(Translated from – El Orden—July 3, 1874)

Sr. Director de El Orden.

Huelva, June 28, 1874.

My dear friend:

I have just read in the newspapers there the following lines that they copied from the Gaceta:

“Andalusia. The military governor of Huelva reports that more than 120 men on horseback and others on foot, dependents and workers from the Tharsis mines, have marched in pursuit of the individuals who rose up a few days earlier in a cantonal sense, etc.”

This must be either a mistake or some enemy hand of the authorities of this province has put cantonal where they wrote Carlist. Be it one or the other, I believe that this phrase can redound to the discredit of these authorities, and I hasten to defend their good reputation, reestablishing the truth of the facts, involuntarily or intentionally altered.

You know, dear friend, what happened in this locality during the period of the cantonal insurrections. The two bordering provinces, Seville and Cádiz, having risen up with formidable forces, made efforts to drag this one into the insurrection; they sent agents for this purpose; Seville threatened to send a column to force it to rise up or support those who were willing to do so; there were rumors that Cádiz would send a warship to our port for this purpose; ex-officers of the Paris Commune who were on the Portuguese border waiting for the movement, entered our province and reached the capital, believing it was imminent.

There was no lack of people who sympathized with the insurrection; because although they viewed with distrust the interference of some elements or some men unknown or with suspicious backgrounds, on the other hand they could not have that same distrust regarding others. It was believed for a few days that Huelva, in the end, would have no choice but, swept away by the force of circumstances, to follow the path traced by Seville and Cádiz. Despite everything, the superior authorities (seconded, it is true, by the local authorities and by some private individuals) knew how to perfectly dominate the difficulties of the situation, and not a single man moved in the province.

Those who, knowing these facts, have read the aforementioned report, will they not think of making comparisons in which the current authorities certainly cannot come out very well? If when the cantonal movement presented itself as powerful; if when everything conspired to drag and compromise Huelva in that fatal insurrection, it remained, however, tranquil, what is happening in it today that, with cantonalism dead everywhere, the partisans of that idea are rising up in such a peaceful province?

If the authorities of that time knew how to conjure up such serious evils in the midst of so many difficulties, what are those of today doing, what is their prestige, what is their activity, what is their intelligence, what are their dispositions, that what the cantonals could not do when everything favored them, they are doing today when everything is adverse to them?

No; in honor of the truth, and in deference to the reputation of these authorities, let us undo this error. The party, as the authority wants, or the parties, as the common people say, is or are Carlist, and it is proven; first, by the insignia that a captured leader wore, precisely by those same people who, as the report states, left Tharsis in pursuit of the rebels; second, in a raid given by the people of Valverde, two prisoners were taken, one of whom was found with a letter from the parish priest of Valverde himself, D. Vicente Linares y Bejarano, whose letter compromised this gentleman, who was arrested on the morning of the 20th; and third, from the papers found in a suitcase also taken from the rebels, not only the aforementioned priest but several others from the villages are implicated in the matter.

There has been much talk in Huelva about these events; there are numerous letters from the towns that deal with them; but neither these, nor the locals, nor the reports from the local authorities, or from private individuals, nor anyone, in short, has spoken of cantonals; so the report in question has produced here the strangeness that such a sovereign slip could not fail to produce.

Some suppose that, since the military chief, author of the report, has very marked affections for Alfonsism, and since the Alfonsinos of late have been afflicted with a strange monomania that makes them see cantonals even on their fingers, some suppose that this military chief is afflicted with the same illness that almost all of his people suffer from, and for that reason he has printed, not wanting to, of course, the word cantonal for Carlist.

There are also those who suppose that this change of words was thought up and advised by another authority who, in this matter of diplomatic subtleties, political skills, and Metternich-like coups, is a wonder.

Whatever it may be, while I collect sufficient data to demonstrate that the Carlist insurrection in this province is due to the situation created in it by the homogeneous ministry, insert this rectification.

I am your attentive and sure servant,

The Correspondent