Gavrilia

Kingdom of Gavrilia Reino de Gavrilia
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto:  "Patria, Orden y Progreso" (Spanish) "Fatherland, Order, and Progress"
Anthem:  "El futuro nos pertenece (Spanish)" The Future Belongs To Us
Capital	Gavrilopolis
Official languages	Spanish Portuguese
Demonym(s)	Gavrilian
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• King	Luis I
• Prime Minister	Ignacio Castro Cisneros (CA)
Legislature	Parliament
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	National Assembly
Area
• Total	1,301,893 km2 (502,664 sq mi)
Population
• 2020 census	42,168,486 hab. (2020 census)
• Density	32.39/km2 (83.9/sq mi)
GDP (nominal)	2020 estimate
• Total	$831,330 ACU million
• Per capita	19,714 ACU
HDI (2020)	0.907 very high
Currency	Gavrilian Real
Time zone	UTC+4
Driving side	right
Internet TLD	.gv

Gavrilia, formally the Kingdom of Gavrilia (Spanish: Reino de Gavrilia), is an Anterian country located in the southwestern part of Astariax.

History

Precolonial History

Ancient ruins give evidence that the first inhabitants of Gavrilia arrived sometime around 800 AD. These pre-colonial peoples are often dubbed the Loza(s) or gente de loza—"earthenware people"—for their distinct pottery. It is thought the Loza were responsible for constructed the large complex of stone and and earth structures called El Templo Mayor (English: "The Great Temple") sometime around 1000 AD. The design and materials suggest a foreign influence, though other archeological evidence suggests these pre-colonial settlers likely originated from inlands Astariax. The temple complex does not appear to have been occupied for long and was seemingly abandoned after only a generation or two. Subsequent generations of Loza peoples—again, likely from Astariax in origin—lived in smaller, more dispersed villages. At their height, it is believed the Loza numbered some 25,000 across 100 or so villages. Nearly all these villages followed a standard layout: a large hut for a cacique ("chieftain") overlooking a central clearing used for religious ceremonies, with smaller huts surrounding. Much of the day-to-day life of Loza peoples is undocumented but it is believed they were a largely agricultural, complimenting their diets with fish, birds and other small game.

Canterian colony (1503–1660)

Alonso Bermejo de Triana sighted the shores of the Santa Cruz island during his voyage on May 1, 1503. He claimed the island for the Canterian Empire and named it Santa Cruz as the date of its discovery was the traditional Catholic holiday of Invención de la Santa Cruz. Having fled Olivacia due to conflicts with natives, in need of repair and resupply, and with the winds proving disagreeable, he decided against landing and instead pressed on for his original destination of Astariax.
It would be nearly three decades before the first permanent Canterian colonists arrived in March 1530. They found the mainland was inhabited by Loza peoples who called it Gabiria meaning "sacred birthplace". This was carried into Spanish as Gavrilia. Led by Carlos García y Oria de Huesca, a soldier intent on conquering the mainland, the small Canterian contingent landed on the mainland’s coast and established a military garrison they named La Fortaleza ("The Fortress"). Five centuries later, it continues to be synonymous with governance in Gavrilia (later serving as the main presidential office and residency, and even later as the presidency’s summer residency).
García was eventually appointed governor and oversaw the gradual increase of Canterian settlements. Many tribes were forced to move further inland and upland, causing conflict with tribes resident in those areas. Those who tried to resist Canterian expansion were either killed or captured. Thousands more were subjected to the encomienda system of forced labor. Conflict coupled with diseases introduced by the Canterians (such as measles and small pox) saw as many as half of the colony's indigenous population wiped out by 1542, the year the Empire restricted use of the encomienda system in the Astariaxian colony.
Skirmishes and war between the Canterians and Lozas was a recurring feature of the early colonial period. However, with more profitable colonies developing elsewhere in the Sunadic Ocean and the rest of Astariax and Olivacia, the government in Thuadia were reluctant to contribute military or money to the island.
With the Canterian colonists limited in their ability to force indigenous peoples into labor, and with more attractive prospects elsewhere in the region, then governor Pedro de Almería oversaw the first import of slaves to Gavrilia in 1545. Unlike elsewhere in the Canterian Astariax-Olivacia, the slave population remained low and the use of slaves did little to stem the economic and population collapse of the colony.

