade thanks to the libertarian Italian Radical Party's love for direct democracy. The instrument? The 'revocatory referendum' or 'referendum abrogativo' in Italian, where citizens could challenge a law passed in government (within limits, and after the okay from the Constitutional Court) and reject via referendum.

So in 1981, the Democrazia Cristiana, the SVP, the Catholic Church and many deeply religious Catholics formed the 'Movement for Life' an association created to mobilise against the new abortion law. And they put it to a vote. Funnily enough, the Radicals also challenged the law and instead proposed a referendum to adopt a more liberal abortion law.

Both initiatives failed. In the referendum about re-penalising abortion, Italians rejected it 32 to 68% with an 80% turnout. Below you can see the really socially conservative parts of Italy, aka rural Veneto and Lombardy - where religiosity was strong and the DC an absolute behemoth without the need for the kind of clientelar politics common in southern Italy.

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So after the results of the Italian referendum on Monday, both the Chamber and the Senate will be reduced to 400 and 200 seats each. According to the new text of the Constitution, of these seats, 8 and 4 seats respectively are allocated to Italians abroad.

Likewise, the text establishes that for the new, smaller Senate, each region is awarded at least 3 seats, except for the Valle d'Aosta (1 seat) and Molise (2 seats). Likewise, the two autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano are treated each as a region (3 seats each). The basis of elections in the Senate remains regional.

With that in mind, I tried to create a full-proportional model of what the new system could look like. Now this system is too simple to probably end up being the case, but there you go.

For the Chamber, where necessary, the regions were subdivided into constituencies, following province lines, except for Roma and Milan, where the provinces were further subdivided into, respectively, Roma Capitale and the rest of the province (plus Viterbo and Riati); and the comuni of Milano, Bresso and Sesto San Giovanni and then the rest of the province (plus the province of Monza e della Brianza). I still have some doubts about Emilia-Romagne not having three electoral districts.

All in all, the constituencies resemble, somewhat deliberately but not quite, those used for the Chamber under the 1946 electoral law.

The Senate is much simpler: One region equals one constituency. I did think about splitting Lombardy into two but ultimately I decided against it.

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Okay, now a referendum to measure economic left-wing-ness. In 1984, the PSI-led government of Bettino Craxi passed an anti-inflation decree that among other things limited the movement of the then-active 'sliding wage scale' to +/-3 pp. annually, which had been agreed to in 1977. This sliding wage scale, also active in France until 1982 guaranteed that, automatically, the wages of workers would adjust and increase with inflation, in Italy's case, calculated from a basket of everyday goods.

In 1984, the scale was amended to limit its impact as it was seen as one of the key reasons behind Italy's high inflation at the time.

At the time, the measure was supported by the government coalition (DC, PSI, PLI, PRI, PSDI) and the Radical Party, as well as the employer's organisation (Confindustria) and several trade unions (the DC-affiliated CISL, the PSDI-affiliated UIT and the PSI-affiliated elements of the CGIL) and opposed by the PCI, Democrazia Proletaria (a party to the left of the PCI), the Federation of the Greens, the neo-fascist MSI and the Sardinian regionalists from PSdA, as well as the Communist-affiliated majority of the CGIL trade union.

The opponents of the measure forced a revocatory referendum to revoke the decree in 1985. Ultimately, they lost 54:46 with a high turnout (78%) in what was seen at the time was a tremendous victory and a show of support on the Craxi government.

Voting 'Yes' (Sì) meant voting to repeal the decree, voting 'No' meant keeping it in place.

Here's the map:

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Next in the Italian referendum series: The failed (sense a pattern yet?) constitutional referendum of 2006.

The 2006 referendum was the result of the Berlusconi II and Berlusconi III governments' measures to build upon the 2001 constitutional referendum. The 2001 referendum had considerably expanded the competences of Italian regions in matters of agriculture, education, healthcare and taxation in theory, in practice it changed little.

As a remedy, the changes passed by the Government under Berlusconi after 2001 that were put to vote to the people in a referendum were meant to properly federalise Italy, end perfect bicameralism, reduce governmental instability by strengthening the power of the Prime Minister, reform the Senate and the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court.

