MILICIA Y RELIGIÓN EN LA TRANSICIÓN AL LIBERALISMO EN ESPAÑA: NUEVOS DATOS SOBRE LA JUVENTUD DE MANUEL MATAMOROS Y SU DISIDENCIA PROTESTANTE

Abstract

Manuel Matamoros (1834-1866) is the main promoter of the II Reform in Spain. Ex-soldier, democratic activist converted into the Protestantism in Gibraltar, and then propagandist linked to the Evangelic societies in Edimburg, London and Paris, was the founder of the first Protestant churches established in the contemporary Spain. After being arrested in Barcelona in 1860, he was taken to the High Court of Granada, where he had to undergo a long and remarkable trial (1860-1863). As a result of being sentenced to deportation, he lived successively in the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland until he died in Lausanne in 1866 at the age of 32. Needless to say that from that moment onwards he would become a legend. Above all the aim of this paper is to touch upon the least known aspects of this Spanish evangelist’s biography such as his childhood and youth, his traumatic experience in the Army and his abandonment from the Church of Rome as well as adding some new documentary information to the topic.