Under the
constitutional monarchy of the
Bourbon Restoration,
government formation required the support of the Crown, and elections were called only in response to a political crisis or the erosion of power of the ruling party. Only two major political parties governed Spain under the Restoration: the
Liberal Conservative Party, representing the "right" of the system, and the
Liberal Fusionist Party, representing its "left". The Conservative Party was led by
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the architect of turnismo, and the Liberal Party was led by
Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. The two men divided between them all of the political factions which supported the constitutional monarchy, excluding
Carlists and
republicans, who both rejected the political system, and socialists and
anarchists, who rejected the principles of liberty and property on which Spanish
bourgeois society was based. The first alternation took place in
February 1881, when the Liberal Party was called to power after six years of conservative government. In this instance, the transfer of power came at the behest of
Alfonso XII, without consultation with Cánovas and against his presumed wishes. According to historian José Ramón Milán García, "its relevance did not escape its protagonists, aware that the monarch's initiative opened the doors to overcoming the entrenched confrontation between left-wing liberalism and the
Bourbon dynasty, and therefore the Cainite struggles sustained for decades between the various houses of Spanish liberalism." Historian Carlos Dardé noted that the 1881 election made clear "that the ultimate interpreter of the state of affairs, and the one who had the power to make decisions―over and above the parliamentary majorities and the president of the government―was the monarch." In response to the 1881 transfer of power, Cánovas formulated a system of rules "that both parties would have to respect in order to avoid falling again into the danger of royal whims. [...] The first thing he saw clearly was the need to control the royal prerogative, to standardize it and give it fixed criteria, far from personal criteria; to achieve a balance between royal and parliamentary power, for which party leaders were going to be the arbiters." In November 1885, following the death of the king and during the brief regency of the pregnant queen
Maria Christina of Austria, Cánovas resigned as prime minister and advised Maria Christina to appoint Sagasta as prime minister. Cánovas then met with Sagasta and General
Arsenio Martínez Campos to communicate his decision. At the meeting, Cánovas and Sagasta informally agreed to alternate power automatically over the following years, an agreement which has become commonly known as the "
Pact of El Pardo". ==Operation==