Práxedes Mateo Sagasta

Práxedes Mariano Mateo Sagasta y Escolar (21 July 1825 – 5 January 1903) was a Spanish civil engineer and politician who served as Prime Minister on eight occasions between 1870 and 1902—always in charge of the Liberal Party—as part of the turno pacifico, alternating with the Conservative leader Antonio Cánovas. He was known as an excellent orator.

Biography Mateo Sagasta was born on 21 July 1825 at Torrecilla en Cameros, province of Logroño, Spain. As a member of the Progressive Party while a student at the Civil Engineering School of Madrid in 1848, Sagasta was the only one in the school who refused to sign a letter supporting Isabella II.

After his studies, he took an active role in government. Sagasta served in the Spanish Cortes between 1854–1857 and 1858–1863. In 1866 he went into exile in France after a failed coup. After the Spanish Revolution of 1868, he returned to Spain to take part in the newly created provisional government.

In 1880, Sagasta founded the Liberal Fusionist Party, which in 1881 formed a government lasting until 1883. During this administration, the government enacted a law guaranteeing freedom of the press without prior censorship and granted a general amnesty to Republicans. In 1885, the Liberal Fusionists merged with the Izquierda Dinástica ("Dynastic Left") to create the Liberal Party.

During Sagasta’s premiership from 1885 to 1890, his government implemented a series of major reforms, including the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886, the Law of Associations in 1887, the promulgation of a new Civil Code in 1889, and the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1890.

He served as Prime Minister of Spain during the Spanish–American War of 1898 when Spain lost its remaining colonies. Mateo Sagasta agreed to an autonomous constitution for both Cuba and Puerto Rico. Mateo Sagasta's political opponents saw his action as a betrayal of Spain and blamed him for the country's defeat in the war and the loss of its island territories in the Treaty of Paris of 1898. He continued to be active in politics for another four years.

Mateo Sagasta's ministry lost a vote in the Cortes on 2 December 1902, he handed in his resignation to the King on the following day, and formally resigned on 10 December 1902.

Mateo Sagasta died in Madrid at the age of 77 on 5 January 1903, just a month after his last resignation.