El liberalismo peninsular ante la «cuestión americana»

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the position adopted by some of the most representative liberal Spaniards on the American insurgent process. In the context of the political revolution that the Hispanic world lived and the Peninsula resistance to the French invasion, the «American question» became a major problem for peninsular liberalism as a result of the uprisings in several provinces in the New World and the claims of the American deputation in the extraordinary «Cortes de Cádiz». It can be surely affirmed that the liberal sector was strongly homogeneous regarding the American issue, which might not only responded to doctrinal principles but also to conjunctural situations such as corporate interests related to the social group that this current somehow represented. Likewise, this statement should be relativized because, as we will attempt to prove, there were divergences, sometimes significant, in how to address the «American question» within the peninsular liberal group. In the present article, we delve into the positions on the Spanish America defended by four of the most representative liberal Spaniards: Manuel Jose Quintana, Alvaro Florez Estrada, Jose Blanco White and Agustín de Argüelles.