Autonomist Party

The Autonomist Party (Italian: Partito Autonomista; Serbo-Croatian: 'Autonomaška stranka', Aутономашка Странка) was a Dalmatianist political party in the Dalmatian political scene, that existed for around 70 years of the 19th century and until World War I. Its goal was to maintain the autonomy of the Kingdom of Dalmatia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as opposed to the unification with the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. The Autonomist Party has been accused of secretly having been a pro-Italian movement due to their defense of the rights of ethnic Italians in Dalmatia. The Autonomist Party did not claim to be an Italian movement, and indicated that it sympathized with a sense of hetereogeneity amongst Dalmatians in opposition to ethnic nationalism. In the 1861 elections, the Autonomists won twenty-seven seats in Dalmatia, while Dalmatia's Croatian nationalist movement, the National Party, won only fourteen seats.

History

Traditionally linked to the idea of a Dalmatian nation advocated by Niccolò Tommaseo in the first half of the century and regarded as a meeting of the Latin world with the Slavic world, initially the party also attracted the sympathies of some of the Slavic Dalmatians, while maintaining an undisputed open to the Italian cultural world.

Autonomist Party (Puerto Rico)

The Autonomist Party (Spanish: Partido Autonomista) was a political party in Puerto Rico founded in 1887. The Party was founded in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and its first chairman was Román Baldorioty de Castro. He was followed by Martin Corchado, a prominent physician from Ponce.Juan Hernández López was one of the co-authors of its program in 1897.

The Party sought to establish an independent government for Puerto Rico under the Spanish colonial system. The party advocated self-rule, but not independence from Spain. It envisioned decentralised control by Spain, and the strongest possible local government.

To provide a voice for the Autonomist Party, Luis Muñoz Rivera, one of its founders, founded the newspaper La Democracia (The Democracy). In it he argued for Puerto Rican independence, denounced the injustices of the Spanish regime, and lobbied for the support of one of the main political parties in Spain to fulfill the goals of the Autonomist party.

In 1897 the Party joined with the less conservative but still monachist Spanish Liberal Fusionist Party of Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, becoming the Liberal Fusionist Party of Puerto Rico. Some members in the Autonomist party who were opposed to any kind of alliance with Spanish political parties, left to form the Pure and Orthodox Liberal Party, with Jose Celso Barbosa as its leader.