Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 143: Christmas

Time passed quietly, and soon it was Christmas of

This year’s Christmas at the royal palace was much livelier because the royal palace welcomed its female master, Queen Sophie.

Carlo himself was indifferent, but to prevent Queen Sophie from being bored in the vast royal palace, he still decided to hold a large court banquet to liven up the Madrid Royal Palace for Christmas.

The banquet was not only an important means of social interaction for noblewomen but also one of the ways for nobles to strengthen exchanges.

Speaking of which, aside from a few nobles like Duke Jacopo, Carlo had not seen many Spanish nobles for a long time.

It was still very necessary to use this court banquet to connect the nobles and deepen affection, after all, the nobles were also Carlo’s support.

Actually, the root cause of everything was that the Spanish Royal Family had too few members. The entire royal family consisted only of the king and the queen, making holidays indeed very monotonous.

However, Carlo had never treated himself poorly in terms of lifestyle. Although the royal family had only two people, the servants in the entire royal palace numbered over a hundred, with more than ten cooks alone responsible for cooking, capable of making cuisine of different styles from European countries.

The clothes that Carlo and Queen Sophie usually wore were all specially made for the royal family by private tailors, with each piece costing over a hundred pesetas, and some expensive formal dresses costing even over ten thousand pesetas.

To prepare for this grand court banquet, more than a dozen cooks proficient in cuisine from European countries were all mobilized to specially make various exquisite dishes. After several years of development, Carlo’s wine industry had also become a relatively well-known enterprise among Spanish wineries.

After all, with Carlo personally advertising it as king, it invisibly elevated the prestige of this wine. Although the version sold to commoners was not the royal winery brand exclusively supplied to the royal family, the production sites were all from the royal family’s wineries.

The high-end royal winery had currently become one of the main choices for nobles’ banquets. After all, it was the king’s industry, and the nobles had to give some face to it, more or less.

Even though most of these nobles had their own red wine industries, bringing out one or two bottles of royal winery wine at a banquet could not only please His Majesty the King but also directly showcase the consumption level of the banquet.

The selling prices of royal winery wines were all quite expensive, just like Maotai in posterity; regardless of whether the taste was good or not, the price was there.

And precisely because of the higher selling prices, the wines produced by the royal winery were still quite popular among Spanish nobles and capitalists.

Even because they were both on the Iberian Peninsula, the royal winery’s wines were also quite popular among Portuguese nobles.

Also because of Queen Sophie, every year a considerable amount of royal winery wine was exported to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and received praise from Austro-Hungarian nobles.

After all, it was one of the world’s top ten wine-producing regions in posterity, and Spanish wine’s taste and production volume were both quite excellent.

Stimulated by the wine industry, Spain also had many more grape plantations, which cooperated with the royal family’s wineries.

Compared to farming grain, growing grapes brought higher income. However, the royal winery had rather strict requirements for grape varieties and quality, so grapes with poorer varieties and quality could only cooperate with those small red wine wineries to produce wine brands for commoners.

Carlo’s winery also had a red wine brand focused on cost-effectiveness, called Iberian Manor. The quality of Iberian Manor’s wine was obviously much worse compared to the royal winery.

Whether in terms of wine quality or packaging, it was worlds apart from the royal winery’s wine.

However, the poorer quality and packaging also meant lower selling prices. The royal winery’s wine was at least over a hundred pesetas per bottle, equivalent to a Spaniard’s annual work income for one bottle of wine.

While Iberian Manor’s wine selling prices were generally below 10 pesetas, with even super low-priced wines at 2-3 pesetas.

As for the even lower-priced inferior wine market, Carlo temporarily had no intention of entering it. After all, the royal family’s wineries alone could not dominate the entire Spanish red wine market, so it was better to target the more profitable mid-to-high-end market.

Although the inferior wine market had larger sales volume, the profit per bottle of wine was very low, purely relying on volume.

Currently, the royal winery occupied over 50% of Spain’s high-end wine market and was very common at banquets of nobles and capitalists.

While Iberian Manor’s wine occupied about 35% of the mid-to-low-end market, with the rest taken by Spain’s dazzling array of other wine brands.

Just the fiscal revenue brought to the Spanish government by the wine market alone reached millions of pesetas, even driving employment for tens of thousands of people.

In addition, the fame of Spanish wine boosted by high-end red wine exports made the Spanish government pay great attention to the development of grape cultivation and the wine industry, even promulgating corresponding supportive policies to encourage the public to plant grapes and provide certain tax reductions to the red wine industry.

For Spain, much land could be used to plant grapes to produce Spanish-style wines with unique flavors.

This could effectively promote the development of the grape industry, and compared to simply planting grain, the income from planting grapes was obviously much higher.

But the bad news was that in northern Spain, there was a country even more famous in the grape industry, namely France.

French wine was the truly best-selling in Europe, even snapped up by the vast majority of European nobles.

Of course, this was also due to certain historical reasons. During France’s most prosperous period, the language used in European noble diplomacy was all French.

When nobles gave their children elite noble education, besides learning their native language, the primary foreign language they learned was French.

With the spread of the French language, French wine also became popular throughout Europe. Although France had been continuously weakening, the love of nobles from various countries for French wine had not diminished much.

Even in posterity, there were legends about Lafite, and although most Lafite on the market were counterfeit products, its fame proved how massive and renowned the French wine industry was.

Although Spain also had one of the world’s top ten wine-producing regions, it was clearly unable to compete with France in terms of wine.