Riamese rule (1660–1713)

As settlers left for more prosperous colonies around the Sunadic, the Canterians were reduced to just a single military garrison at La Fortaleza. However, it was not enough to repel attacks: a Vultesian fleet plundered the fort and the harbour it overlooked in 1629 and as early as 1630, Vultesian pirates had established a permanent outpost at a disused fort in the northwest of the country (still dubbed Cala Vultesiana, "Vultesian Cove").
The greatest threat, however, came from the Riamese. Expanding its power and influence in the region, and wanting a base from which to securely trade with their new colonies sprinkled along the Astariaxian coast, a Riamese fleet captured La Fortaleza in 1656. The Riamese continued to occupy the colony and repel Canterian counter-attacks until 1660 when the colony was formally transferred to Riamese rule by the Treaty of Santiago.
The economy of Gavrilia rapidly improved under Riamese governance. Gavrilia sat at a cross roads of Riamese trade routes at this time and reaped the rewards as tobacco and sugar exports substantially increased. Due to this, Gavrilia itself never saw heavy development of plantations, with the colony's governors choosing to profit from through-trade rather than home-grown trade; a mistake which would later cost the colony. The Riamese also oversaw a larger influx of forced labor though, as under Canterian rule, numbers remained low relative to other colonies and never surpassed several hundred. The Loza population, who had helped the Riamese invasion in exchange for peace, had substantially recovered by the time of, and during, Riamese rule.

Return to the Canterian Empire (1713–1819)

By the early 18th century, Gavrilia's economy again began to decline as trade routes shifted and piracy became far less profitable. Gavrilia increasingly was the focus of Canterian aggression against the now Riamese colonies. With the Treaty of San Fernando in 1713, the Riamese returned Gavrilia to Canterian rule.
The Loza, particularly aggrieved that their peace treaties with the Riamese would not be upheld by the Canterians, began a series of protracted insurrections, joined in part by runaway slaves and disenfranchized colonists overburdened by high taxation. This atmosphere fostered the first major rebellion against Canterian rule, La Gran Revuelta ("The Great Revolt"), led by runaway slave Victor de la Fuente in 1810. De la Fuente led some 2,500 slaves, Loza and colonists against governor Colonel Alberto Flores Guillén. The uprising culminated in the Battle of Aguasdulces on August 5, 1810. The colonial forces were victorious, saved by a Canterian naval convoy arriving and bombarding the rebel positions within the town. The Canterians were merciless in exacting revenge. Suspects—regardless of guilt or innocence—were founded up. On August 5, 1810—Día de los Mártires ("Martyrs' Day")—95 people were brutally publicly executed on the steps of the rebels' headquarters at La Capilla ("The Chapel"). The event became known as Masacre de La Capilla ("Massacre of La Capilla"). Despite hundreds of rebels being summarily executed, leader Victor de la Fuente evaded capture and became a folk hero to Gavrilians for centuries.

Gavrilian Independence War (1819-1823)

