José Canalejas y Méndez (31 July 1854 – 12 November 1912) was a Spanish politician, born in Ferrol , who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 1910 until his assassination in 1912.
17-613: Son of a railway engineer, politician and editor of the newspaper El Eco Ferrolano José Canalejas y Casas and of María del Amparo Méndez Romero. He moved with his family to Madrid, and in October 1867 he enrolled in the Instituto San Isidro , "because at that time the incorporated schools could not teach the last two years of the six which made up the baccalaureate ». Already at the Central University of Madrid , he obtained
34-677: The Arévalo district at 1876 election to Cortes , who had renounced to the seat, as it was incompatible with his occupation as land registrar. He became deputy again in 1881, this time in representation of Borjas , replacing Manuel Vivanco Menchaca, elected at the 1879 election , who had renounced to office in January 1881. Canalejas became Senator in representation of the province of Ávila in 1891. He died in Madrid in November 1902. José Canalejas Casas
51-874: The Congress of Deputies ) and from Tuesday, 1 February to Friday, 4 February 1876 (for the Senate ), to elect the Constituent Restoration Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain . All 406 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 196 seats in the Senate. In the Canary Islands the election was held from 28 to 31 January, and in Puerto Rico it was held from 15 to 18 February. On 5 April 1877, another election to
68-581: The Congress had preeminence. Voting for the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage , which comprised all national males over 21 years of age and in full enjoyment of their civil rights. For the 1876 election, the laws of the First Spanish Republic remained in force, including the provisions for both the Congress and Senate within the Spanish Constitution of 1869 . As a result,
85-567: The Senate was held. This was the first election to be held after the end of the First Spanish Republic in 1874. The Third Carlist War and the Ten Years' War were still unraveling at the time, meaning that elections were not held in some districts (namely, those in the Captaincy General of Cuba ). The newly-founded Liberal Conservative Party of incumbent prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo won an overall majority of seats, paving
102-466: The Senate—expired three years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The Monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both Houses at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election . The pronunciamiento —a military coup—of Arsenio Martínez Campos on 29 December 1874 put an end to the First Spanish Republic and hastened the restoration of
119-742: The Sovereignty of the State in view of the encroachments of the Vatican". He served as President of the Congress of Deputies (the equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon office of parliamentary Speaker) from 1906 to 1907. In 1909, after the bloody confrontations of the " Tragic Week " in Barcelona, Antonio Maura resigned and Segismundo Moret was again appointed prime minister. Moret was forced to resign in February 1910 when he
136-461: The degrees of Law in 1871 and Philosophy in 1872, and the degree of doctor in both faculties. In 1873 he was assistant professor, but failed in two chair examinations, so he left teaching. He joined the company of the Railways of Madrid to Ciudad Real and Badajoz, where he became secretary general and He defended the company as a lawyer in lawsuits with other Spanish railway companies. In 1881, Canalejas
153-499: The legislature. For the Senate, 196 seats were indirectly elected , with electors voting for delegates instead of senators. Elected delegates—equivalent in number to one-sixth of the councillors in each municipal corporation—would then vote for senators using a write-in , two-round majority voting system, with each province being allocated four seats. The term of each House of the Cortes—the Congress and one-quarter of
170-654: The literary novelties of the day from a bookstore in central Madrid , he was fatally shot by anarchist Manuel Pardiñas . Canalejas believed in the possibility of a monarchy open to a thoroughgoing democratic policy both in economic and in civil and political matters. Salvador de Madariaga , the liberal historian, argued that the disasters Spain experienced during the 1930s could be traced to Canalejas' murder, given that this murder deprived King Alfonso of one of his few genuine statesmen. [REDACTED] Media related to José Canalejas at Wikimedia Commons Jos%C3%A9 Canalejas y Casas José Canalejas y Casas (1827–1902)
187-640: The original electoral law of 1870 was applied, without including the changes introduced by the 1873 amendments. The electorate consisted of 3,989,612 electors, about a 24.0% of the country population. For the Congress of Deputies, 391 seats were elected using the first-past-the-post method under a one-round system. Candidates winning a plurality in each constituency were elected. The provinces of Spain were divided into single-member districts , with each province entitled to one district per each 40,000 inhabitants or fraction greater than 20,000. The law also provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated throughout
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#1732892165140204-574: The time, especially in rural areas; to weaken excesses of Catholic educational clericalism without threatening the Catholic Church as such; and to turn Spain into a true democracy . These policies successfully faced the social turmoil that radicals had been creating within Spain (and which had led, in 1909, to a brief but bloody unrest in Barcelona ). On 12 November 1912, while Canalejas was window-shopping
221-505: The way for the adoption of the Spanish Constitution of 1876 , which would mark the starting point of the Bourbon Restoration that would last until 1931. The Spanish Cortes were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameralism . Both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions or public credit, where
238-561: Was a Spanish engineer, writer and politician. Born in December 1827 in Barcelona . He was son of José María Canalejas Ugalde and Ana María Casas Foxet. He took studies in industrial engineering in Liège . Canalejas, who worked for the Railway Company from Ciudad Real to Badajoz, came to replace Telesforo Gómez Rodríguez as member of the Congress of Deputies , elected in representation of
255-534: Was elected deputy for Soria . Two years later, he was appointed under-secretary for the Prime Minister's department under Posada Herrera ; he became minister of justice in 1888 and finance from 1894 to 1895. A brief spell as Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce from March to May 1902 ended after only two months, when he resigned as he regarded the Sagasta Ministry weak and "incapable of safeguarding
272-400: Was father José Canalejas Méndez , prime minister of Spain durante the reign of Alfonso XIII and of Luis Canalejas Méndez, politician and engineer. 1876 Spanish general election Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Conservative Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Conservative The 1876 Spanish general election was held from Thursday, 20 January to Sunday, 23 January 1876 (for
289-567: Was replaced by Canalejas who became Prime Minister and chief of the Liberal party. Moret denounced the Canalejas Ministry as "a democratic flag being used to cover reactionary merchandise". While in office, Canalejas (with the support of his sovereign, Alfonso XIII ) introduced several electoral reforms that aimed to win working-class support for moderately conservative policies; to curb the power of independent political bosses , quite common at
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