El Componte, 1887

In 1887 General Romualdo Palacio González arrived as governor and made the componte — a forced correction — his politics. EnciclopediaPR's chronology is frank. He landed in March, hunted members of the Autonomist Party, and used beatings and jail. The Civil Guard carried the work to towns that had spoken too loudly of self-government or boycott. People afterwards named the twelve months the year of terror.

The componte was not a tribunal. It was a barn, a barracks, or a back room where a man was told to confess a conspiracy and name the next one. Liberal clubs, country stores, and the rumor of a secret society gave Palacio his pretext. Spain still remembered Lares. A generation after El Grito, the State still treated the organized word as a prelude to another night in the mountains. Some of the tortured were autonomists who wanted a charter, not a republic. The distinction did not protect them.

Palacio also sat for a stretch in Aibonito, far from the eyes of San Juan, which says how personal the campaign felt. Complaints reached Madrid. He was removed the same year; EnciclopediaPR dates his farewell November 11, 1887. A governor who lasts a few months and leaves a nickname has succeeded as terror and failed as administration. The towns remembered the Civil Guard's visits longer than his decrees on sugar tariffs and walls.

This board will not invent a count of the beaten. The public pages describe the method and the targets, not a reliable tally. The method is the fact: Civil Guard, autonomists, jail, beatings. Muñoz Rivera's generation learned its Spain from this year as much as from the books of Cádiz.

The Autonomy Charter of 1897 looks softer if you forget 1887. Do not. The charter came after a beating. Sagasta's liberals in Madrid were, among other things, answering a file of complaints that Palacio had written on skin.

Sources: EnciclopediaPR, Cronología de gobernadores del siglo XIX. Freeze 2026-08-22.