In the case of the Prime Minister's powers, the proposed text would have given him the power to dissolve parliament, appoint the ministers and control cabinet agenda (the first two belong to the President, the second to the Council of Ministers as a whole) making the Italian Prime Minister more of a chief executive and less of a cabinet chair. The President would have lost its ability to freely choose a Prime Minister, instead being bound by the advice of the parties and/or the parliamentary majority. (yes, the Italian Presidency is pretty powerful).

The proposals would have given the regions total independence in managing schools, local and regional policing, running most elements of healthcare and would have introduced in the constitution elements of MLG like periodic conferences of the PM and the regional premiers. Some other questions devolved to regions in 2001 would have been returned to the national government.

The Chamber of Deputies would have been reduced to 518 MPs and the - renamed - Federal Senate to 252, with senators no longer being elected with the deputies, and instead at the same time as the regional MPs. Likewise, perfect bicameralism would have come to an end: The Chamber would have been the only chamber that could dismiss a government and discuss and vote on matters of general or national competences. Perfect bicameralism (so a Senate veto or navetta to find a compromise bill) would have been limited to bills dealing with policy areas of shared State-region competence.

The changes would have introduced a clause in the Constitution that would have automatically forced an election in case of a changing government majority during a parliamentary mandate; and given the comune of Rome a special, autonomous status within the Lazio region as a sui generis entity known as Roma Capitale, probably based off the special autonomy that capital city districts tend to have in federal countries.

These changes, while passed and approved by a maority of deputies and senators in the 2001-2006 parliament and the outgoing Berlusconi cabinet, were opposed by the centre-left opposition and later government under Romano Prodi (2006-08).

Ultimately, the constitutional reform bill was rejected by voters in a referendum, with 61.3% voting against and 38.7% voting for, mostly in northern Italy, whose wealthy regions would have probably benefited from more autonomy to run their affairs, unlike the southern regions. Plus, Lega Nord voters. Turnout was pretty low at 52.5%.



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Last one, I promise.

Similarly to 1981's abortion referendum; in 1974 an odd combination of parties legalised divorce in Italy against the vote of the dominant DC as well as the neo-fascist MSI. The law that approved divorce had been sponsored by PSI deputy Loris Fortuna and PLI deputy Antonio Baslin, hence being informally known as the Fortuna-Baslin Law. The bill was passed by an odd coalition of DC secular government partners (PSI, PSDI, PLI and PRI), the Radicals and a very very reticent PCI - which in 1974 was in the middle of forging its 'historic compromise' with the DC.

But the legalisation of divorce, even if opposed by prominent DC politicians, as well as officially the party itself and by the MSI, had gathered support from within the 'white' Catholic world like from the ACLI (a large, Catholic left lay association closely tied to the CSIL) and many members from the DC left were either favourable (like Paolo Prodi, brother of Romano Prodi) to the bill or simply (deliberately?) ambiguous about it. The also fairly clerical SVP gave its voters the freedom to vote as they pleased.

Even the government, led by Mariano Rumor, was largely silent during the referendum campaign, to prevent a breakdown with the DC's secular coalition partners and to maintain the party's inner peace over the topic.

As such, the campaign led by Gabrio Lombardi to revoke the law via an abrogative referendum (a clause in the Italian Constitution never used before 1974) was only really supported, politically, by the DC's right and the MSI, and at the grassroots level by the powerful Catholic lay associations like Comitati Civici and Comunione e Liberazione. And obviously by the Catholic Church.

So it was an interesting campaign, as the two larger parties were rather equivocal on the issue since they had their own political concerns elsewhere, and only the MSI (for the 'Yes') and the secular, middle-class parties for the 'No'.

Ultimately, the result wasn't very close, and Italian society proved more liberal than what many - including the PCI leadership - thought. With an 87.7% turnout, 59.3% of Italians voted 'No' on the measure and 40.7% voted 'Yes', meaning they voted against repealing the Fortuna-Baslin Divorce Law.

As an aside, if Italians could do me the favour and stop changing Sardinia's provincial border, I'd be very happy. I've done 5 maps with 4 different sets of borders.

The map:

CENTER]
 
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As an aside, if Italians could do me the favour and stop changing Sardinia's provincial border, I'd be very happy. I've done 5 maps with 4 different sets of borders.

I've found the same thing myself before. Its almost Napoleonic.
 
Off the conversation over at Chat, I decided to map where the Belgian ministers and secretaries of state are from in Belgium, both for the new De Croo government and the Michel I government (2014-18). I'm now tempted to do the same for Belgian MPs.

