Antonio Canovas del Castillo

Shot on 8 August 1897 at the Santa Agueda spa in Spain by the Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo; the architect of the Restoration monarchy died amid the Cuban war.

Overview

Canovas, the dominant conservative statesman of Restoration Spain, alternated in power with Sagasta under the constitution he wrote, and as premier pursued the relentless reconcentration policy in the Cuban war of independence that was starving the island countryside. Angiolillo, an anarchist journalist moved by the fate of Spanish anarchists imprisoned at Montjuich and by the Cuban reports, shot him at the Basque spa where he took the waters. Angiolillo was garroted within weeks. The killing removed the statesman most committed to holding Cuba by force; his successor Sagasta moved toward the settlement that failed only months later in the Spanish-American War of 1898, which destroyed the remnants of the Spanish empire.