Il discorso politico elettorale nella Spagna della Restauración (1876-1890)

Thanks to an accurate study about the language and the conceptual paradigms used in electoral speeches during the Restauración, some recurrent elements appear with significant frequency. These elements represent the symbolic core in the political conceptual repository of the Spanish liberalism, and they converge around some principal concepts: catholicism, public order and the building of a specific national identity, but also, among others, the complaint for scandals and for the corruption of a governmental system represented as absolutely inadequate to represent the Country. These concepts, converted in self-referred stereotypes, influenced deeply not only the thesaurus of politicians, and above all the electoral rhetorical, but also mechanisms of nation building and of the perception of the Spanish Nation. In particular, the representative and parliamentarian system suffers, together with the liberal regime, a consequent process of progressive delegitimation.