In 2014, the so-called "Swedish coalition" (because of the blue and yellow colours of the member parties) was formed between Flemish nationalists (N-VA, yellow), Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V, orange) and the two liberal parties (Francophone MR, lighter blue; and Flemish VLD, darker blue). This government, probably the most right-wing in several decades fell over immigration, where the liberals and Christian Democrats agreed to sign up to the UN Migration Pact while N-VA was so opposed they resigned from cabinet to try and make the government fall.

In terms of composition, the province of Limburg is over-represented and it's wild that there wasn't a single minister from Brussels. The Francophone ministers all hail, with one exception from the main urban areas of Wallonia (Liège, Namur, Charleroi, Tournai, Dinant...).

Meanwhile, the Flemish members are more divided, some are more urban (one from Ghent, another from Antwerp, one from Oostende), but it markedly more suburban, whether it's Brussels' metropolitan area or Antwerp's.

Belgian_ministers_2014.png


Next up, the new De Croo cabinet. The new coalition, called Vivaldi by the press because it contains each colour of the four seasons is a seven-way coalition of Flemish and Francophone liberals, socialists and greens as well as the CD&V (still in orange).

In terms of membership, the Flemish delegation is slightly more urban, but not much. The Francophone ministers mostly come from Namur, but also Mons, Tournai and Liège. I would have expected more people from Liège or Hainaut as they're the largest electoral districts in Wallonia.

4 members this time hail from Brussels, 3 Francophone and one Flemish (now that's a shock). The origins reveal the more humble life of the left-wing ministers, and their second-generation immigrant status too. With one minister from Sint-Joost-ten-Noode (Zakia Khattabi, green dot), the poorest commune in Belgium and an area honestly very afflicted by US city-style urban blight. Likewise, the red dot in Anderlecht reveals a similar origin. Anderlecht is not as poor as Sint-Joost but it definitely not a wealthy part of Brussels.

As for the other two Brussels ministers, they both come from Ixelles, a relatively well-off, kind of bobo area of Brussels, which is split in two by Bruxelles-Ville's Avenue Louise (there's a fun story behind that involving Leopold II) but that also contains the city's Congolese community, so it still has areas of fairly concentrated poverty.


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I know Luxembourg isn't exactly heavily populated, but that still feels a bit disproportionate.
 
I know Luxembourg isn't exactly heavily populated, but that still feels a bit disproportionate.

The constituency elects 4 MPs, so I suppose being born elsewhere seems anomalous due to the small sample size. But it is curious, since most MPs are born in the same province that they represent.

But for the record, the place of birth (which is what I mapped) doesn't necessarily correspond with the residence place. Many MPs hold mayorships or schepen/echevins (like aldermen?) roles in towns other than the ones they were born in. And yeah, the cumul is really, really, common. French influence maybe? Or that MPs are designated by provincial committees through internal elections (called 'polls').
 
Are there any Walloon MPs born in Flanders and vice versa?

There is one Walloon MP born in Hasselt that sits with the PvdA-PTB, one DéFI MP born in Sint-Genesius-Rode and one Flemish MP born in Uccle from Open VLD.

Not shown are a couple of Congolese-born lily-white MPs and a couple German-born ones as well (children of soldiers?).
 
So this is the 1955 apportionment for the lower house of the Assembly of the Levantine Union. Colours represent the allocation by religion (further subdivided into Sunni-Shia, and between the many Christian denominations).

Not pictured: The Sinai and its two MPs (both Sunni muslims).

Apportionment, By state:
Judea: 72 seats
Lebanon: 43 seats
Galilee: 25 seats
Palestine: 23 seats
Jerusalem U.T.: 10 seats
Sinai: 2 seats*

Apportionment, by religion:
Islam: 79 seats (69 Sunnis, 10 Shia)
Judaism: 57 seats
Christianity: 35 seats (16 Maronites, 9 Greek Orthodox, 4 Greek Catholic, 2 Armenian Orthodox, 1 Roman Catholic (Latin), Protestant, Armenian Catholic and 'Other Christian' each*)
Druzism/Unitarianism: 4 seats


* I recently saw a census estimate from 1914 that showed South Sinai as being 40% Copt so I might have to revise the Sinai number.
* Primarily Syriac Orthodox (Jacobites), Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Templar Community. Many others too.

