Las elecciones en Almería a comienzos del siglo XXdel pactoentre caciques al triumfo del encasillado y del cunerismo (1903-1907)

Resumo

Using documentation from the private archives of several politicians of the period, among which those of Antonio Maura and Juan de la Cierva are particularly noteworthy, this article deals with elections held between 1903 and 1907 in Almería, a province regarded as one of the main scenarios of electoral fraud and corruption of the Spanish Restoration, and therefore a reflection of the prevailing political archaism. For this reason, this province provides an excellent viewpoint from which to examine different aspects of the Spanish political system in the first decade of the twentieth century: the organization of dynastic parties, the renewal of political elites, the extent to which local political power -as opposed lo centralised power- was articulated, the extent to which politics had become professionalized, cunerismo, and the level of ideological and clientelistic mobilization with a growing electoral competitiveness. An analysis of these elections reveals the complexity of an electoral dynamic which gives rise to a new reality in which, together with the persistence of the old style of politics, new signs of modernization can be seen, which, although still in their infancy, are an expression of the passage to the "new politics".