The Canterians maintained an iron grip on what they increasingly viewed as a troublesome and valueless colony. Despite this, there was little extra investment save for garrisons and defenses, and the economy continued its centuries' old tradition of stagnating. At the same time, a powerful political and mercantile class was beginning to develop around the capital city of Puerto Almagro (now Puerto Real). Meanwhile, especially rurally, living standards continued to worsen.
The Great Revolt had left his marks on Gavrilian society, and the spirit of rebellion was spreading through the country. In 1817, José Luis Herrera Rodriguez (1778-1830), an educated nationalist from the merchant bourgeoisie of Puerto Almagro, founded a resistance movement called La Trinitaria (“The Trinity”) along with Sergio Duarte Gracia (1787-1841), a veteran of De la Fuente’s revolt and personal friend of Herrera, and Amadeo Hernandez Rosario (1786-1844), a Canterian army general who defected to the revolutionary cause, thus winning over the loyalty of two Gavrilian-manned Canterian regiments.
La Trinitaria was so named because its original nine members had organized themselves into cells of three. The cells went on to recruit as separate organizations, maintaining strict secrecy, with little or no direct contact among themselves, in order to minimize the possibility of detection by the Canterian authorities. Many recruits quickly came to the group.
In 1818, the revolution made a breakthrough: they worked with the liberal faction that overthrew the newly-appointed governor Pedro de Mendoza. However, the Trinitarios' work in the overthrow gained the attention of Mendoza's replacement, Alonso Osorio Velazquez. Osorio imprisoned some Trinitarios and forced Herrera to leave the country. While gone, Herrera searched for support in other countries, but was unsuccessful. Upon arriving to Gavrilia, Osorio faced a rebellion in Puerto Principe. The two regiments of Gavrilians were among those used by Osorio to suppress the uprising.
In December 1818 the rebels told Herrera to return since they had to act quickly because they were afraid the Canterians had learned of their insurrection plans. When Herrera had not returned by February 1819, because of illness, the rebels decided to take action anyway with the leadership of Sergio Duarte Gracia, Amadeo Hernandez Rosario, and Jorge Sanjuan Camacho (1791-1864), a wealthy cattle-rancher from Villaverde who commanded a private army of peons who worked on his estates. The revolutionaries rose up in all coastal major cities and in the countryside on March, 1st.
The metropolis’s answer to that uprising was quick. However, an initial attempt to land on the island on August 5, 1819 was repelled by revolutionary forces. Despite this, a Canterian invasion force of 500 soldiers successfully landed at Santo Domingo on August 6, 1819. The Canterians quickly moved to intercept the revolutionary troops but, despite several close skirmishes, found themselves outgunned. The Canterians were further confounded in many locations by residents who saw the revolutionary forces as liberators rather than traitors. The Canterian military garrison at La Fortaleza surrendered on August 10, 1819.
The Gavrilian Independence War resulted in a revolutionary victory. The Treaty of Puebla, signed on December 10, 1819, saw the Canterian Empire cut the Gavrilian territory in four (between the Republic of Amarelia, the Republic of Santa Cruz, the Republic of Trinidad and the First Republic of Gavrilia, all lead by Trinitarios) and cede what would then become Gavrilia to a national junta led by Hernandez and Duarte. Many Gavrilians were hopeful that Hernandez’s military rule would result in significant investment in and development of the country. However, despite some improvements in infrastructure, healthcare and education, the country's economy did not improve and many came to see Gavrilia as a nueva colonia ("new colony") with the military junta simply replacing the Canterians as colonial masters.
The transfer to junta rule coincided with the formation of political movements in Gavrilia. At the onset of junta rule, the political landscape began sharply dividing between juntistas ("juntists") who saw Gavrilia's future as it was at the moment, as a backwater country ruled by a military junta, mostly finding support among the classes who had profited from the colonial situation, such as the Church and the landowners in the inland agricultural provinces, and herreristas ("herrerists") who saw Gavrilia's future as a merchant republic turned towards progress and future, and mostly supported by the popular classes and the coastal intellectual elite. This divide between former comrades in arms caused the independence war to evolve into a civil war as soon as the Canterians left. A crucial moment in the independence movement came in 1821 when Sanjuan’s peon army joined forces with Herrera’s Partido Nacional Gavriliano ("Gavrilian National Party"). This swayed vast amounts of workers in the country towards Herrera’s and the liberal’s cause. And thus, the 27th of May of 1822, Hernandez’s junta fell, victim of a coup by officers loyal to Herrera’s cause, who forced Hernandez to agree to hold general elections under 12 months, thus ending the revolutionary period.

War of the Triple Alliance/Wars of Unification (1837-1849)