So I have a few questions - I want to make it a bit less c/p of history so I'm thinking of perhaps removing Sinai but instead adding the OTL State of the Alawites (I found data from the 1923 and 1943 censuses!) and cutting off the Negev, so it resembles a bit more the Ottoman Sandjak of Jerusalem and the Sykes-Picot boundaries.

And then another, especially for @Lavidor - do the boundaries make sense? I based them off the Mandatory Palestine sub-districts and especially the one in the Lydda sub-district, which I split between a more urban constituency containing Lod, Ramla, Rishon LeZion, Rehovot and surrounding areas, and then the rest.

I might need some help with the parties though. Now, most Arabic politicians will be zaim (notables) anyway, but by the mid-50s, Lebanon had some well-structured political parties that were (left-/right-)reformist, from the PSP, the SSNP, the Ketaib. No clue how the Zionist parties would react to not having a proper independent Israel - I can envision Menachem Begin and other Revisionist Zionists either leaving their seats empty or refusing to run for office. But that's about it.

Levantine_1955_apportionment.png
 
So this is the 1955 apportionment for the lower house of the Assembly of the Levantine Union. Colours represent the allocation by religion (further subdivided into Sunni-Shia, and between the many Christian denominations).

Not pictured: The Sinai and its two MPs (both Sunni muslims).

Apportionment, By state:
Judea: 72 seats
Lebanon: 43 seats
Galilee: 25 seats
Palestine: 23 seats
Jerusalem U.T.: 10 seats
Sinai: 2 seats*

Apportionment, by religion:
Islam: 79 seats (69 Sunnis, 10 Shia)
Judaism: 57 seats
Christianity: 35 seats (16 Maronites, 9 Greek Orthodox, 4 Greek Catholic, 2 Armenian Orthodox, 1 Roman Catholic (Latin), Protestant, Armenian Catholic and 'Other Christian' each*)
Druzism/Unitarianism: 4 seats


* I recently saw a census estimate from 1914 that showed South Sinai as being 40% Copt so I might have to revise the Sinai number.
* Primarily Syriac Orthodox (Jacobites), Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Templar Community. Many others too.

So I have a few questions - I want to make it a bit less c/p of history so I'm thinking of perhaps removing Sinai but instead adding the OTL State of the Alawites (I found data from the 1923 and 1943 censuses!) and cutting off the Negev, so it resembles a bit more the Ottoman Sandjak of Jerusalem and the Sykes-Picot boundaries.

And then another, especially for @Lavidor - do the boundaries make sense? I based them off the Mandatory Palestine sub-districts and especially the one in the Lydda sub-district, which I split between a more urban constituency containing Lod, Ramla, Rishon LeZion, Rehovot and surrounding areas, and then the rest.

I might need some help with the parties though. Now, most Arabic politicians will be zaim (notables) anyway, but by the mid-50s, Lebanon had some well-structured political parties that were (left-/right-)reformist, from the PSP, the SSNP, the Ketaib. No clue how the Zionist parties would react to not having a proper independent Israel - I can envision Menachem Begin and other Revisionist Zionists either leaving their seats empty or refusing to run for office. But that's about it.

View attachment 26423
Is there a TL you had in mind for this? Different British colonial policy or something? Because if the British have anything to say about it then Sinai won't be part of a non-allied state.

The subdivisions do broadly follow geographic lines, and if it's tracing the Mandate districts then it's along cadastral boundaries so that's good and natural.
But I wouldn't put Samaria (Nablus district) in Judea if the idea is for a mostly Jewish subdivision. Also, Palestine as a name for the Arabs only is anachronistic, it referred to the whole country.
 
Is there a TL you had in mind for this? Different British colonial policy or something? Because if the British have anything to say about it then Sinai won't be part of a non-allied state.

The subdivisions do broadly follow geographic lines, and if it's tracing the Mandate districts then it's along cadastral boundaries so that's good and natural.
But I wouldn't put Samaria (Nablus district) in Judea if the idea is for a mostly Jewish subdivision. Also, Palestine as a name for the Arabs only is anachronistic, it referred to the whole country.

Well, so this first was conceived to be a part of Leinad's Hail Britannia series but I've put a lot of work into it so by now it's more of a standalone thing without an actual TL behind it. That's also why I'm considering extending it to cover the Alawite territories off the coast of OTL Syria. Since the Alawites/Nusayris weren't really considered Muslims (pre-50s fatwas were very clear on this), it seemed like an interesting idea.

