Cánovas, the Peral submarine and Spain's new traitor controversy

Cánovas sank the Peral submarine, and the echo reaches JITANOBOCS

Spanish politics has found a new mirror in the 19th century. The architect of the Restoration, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, is now being used to measure treason. The trigger is Isaac Peral's military programme: Cánovas ordered it cancelled, the submarines dismantled and their attack equipment removed. The black legend holds that the goal was to leave Cuba defenceless.

The order that wrecked the arsenal

The Peral submarine had passed its tests. It was no toy: an electric torpedo boat capable of altering the naval balance. The decision to scrap it and strip its weapons is seen as the first great surrender of home-grown capabilities. The man who did it, Cánovas, becomes the original traitor, the one who buried a military advantage just as the Cuban war loomed.

From Ferdinand VII to the regime of '78

The controversy does not stop at Peral. Some trace the decline back to Ferdinand VII and his renunciation of keeping the empire. Others carry the parallel into the present: the regimes of '76 and '78 would be two sides of the same coin. The opposing view considers Cánovas worse, because he destroyed a Spain that was still a power. The third dismisses the whole matter: if the country was already sold out, there is no individual traitor, only an inheritance.

The Peral submarines were scrapped and Cuba was lost. If treason is measured by its effects, Cánovas's lies at the bottom of the sea; today's lies in the budgets. Which weighs more, nobody can say.