EL MOVIMIENTO DE REARME NAVAL EN TIEMPOS DE LA UNIÓN LIBERAL. OPINIÓN PÚBLICA, CULTURA ESTRATÉGICA Y NAVALISMO (1858-1863)

Between 1858 and 1863, a naval rearmament movement developed in Spain that coordinated the efforts of the commercial bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and intellectual elites of liberalism, a sector of the officers of the Royal Navy, the municipalities, the communities of Spanish emigrants in America and the press. Previously, between 1833 and 1857, navalism had already been installed as a consensual horizon of geopolitical regeneration in Spanish public opinion. This process reached its zenith between 1858 and 1860, during the first government of the Liberal Union. The article will analyze how this brief period involved an intensive mobilization of the previously mentioned actors to favor the growth of the Royal Navy and its use as an instrument of Spanish power on the international scene. For this reason, certain organic intellectuals devoted themselves to systematize these demands, defining major strategic schemes that influenced the policies adopted by the Ministries of the Navy between 1861 and 1868.