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The Ominous Decade (1823-1833) is the name given to the period of Spanish history between the last phase of the reign of Ferdinand VII and the restoration of absolutism, after the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823) during which Spain was governed by the Cádiz Constitution which was promulgated in 1812.

This period opens with the invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of San Luis on April 7, 1823. The French Army was commanded by Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, who subjugated liberal Spain by order of the Holy Alliance. The Alliance, which was upset over the development of liberalism in Spain and incited to action by the secret emissaries sent by the king to the allied powers, was trying to avoid having to govern under a constitution. This period witnesses some of the most egregious examples of the repression of liberals in the history of the Iberian peninsula. In order to avoid death, the most important of their leaders had to emigrate. Above all, they went to London's Somerstown neighborhood, but they also went to Malta, Paris, the United States, and the newly created countries of Latin America. One of these leaders, Rafael del Riego, was executed in the Plaza de la Cebada in Madrid on 23 November 1823 as an example of possible consequences. The authorities established strict censorship and the Minister of Grace and Justice Francisco Tadeo Calomarde y Arría developed an archaic and reactionary plan for university studies. The liberals were suffocated on the one hand by pre-Carlist uprisings which had to do with the unresolved question of the Salic law (e.g. The Malcontents in Catalonia), and on the other hand by attempts at liberal insurrection, coups d'état (prepared abroad for the most part) like those of Torrijos or like the ones by the Coloraos in Almería, among many others. The French army remained in Spain for several years, paid by the bloody taxes of a bankrupt country,subjugated by a Frenchified king who was ridiculed all over Europe, and who was afraid of the popular army during the War of Independence, and who substituted them with local squadrons of the so-called Realist Volunteers, a traditional partisan body of alliance between altar and throne, and who tried to replace the voluntary, liberal National Militia. The momentum of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, which developed irregularly in Spain, was lost and innocent liberals like Mariana Pineda were executed.

In 1830, the Pragmatic Sanction was published, approved by Charles IV in 1789 but not promulgated, which permitted female succession to the throne. The birth of Isabella II thwarted the king's brother Charles's pretensions to the throne, and was a catalyst for the First Carlist War.