Crisis de subsistencia y protesta popular: Los motines de 1847

This article propounds the view that a widespread popular protest occurred in 1847, a fact that historiography has ignored, as a consequence of a crisis in means of subsistence that resulted in prices soaring in the first half of that year. Such a threat of widespread social upheaval forced the government to intervene by forbidding the export of corn abroad and allowing it to be imported instead. This measure, which sparked off controversy and was criticised by producers and merchants alike through their representatives in Congress, came too late to prevent disturbances in most of the country, which in many cases took the form of uprisings. The protests, that were lacking in political objectives and directed chiefly against corn merchants and local authorities but not against landowners, exacerbated the already precarious situation of the moderate governments, affected by marked instability and the resurgence of Carlism, which could endanger the viability of the liberal system. Faced with popular unrest, the government appealed to local councils and influential individuals to set in motion measures to aid the population. Needless to say, the spectre of the use of armed force and the declaration of a state of emergency was ever present.