A paradoxical politicization. Carlism, democracy and popular commitment during the Sexenio Democrático

Abstract

The Sexenio Democrático was an essential experience in the making of a “modern” political culture within carlism. This article aims to study the carlist politicization during this period to show that this process was not a simple adaptation of carlism to political modernity but a whole of processes much more ambiguous, paradoxical, which had to do with the making of an alternative modernity to the liberal option which prevailed since 1833. Three elements allow to identify this alternative modernity: the transformation, in the discourse as in the political practice, of the role of the people, and the consequences of this transformation in the carlist ideology; the dialectic between the tradition of military uprising and the tentation to integrate the democratic game ; the multiple processes of mass politicization which occurred  at various scales.