So if you, or generally anyone who knows more about British MENA policy thinks it's highly unlikely then I'll just take it out, to be honest.

Judea does have the lion's share of the Jewish population but I didn't really conceive it as a Jewish entity per se, but yeah, I can shift it over to Galilee if that makes more sense.

"Palestine" wasn't really meant as an Arab-only entity, it was just the name assigned to the southernmost entity covering Jerusalem D., Hebron, Gaza and Beersheva. But again, if that doesn't make sense, I'll look into something that does. Unless you have suggestions.

And yeah, although the base map I used wasn't great, I found various municipal maps from 1944, 45 so I can fix some border issues and perhaps (with some help) draw smaller sub-districts, more akin to Lebanon's cazas in size or Israel's own subdistricts.

The states are mostly meant to not be ethnic/religious "homelands" but deliberately multi-ethnic/religious (whether that's successful is something I have no clue and why I wanted to focus on 1955) but the whole concept of the 'Levantine Union' is that it both tries to recognise and institutionalise religious and ethnic diversity without being all about it.

For instance, with the electoral system. It's a "Most open" open list PR system. People vote for the parties or lists that they wish (and within them, the candidates). The parties or lists of independents would be required to field lists that includes candidates from the various religious groups that can obtain a seat (so in Jerusalem U.T. Jewish, Sunni, Greek Orthodox & Roman Catholic) and then based on that the seats are filled, also taking into account most voted candidates within lists to fill a seat. So something similar-ish to Lebanon's older electoral systems. I haven't fully figured out the interplay of confession quota and party results.

But the point is that party/independents' lists would need some degree of cross-community support preventing excessive confessionalisation of politics without ignoring it as a factor either. Same for the election of the directorial executive, the Federal Council, in parliament through weighed voting depending on the community.
 
Under the Restoration (1876-1923), local elections were held every three years. In the case of Madrid, each of the city's then-districts served as a multi-member district whose members were elected by what we would today call single non-transferable vote. All men over 21 could vote.

The Madrid City Council (Junta Municipal) formed the legislative and the executive together with the government-appointed Mayor (Alcalde Presidente). The City Council was formed by 50 members (concejales) who had six-year terms, as the City Council was elected in roughly halves, 28 and 22 each time. The official results only indicate the elected members and their affiliation, but not the vote margins, but luckily the national press tended to cover that, although discrepancies exist.

A note of caution, Spanish electoral law would not recognise political parties as legal entities until the Second Republic, so all party affiliations are self-reported.

In 1905, ABC reported that the elections were marked, other than in Chamberí, by extremely low turnout and even lower interest. So much so that more critical (or neutral) commentators from the period than the openly conservative ABC reported that only the usual suspects' vote, aka people paid by the parties to vote their way or who held their jobs thanks to them, so clients.

Meanwhile, both 1909 elections were held under the new 1907 electoral law passed by the Maura Government. The law, besides making certain changes that do not matter much here (like elections by acclamation if there only one candidate standing) primarily served to introduce mandatory voting modelled on the Belgian 1896 electoral law. The Government also promised to study and present within a year a new constituency map, but it never did, so Spain continued using the exact same constituencies that it had been using since 1869.

Because of the change to the electoral law, both halves of the City Council were elected in 1909, one in May, and another one in December.

As for the political parties:

The Fusionist Liberal Party (Partido liberal fusionista), was the centre-left party created from the merger (fusión, hence the name) of the disparate elements of the parties that governed during the monarchist phase of the Sexenio Democrático and the more moderate republicans around the figure of Práxedes Mateo-Sagasta y Escolar.

During the late 19th century, the liberals were anti-clerical, pro-free trade, pro-universal male suffrage, and favourable to greater freedom of the press, of academia and for more autonomy in the colonies. For that reason, the party found special support in the cereal-growing areas of Castilla and the fruit-growing areas of the Levant, as it was here that Spain's main exports were located.

However, by the turn of the century, after achieving universal suffrage in 1890, expanding academic freedom, freedom of speech and press and losing Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and coming around to support protectionism, the party had a very little ideology or coherence to offer. Indeed, after Sagasta's passing in 1903, the party would enter into tremendous internal bickering between its main personalities and their followers until the strong figure of José Canalejas Méndez.

