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Francesc Pi i Margall | |
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.png) Photograph byCarlos Bertazioli,c. 1895–1901 | |
| President of the Executive Power | |
| In office 11 June 1873 – 18 July 1873 | |
| Preceded by | Estanislao Figueras |
| Succeeded by | Nicolás Salmerón |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1824-04-29)29 April 1824 Barcelona, Spain |
| Died | 29 November 1901(1901-11-29) (aged 77) Madrid, Spain |
| Political party | Democratic Federal Democratic Republican |
| Spouse | Petra Arsuaga |
| Children | 3, includingFrancisco [es] andJoaquín [es] |
| Parents |
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| Signature |  |
Francesc Pi i Margall (Spanish:Francisco Pi y Margall; 29 April 1824 – 29 November 1901) was a Spanishfederalist andrepublican politician and theorist who served as president of the short-livedFirst Spanish Republic in 1873. He was also a historian, philosopher,romanticist writer, and was also the leader of theFederal Democratic Republican Party and theDemocratic Party. Pi was turned into a sort ofsecular saint in his time.[1][2]
A disciple ofPierre-Joseph Proudhon,[3] his theoretical contributions left a lasting effect on the development of theanarchist movement in Spain.[4]
Pi was the son of a working-class textile worker inBarcelona,Catalonia, and was born on 29 April 1824. Pi's father enrolled him in a religious school in 1831 where Pi acquired an education in the humanities and theclassics. He was a member of theSocietat Filomàtica, enabling him to meet some of the main thinkers and writers of theCatalanromanticist movement. In 1837, he left to study law, earning alicentiate degree in 1847. He moved toMadrid that year and began writing as a theater critic for the journalEl Renacimiento and forEl Correo, in which Pi's first political article was published. In need of further income, Pi also took a job for Martí, a Catalan bank.[citation needed]
Pi was involved in the revolution of 1854 that brought theliberalespadónBaldomero Espartero back to power. He publishedLa reacción y la revolución in that year, influenced byG.W.F. Hegel'sphilosophy of history and the thinking of the FrenchanarchistPierre-Joseph Proudhon. In 1856 he established a new journal,La Razón, that was closed when the government ofLeopoldo O'Donnell was overthrown byRamón María Narváez. Pi fled toGuipúzcoa in theBasque country until 1857, whenNicolás María Rivero asked him to return to Madrid to contribute to the Republican newspaperLa Discusión. AtLa Discusión, Pi became acquainted with a number of leaders of the Spanish republican movement, including another future president of theFirst Republic,Estanislao Figueras. In 1864 he became the director of the newspaper.[citation needed]
After the sergeants' revolt atSan Gil in 1866, Pi fled to Paris, where he gave lectures and translated several of Proudhon's works and became familiar with Frenchpositivism. 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 infederal constitutions. Throughout his life he would promote republicanism and social objectives through the federal idea.[citation needed]
Pi returned from Paris after the success of the1868 Glorious Revolution. He was elected deputy on behalf ofBarcelona and was part of the Constituent Cortes that wrote the1869 Constitution. 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 theParis Commune, conciliatory policy toward opposition groups, and electoral setbacks. He continued to adamantly promote the establishment of afederal republic in place of a monarchy. He opposed the monarchy ofAmadeo I during its short rule.[citation needed]
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When theFirst Spanish Republic was established in 1873 after the abdication of Amadeo I, the first president, Estanislao Figueras, appointed Pi as Minister of the Interior. During his ministerial tenure, Pi was responsible for the struggle against thecantonalist movement in the provinces. On Figueras's resignation on 11 June, Pi was namedpresident. Pi presented to the Cortes an ambitious plan of reform, including a law formalizing a stricterseparation of church and state, the reorganization of the army, reduction of the working day to eight hours, regulation ofchild labor, enhancements to the relationship between business and labor, new laws regarding the autonomy of the regions of Spain, and a program of universal education. His acquaintance with Proudhon enabled Pi to warm relations between the Republicans and the socialists in Spain. However, Pi was unable to rein in the instability of the Republic; on 1 July, the more radical elements of the Republican party and federalists broke off and declared the government illegitimate, and new insurrections appeared inAlcoy andCartagena only a week later. Under pressure from the Cortes and many leading Republicans who accused him of dangerous weakness, Pi resigned the presidency on 18 July, only a little more than a month after he assumed the office.[citation needed]
After the end of the Republic in 1874, Pi left political life for a decade. During this time, he returned his attentions to his writings; only a few months after the end of the Republic, he wrote a treatise on its events,La República de 1873. He followed this withLas Nacionalidades andJoyas Literarias in 1876. The first volume of hisHistoria General de América was published in 1878,La Federación in 1880, andLas luchas de nuestros días andObservaciones sobre el carácter de don Juan Tenorio in 1884. In 1886, he returned to politics and was elected deputy forFigueres, inCatalonia, and again in 1891 and 1893. He was involved in the fragmentation of the Spanish Republican movement in this period together with Estanislao Figueras,Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla,Emilio Castelar y Ripoll, andValentí Almirall. Pi was involved in the 1883 RepublicanCongress of Zaragoza that proposed a federal republican constitution for Spain; in 1894, he was instrumental in reforming the republican movement with a new manifesto for the Federal Party. In 1890, Pi founded the newspaperEl Nuevo Régimen, which campaigned for Cuban independence. Pi's promotion of federalism and regional autonomy earned him popularity among Catalananarchists.[citation needed]
Pi died on 29 November 1901 around 18:15 at his home in the calle del Conde de Aranda,[5] in Madrid.
Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish[6] and later briefly became president of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the Democratic Republican Federal Party. According toGeorge Woodcock, "These translations were to have a profound and lasting effect on the development of Spanish anarchism after 1870, but before that time Proudhonian ideas, as interpreted by Pi, already provided much of the inspiration for the federalist movement which sprang up in the early 1860s."[7] According to theEncyclopædia Britannica "During the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi i Margallattempted to establish a decentralized, or "cantonalist", political system on Proudhonian lines."[8]
Pi considered federalism to be a "unity in variety, the law of nature, the law of the world", an organization based on the bottom-up contract by "natural and spontaneous collective beings" (La reacción y la revolución, 1854).[9]
Pi i Margall was a dedicated theorist in his own right, especially through book-length works such asLa reacción y la revolución (English: "Reaction and revolution" from 1855),Las nacionalidades (English: "Nationalities" from 1877), andLa Federación from 1880. For prominentanarcho-syndicalistRudolf Rocker "The first movement of the Spanish workers was strongly influenced by the ideas of Pi i Margall, leader of the Spanish Federalists and disciple of Proudhon. Pi i Margall was one of the outstanding theorists of his time and had a powerful influence on the development of libertarian ideas in Spain. His political ideas had much in common with those ofRichard Price,Joseph Priestly (sic),Thomas Paine,Thomas Jefferson, and other representatives of the Anglo-American liberalism of the first period. He wanted to limit the power of the state to a minimum and gradually replace it by a Socialist economic order."[10]
He was also a supporter of a decentralized version ofIberian Federalism, framing the realization of such prospect in terms of "Iberian nations".[11] He was wary of centralism (which was alien to the internal organization of the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula and imposed on them, according to Pi), which he deemed to be, along with monarchy, one of the root reasons behind the state of decadence of the Peninsular peoples.[12]
He showed a special and naive affection for the United States.[13]
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| Preceded by | President of the Executive Power of Spain 11 June 1873 – 18 July 1873 | Succeeded by |
| President of the Provisional Government of Spain 11 June 1873 – 18 July 1873 | ||
