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Cartoon in the satirical magazine El Motín depicting Cánovas and Sagasta over a swing supported by an allegory of Spain

New Theatre "The Twins" from the Spanish magazine Gedeón, 1909.

In Spanish politics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, El Turno Pacífico ("The Peaceful Turn") was an informal system operated by the two major parties for determining in advance the result of a general election. The system ensured that the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party would have alternating periods in power.

Operation

Under the turno, the incoming government would first be chosen by the king and would then "make" the election (the so-called encasillado or "pigeonholing"), ensuring victory. After a period in office, it would then be the turn of the opposition. The key to the system was the link between the minister of the interior, the provincial civil governors, and the local bosses (caciques). These caciques in most constituencies would instruct their clients how to vote. A similar system in Portugal was called rotativismo [pt].

Motivation

The Turno Pacífico was put in place by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and saw to it that the two "official" parties of the Cánovas Restoration, the Partido Conservador (or Liberal-Conservatives) and Partido Liberal (or the Liberals), retained power in alternation. Both parties upheld the monarchy and could be seen as factions of the "governing class".^[1]

After almost a century of political instability and many civil wars, the Restoration of 1874 sought to achieve political stability in Spain. Under the turno, no sector of the bourgeoisie felt isolated and patronage could be doubled. It worked effectively until 1898, surviving the death of Alfonso XII in 1885,^[2] but then became more difficult to operate because of divisions within the major parties and the growing mobilization of sectors of the electorate.

Cessation

Despite being modelled on the United Kingdom, Spanish democracy lacked a responsiveness to popular opinion as (until about 1914) the outcome of elections was broadly decided in advance. Growing opposition was first apparent after Spain's defeat in the Spanish–American War. A period of grave instability occurred in 1918 and 1919, but between 1920 and 1923, a serious attempt was made to reconstruct the turno. It was brought to an end by the military coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera in September 1923.^[3]

Election results under the turno

Electoral performance of the two main parties, 1876-1923
		Deputies
Date	% non-voters	Conservatives^[a]	Liberals^[a]	Others
23 January 1876	45	333	27	31
20 April 1879		293	56	43
20 August 1881	29	39	297	56
27 April 1884	28	318	31	43
4 April 1886		56	278	58
1 February 1891		253	74	72
5 March 1893		44	281	75
12 April 1896		269	88	44
27 March 1898		68	266	67
16 April 1899	35	222	93	76
19 May 1901	33	79	233	89
26 April 1903		234	102	67
10 September 1905		115	229	60
21 April 1907	33	252	69	83
8 May 1910	17	102	219	83
8 March 1914	24.7	188	85	135
9 April 1916	20.3	88	230	91

^ ^a ^b Excluding dissident and independent factions of these parties

References

^ Francisco J. Romero Salvado (2012). Spain 1914-1918: Between War and Revolution. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-61449-3. For the following four decades two monarchist or 'dynastic' parties rotated in office: the Conservatives, headed by Cánovas himself, and the Liberals, led by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. The succession in government of these two groups was so systematic that the Canovite order was known as Turno Pacífico (Peaceful Rotation). The governing class was formed by the representatives of the dominant landowning oligarchies of Castilian wheat growers and Andalusian wine and olive oil producers. As the years went by, the group also included large financial interests such as banks, state companies and big concerns like railways. Thus liberal democracy in Spain, as in most European countries at the time, was a sham and a way to disguise the supremacy of these privileged groups in society. It perpetuated the co-existence of modern liberal institutions with a semi-feudal socio-economic order. […] The ruling system avoided confrontation and instead sought compromise and stability. The party in power at election time respected the strongholds of the dynastic opposition and even the most important seats of such enemies as the Republicans on the Left and the Carlists on the Right.
^ "The Revolution of 1868 and the Republic of 1873". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
^ Angel Smith, Historical Dictionary of Spain, p. 624.