Canalejas represented a new kind of liberal, more socially interventionist, more anti-clerical (he closed all convents with the Lock Law of 1910), abolished the extremely unpopular consumo (a sales tax on basic goods like salt, bread, etc.) and introduced compulsory military service (eliminating the exemptions for the children of families that could afford to pay for a substitute) and almost passed a first pseudo-autonomous Catalan government. Unfortunately, he was murdered in 1912.

After his death, the Liberals entered a long period of internal fights between its members, around the key figures of the Count of Romanones ('romanonistas'), the Marquis of Alhucemas ('democrats') or Santiago Alba Bonifaz ('albistas' or 'Liberal Left').

The Liberal-Conservative Party (Partido liberal conservador) represented the centre-right of the two dynastic parties. The party was built from moderate conservatives and alfonsistas around the figure of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.

During the late 19th century, the conservatives believed in a close relationship with the Catholic Church (clericalism, without being Carlists), were protectionist, favoured a more active and harsher colonial policy, were opposed to suffrage extensions and were generally conservative on matters of academic and press freedom. For that reason, the party as favoured by Andalucian landowners as well as Catalan and Basque industrialists, whose businesses depended more on access to colonial markets and protection from foreign competition.

Similarly to the Liberals, following the loss of Cuba in 1898 and the assassination of Cánovas del Castillo in 1897, the party was bereft of new ideas other than protectionism (hardly different from the Liberals by then though) or clericalism. But fortunately for them, the party chose as its leader Franscisco Silvela y de Le Vielleuze and, after his untimely death in 1905, Antonio Maura y Montaner.

Both Silvela and Maura were 'regeneracionistas' or reformers if you will. And both came with a large programme of social, political and economic reform that was then known as the 'revolución desde arriba' (top-down revolution). Their ideology was democratic but, in the case of Maura, with the years began to shift towards more 1920s-style authoritarian socially-minded conservatism.

Maura served as Prime Minister between 1904 and 1905 and again between 1907 and 1909 (and then more times). But more importantly, Maura was forced to resign following the 'Tragic Week' when violent riots and even more violent repression shook Barcelona as a result of protests again the sending of draftees to fight in Morocco.

After his dismissal, Maura would lose power internally as another figure, that of Eduardo Dato e Iradier emerged. Dato was a more classical, almost British kind of conservative, socially-minded but in a parliamentarian mould, much less authoritarian in temperament and well-known for his ability to find compromises (Maura once quipped that if Dato ever met the Devil, he'd offer him a cigar before befriending him). Dato was also favoured by the Monarch to the point that his faction of the party was known as the 'idóneos' (the 'ideal ones').

The Republicans, which at the time of these elections were not right a cohesive unit - even by the loose standards of the time. Unlike the Barcelona-based populist republicans led by Lerroux, the Madrid republicans were still basically a collection of disparate politicians to the left of the Liberal Party, some barely evolved from 19th-century café ideologues and some much more socially-minded.

The Republicans' key demand in this time period, besides the obvious one, was an extreme form of anti-clericalism, essentially drawn from French laiïcité, like a state-ran secular education system (banning religious instruction), closing down all convents, and so on.

The Social Defence Committee (Comité de Defensa Social) represented the non-Carlist far-right of the Spanish political spectrum in the early 20th century. The Committee was founded in 1903 by the Marquis of Comillas in Barcelona in response to the city's social upheaval and strong anarchist, republican agitation. The Committee was founded to "defend the social, moral and religious interests of all classes".

The Committee appeared in Madrid in 1907 thanks to the support of the Duke of Sotomayor. The electoral arm which ran in Madrid was famous for declaring itself as "absolutely and unconditionally subject to the [Papal] Encyclicals and Pastoral Letters".

And lastly, the Spanish Socialist Worker's Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) which, like the various Southern European socialist parties of the era was considerably more radical than the German one or Labour. Madrid was, together with Asturias and the Basque Country, one of the parties' strongholds, as here the working class was usually more educated and the PSOE was stronger among miners, 'labour aristocracy' and steelworkers (whereas the anarchists were strongest in Catalonia, amidst the textile industry workers, and in Andalucia).

The PSOE remained, under the Restauración, a fairly marginal and radical party, largely reliant on the cooperation and good will of the republicans, from which the party slowly copied their anti-clerical stances. The PSOE would not elect its first MP until 1910, and only thanks to running a joint slate of candidates with the Republicans.

madrid_elecciones_locales_1905,1909.png
 
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