Puerto Rico without the Spanish-American War

[Ricardolindo]

In a scenario in which the Spanish-American War never happened, what would have been the fate of Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico was far more happy under Spain than Cuba and the Philippines were. Puerto Rico was actually granted a statute of autonomy in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.
My guess is that Puerto Rico would probably remain part of Spain until the present day, like the Canary Islands.

 

[Ricardolindo]

So, does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[Charles EP M.]

Puerto Rico is far from Spain but nearer to America, a larger island than any if the Canaries, and already wanted autonomy from Spain OTL so I think it most likely becomes independent like most of Europe's Caribbean colonies. The big question would be 'when'. Off the top of my head, if it decided to break away during the Spanish Civil War and the US recognised it (because it would like more trade/to lease a naval base), Madrid has to lump it.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Puerto Rico is far from Spain but nearer to America, a larger island than any if the Canaries, and already wanted autonomy from Spain OTL so I think it most likely becomes independent like most of Europe's Caribbean colonies. The big question would be 'when'. Off the top of my head, if it decided to break away during the Spanish Civil War and the US recognised it (because it would like more trade/to lease a naval base), Madrid has to lump it.

Puerto Rico isn't really comparable to the other European colonies in the Caribbean, though. There wasn't the same racial split that there was in the British or French Caribbean. Puerto Rico had a large white population and the mixed race people spoke Spanish, not a Creole.
As I said, Puerto Rico was granted a statute of autonomy in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.
The biggest trouble that Spain may have in keeping Puerto Rico is if something like the Spanish Civil War still happens but without the Spanish-American War, I think that's unlikely.

 

[Nanwe]

This is a hard-to-answer question, frankly. The loss of Cuba in 1898 was an extremely traumatic moment in Spanish history and, in many ways, unleashed the energies that led to the Civil War. Without the loss of Cuba and Puerto Rico (and the Philippines, but they didn't have the same role in the collective imagination of the Spanish intellectual, social and political elites), it is very hard to know how things could evolve in Metropolitan Spain.

However, I could venture to say that the military and the political elites won't feel the same pressure to get so heavily invested in the Rif as a way to recover the lost prestige. This makes it less likely that a type of africanista mentality develops in the Army and the stab-in-the-back myth that the Army started to believe in increasingly more in more from 1898 on, and which can be seen as early as 1906 with the Cu-Cut incident.

As concerns Puerto Rico, the Estatuto de Autonomía was significantly more wide-ranging than the modern ones, far more like that of a French TOM or Greenland vis-à-vis Denmark nowadays. Puerto Rico would have retained representation in Parliament but would have been very autonomous, including on customs issues (which makes sense, given the importance of trade with the US).

Besides that, by 1898, Puerto Rico's Partido Liberal Autonomista, seemed on the verge of being a hegemonic party, due to the collapse of the unity of the Unconditional Party due to internal fractures and the weakness of republicans. This was helped because it had fully taken root in the turnismo back in Metropolitan Spain.

PS: As an aside, it's quite wrong to assume that the Spanish Civil War has to happen and it's a fixed point in history or something.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Puerto Rico isn't really comparable to the other European colonies in the Caribbean, though. There wasn't the same racial split that there was in the British or French Caribbean. Puerto Rico had a large white population and the mixed race people spoke Spanish, not a Creole.

Puerto Rico had a large white population because of both large scale Canarian settlement in the late 17th century and in the 18th century and Catholic European immigration in the 19th century.
Arguably, the reason that the United States annexed Puerto Rico is that it's so white compared to the rest of the Caribbean.