[Menydh]

Embarking of soldiers to Ultramar (overseas)

The opinion of Polavieja, as it is well known, was not taken into account and regrettably his predictions became true.

There was neither a foreign policy geared to obtain support, in case that some foreign powers which were interested in our colonies decided to take on a military intervention. In the begining of the decade of the 90s, the biggest worry was the negotiation of a series of commercial treaties in line with the protectionist orientation that our commercial policies had taken.

The Spanish Government tried, via diplomatic actions, to obtain warranties that the United States would not intervene in the Cuban conflict, but these attempts failed.

Spain insisted till the end. "All diplomatic activity performed by the Government of Sagasta from October 1897 until April 1898 only achieved that the big powers raised a moral protest in favour of Spain because England led a minimal European intervention. So far as we know until this moment, there was not the slightest chance that some of the six big powers, alone or with allies, accepted the possibility of participating in an armed intervention."

Nor were the politicians of the Restauration, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals, able to face the deep reforms that the Army needed. All they did was looking forward to avoid the raisings and, due to the scarcity of elements to maintain public order, that the Army substituted the Law and Order forces in case of necessity, as had happened in numerour occassions before.

Some improvements took place though, like the creation of the Academia General Militar in 1882. But many of the bills that were passed kept, in essence, the existing organisation or they barely modified it. Other, after being passed, were never taken into effect.

It must be pointed that in April 1887, General Cassola, Minister of War, presented in a Congress a plan to reorganize the Army. The open debate that this brought was of much importance to the Spanish society, and the press followed it with much interest. The reforms that General Cassola meant to perform on the core of the military institution affected two fundamental aspects of it: first, to create an autonomous and effective organism through the promulgation of a law Constitutive of the Army which defined clearly the essence of the Army, and which establishes definitely its organic articulation; and second, to try to adequately resolve the pitiful personal, famililar and social state which the the members of the Army where going through.

Cassola found a strong opposition, since his project touched some sensitive issues.

If the proposal of the obligatority of the military service stroke that bourgeoise society, which was so propicious to the new privileges of money and where only the children of the poor served as soldiers, many of the other reforms left wounded directly the "spirit of corps". His project was rejected by the privileged in the civilian society and by those who could avoid the conscription through the payment of the redemption, and by the priveleged ones in the military stratum, i.e. by the facultative arms: Artillery, Engineers and Staff, who feared that they would lose the benefits of dualism and the system of promotion through merits.

Canalejas, before the Congress, denounced the main problems that our army suffered of in 1888. Among others we can highlight the defficient status of organisation, low wages, problems in promotions, and old and scarce material.

With regards to the small campaign which took place after the border incident with Morocco in 1893, the Staff of the E.M.C. writes in its History of the campaigns in Morocco: "The military organisation was so deficient that it was necessary to desorganize all services in order to place an army of 22,000 troops in Melilla, and considerably late and with a lack of numerous elements.

It was obvious that in 1895 things could not have changed much. The politicians did not bother with creating an army appropiated to defend our colonies.


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