Not to mention France; Italy across the Mediterranean to the east also had one of the world’s top ten wine-producing regions and was similarly a competitor in Spain’s wine exports.

Soon, the Spanish nobles received the news that His Majesty the King would hold a large court banquet at the royal palace on Christmas Day.

For His Majesty the King’s personal invitation, these nobles naturally had no reason to refuse. Of course, no one would refuse His Majesty the King’s invitation. After all, this was not only an opportunity for the king to get closer to them but also for them to get closer to the king.

This large-scale court banquet invited the vast majority of grand dukes and dukes near Madrid, making it a gathering of the upper echelons of the Spanish aristocracy.

Including Prime Minister Duke Primó and Grand Duke Serrano the Minister of Defense, the nobles participating in this banquet were either those with considerable influence in the noble class or high-level figures with certain prestige in the government and military.

Of course, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Jovellar Soler were also among them.

Cánovas was the current Minister of Agriculture of the cabinet government and a main leader of the Spanish Conservative Party. While Jovellar Soler was only an ordinary member of parliament, because he showed loyalty to Carlo relatively early, he also received Carlo’s heavy use.

After all, there were only so many parliamentary seats in Spain, most of which were controlled by Prime Minister Primó, so parliamentarians like Jovellar Soler who supported Carlo were still quite important.

Just like the previous low-rent housing proposal, if Carlo wanted to submit something to parliament, he could have Jovellar Soler submit it on his behalf, avoiding the risks he had to bear.

Moreover, members of parliament not only had the power to elect the cabinet government but also the power to run for the cabinet government.

After Prime Minister Primó and Grand Duke Serrano gradually withdrew from the Spanish political arena in the future, the next cabinet government was destined to be born from elections among parliament members.

In other words, the current members of parliament were very likely to be members of the next cabinet government.

Of course, the premise was that they were still members of parliament at the time of the next cabinet government election.

According to the Spanish Constitution, various places elect a certain number of senators based on population proportion to jointly form Spain’s Senate, also known as parliament.

Senators are elected every 3 years and can theoretically serve unlimited terms. As long as supported by the local Spanish people, they can continue to serve as senators.

Because the current cabinet of the Spanish government was elected in February 1869, the next cabinet government election would be in February 1874, five years later.

When February 1874 arrives, the senators can actively run for the position of cabinet prime minister, and after voting by all senators in the Senate, the final prime minister candidate is determined.

Although there is no party requirement to run for prime minister, the parliamentarians running for prime minister must either be independents or the actual leader of a certain party.

Party members have no right to run for prime minister and can only help their party’s leader campaign for prime minister, then obtain cabinet minister seats in the cabinet composition.

After all, the prime minister is the leader of the Spanish government; if one cannot even serve as the highest leader in their party, wouldn’t the position of Spanish prime minister, one below tens of thousands, be even more difficult?

The requirement that candidates for prime minister from parties must be party leaders is actually screening the prestige of prime minister candidates. Only with sufficient prestige can one suppress the entire cabinet government; a prime minister without prestige would instead make the cabinet more chaotic.

Although independents have no such requirement, in reality, running as an independent is even more difficult. Running as a party leader allows mobilizing the entire party’s strength to help with the campaign.

But for an independent, they can only rely on themselves, with difficulty increased several times over.

According to the Spanish Constitution, the one obtaining over 60% of Senate seats’ votes becomes the prime minister of the Spanish government.

If one can obtain 60% of votes through their own or their party’s efforts, such a prime minister has complete freedom to form the cabinet.

But if one’s own party cannot obtain 60% of votes, they can also unite with other parties, and combined votes reaching 60% is fine.

However, the prime minister position obtained through union also comes with great restrictions. After all, others will not help one campaign for prime minister unconditionally, and there will definitely be some concessions during cabinet formation.

The Spanish Constitution stipulates that if over 60% of votes cannot be obtained through united cabinet formation, the individual or party leader with the most votes will become Spain’s prime minister, but other parties and independents will have the right to run for other cabinet seats.

In other words, if 60% of votes cannot be obtained, all cabinet seats in Spain will be obtained through elections, rather than appointed after selecting the prime minister.

In any case, no matter which method is used to establish the cabinet government, the cabinet government must swear loyalty to Carlo as king.

This step was previously a convention in absolute monarchies, aimed at showing the cabinet government the king’s supreme power and making them understand who the real master of the country is.

The reason Prime Minister Primó retained this convention was mainly to protect Spain’s monarchy and stability. After all, since he chose monarchy as the government’s foundation, the monarchy became tied to him.

The more stable monarchical Spain is, the more energy the government led by Prime Minister Primó has to promote Spain’s reforms.

Conversely, if Spain’s monarchical system is unstable, as a supporter of the monarchical system, Prime Minister Primó naturally would not have much energy to promote reforms.

The cabinet government is elected by the Senate, and regional governors of various regions are also elected by the regional councils, including cities and towns, basically all through election processes.

The Senate and various regional councils also have the power to impeach officials. Spain’s current system is more like a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, with power basically concentrated in parliament.

A similar system is that of the United Kingdom, or rather, Spain largely referenced the provisions of the British constitution when formulating its constitution.

After all, Britain at that time was the undisputed world’s strongest nation and a representative of constitutional monarchy, so referencing the British constitution was commonplace.

As king of Spain, Carlo was quite special in Spain’s political system. Nominally, his power was great, but it required high influence.

Without influence in the political arena and military, the power was more like empty talk and basically unenforceable.