ABSTRACT
The case of Spain is fundamental for the study of modern praetorianism. More than any single Latin American country, Spain provided the modal example throughout the lengthy and complex evolution of nineteenth-century liberalism. During the twentieth century, the Spanish military provided two dictators, one of them the most successful in any Western country. Altogether, the history of modern liberal and constitutional government in Spain, beginning in 1810, is one of the longest in the world, and for 165 years, from 1810 to 1975, the most common means of institutional breakthrough or fundamental change was military intervention or the rule of a general (whether or not formally a dictator). This created what, without the slightest exaggeration, may be called the praetorian tradition of modern Spain.
