The discontent was aggravated by lax and corrupt methods of administration as well as by financial difficulties.

Swarms of Spanish officials enjoyed large salaries without performing duties of equivalent value.

Not a few of them had come over to enrich themselves at public expense and under conditions altogether scandalous.

On Cuba, furthermore, was saddled the debt incurred by the Ten Years' War, while the island continued to be a lucrative market for Spanish goods without obtaining from Spain a corresponding advantage for its own products.
As the insistence upon a removal of these abuses and upon a grant of genuine self-government became steadily more clamorous, three political groups appeared.

The Constitutional Unionists, or "Austrianizers," as they were dubbed because of their avowed loyalty to the royal house of Bourbon-Hapsburg, were made up of the Spanish and conservative elements and represented the large economic interests and the Church.