The 14 years of Herrera and then Contreras presidency guaranteed a certain peace to the young nation, however, this was not to last, as the territory of current Gavrilia has been split in four before the Canterians left, and the three other nations saw Gavrilia as the perfect expansion opportunity. The decades that followed were filled with tyranny, factionalism, economic difficulties, rapid changes of government, and exile for political opponents. Archrivals Jorge Sanjuan, who was appointed general of the armed forces of the nascent Gavrilian Republic and Bernardo Molina Huerta held power most of the time, both ruling arbitrarily. Threatening the nation's independence were renewed invasions from their neighbours. In March 1837, Luis Carreras Robles, the new president of the Republic of Trinidad, ruling over what is now Northern Gavrilia, attempted to reimpose his authority, but the Gavrilians put up stiff opposition and inflicted heavy casualties on the Trinidadians.
In early July 1837, Damaso Boadilla was urged by his followers to take the title of President of the Republic. Boadilla agreed, but only if free elections were arranged. However, Sanjuan's forces took Puerto Almagro on July 12, and they declared Sanjuan ruler of the Gavrilian Republic. Sanjuan then put Duarte, Hernandez, and Molina Huerta in jail. On February 27, 1838, Santana executed María Trinidad Sánchez, heroine of La Trinitaria, and others for conspiracy. On June 17, 1838, small Gavrilian detachments invaded Trinidad, capturing Lascahobas and Uriel. The Gavrilians established an outpost at Cachimán, but the arrival of Trinidadian reinforcements soon compelled them to retreat back across the frontier. Trinidad launched a new invasion on August 6. The Gavrilians repelled the Trinidadian forces, on both land and sea, by December 1838. The Gavrilians would then push forward into Trinidadian territory and claim victory in February 1839, with the fall of the capital to Gavrilian forces and the first step towards a united Gavrilia done.
Next came the turn of the Republic of Santa Cruz. The Cruceños invaded in 1842, forcing the president of the Gavrilian Republic, Miguel Leon Alba, to call upon Sanjuan, whom he had ousted as president, to lead the Gavrilians against this new invasion. Sanjuan met the enemy at Ocoa, April 21, with only 4000 militiamen, and succeeded in defeating the 18,000-strong Cruceño army. The battle began with heavy cannon fire by the entrenched Cruceños and ended with a Gavrilian assault followed by hand-to-hand combat. In November 1842, Gavrilian seamen raided the coasts of Santa Cruz, plundered seaside villages, as far as Puerto Bello, and butchered crews of captured enemy ships. By March 1843, Santa Cruz island was firmly in Gavrilian control, and there to stay.
Now only remained Amarelia. By 1847, Gavrilia was at war again. In November, a Gavrilian squadron composed of the brigantine 27 de Febrero and schooner Constitución captured an Amarelian warship and bombarded Santa Eulalia and Belém. In November 1848, Amarelia invaded again. Over 1,000 Amarelian soldiers were killed in the battles of Santomé and Cambronal in December 1848. The Amarelians suffered even greater losses at Sabana Larga and Jácuba in January 1849. That same month, an engagement at Lembrança again resulted in heavy Amarelian casualties. The Gavrilian Wars of Unification were over with the fall of Porto Novo in May 1849, and Gavrilia was whole again.
The Gavrilian Republic's constitution was adopted on November 6, 1837. It featured a presidential form of government with many liberal tendencies, but it was marred by Article 210, imposed by Sanjuan on the constitutional assembly by force, giving him the privileges of a dictatorship until the wars of unification were over. These privileges not only served him to win the war but also allowed him to persecute, execute and drive into exile his political opponents, among which Boadilla was the most important.
Sanjuan antagonized the Santa Cruz farmers, enriching himself and his supporters at their expense by resorting to multiple real printings that allowed him to buy their crops for a fraction of their value. In 1841, he was forced to resign and was succeeded by his vice-president, Miguel Leon Alba.
After defeating a new Cruceño invasion in 1842, Sanjuan marched on Puerto Almagro and deposed Leon Alba in a coup d'état. At his behest, Congress elected Bernardo Molina Huerta as president, but Molina Huerta was unwilling to serve as Sanjuan's puppet, challenging his role as the country's acknowledged military leader. In 1846, Sanjuan was elected president for his third term, forcing Molina Huerta into exile. Three years later, after repulsing another Amarelian invasion, he negotiated a treaty leasing a portion of the Calistian Peninsula to a foreign company; popular opposition forced him to abdicate, enabling Molina Huerta to return and seize power.
With the treasury depleted, Molina Huerta printed eighteen million uninsured reales, purchasing the 1850 tobacco crop with this currency and exporting it for hard cash at immense profit to himself and his followers. Santa Cruz tobacco planters, who were ruined when hyperinflation ensued, revolted and formed a new government headed by Agustin Arenas Zamorano and headquartered in Salvador.
In July 1850, General José Luis Vallejo Medrano besieged Puerto Almagro. The Santa Cruz-based government declared an amnesty to exiles and Molina Huerta returned and managed to replace Vallejo Medrano in September 1850. After a year of civil war, Molina Huerta captured Puerto Almagro in June 1851, overthrew both Sanjuan Camacho and Arenas Zamorano and installed himself as president.

Second Republic (1851-1931)

During the Gavrilian Second Republic, there was little extra investment save for garrisons and defenses, and the economy continued its centuries' old tradition of stagnating. At the same time, a powerful political and mercantile class was beginning to develop around the capital city. Meanwhile, especially rurally, living standards continued to worsen. The situation was exasperated with the abolition of slavery in the country in 1872 by President Pedro Ortiz Ochoa (1812-1884), who ruled from 1870 to 1877. Although never particularly reliant on slavery, the abolition of slavery caused wages to shrink for the population, as a new cheaper workforce emerged and could be pressed into service. Furthermore, the onset of rapid industrialization and the replacement of plantations by ranching saw thousands being made redundant and displaced. Consequently, the 1870s through the 1890s were dubbed las décadas de decadencia ("the decades of decay").

The Directorio (1926-1938)

Eugenio Cantillo Reyes (January 16, 1885 – July 23, 1956) was a Gavrilian military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Gavrilia and as its military dictator/caretaker from 1926 to 1938 before resigning under popular pressure. Cantillo initially rose to power as part of the 1926 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the democratically-elected, but weak and unstable government of José Arcadio Serrano Ureña. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of general and effectively controlled the country as its head of state. He maintained this control until 1928, when he was himself elected President of Gavrilia on a vague populist platform. He then instated the 1929 Constitution of Gavrilia and served until 1938.
He deeply believed that it was the politicians who had ruined Gavrilia and that by governing without them, he could restore the nation. His slogan was "Country, Religion, Law and Order." Historians depict him as a semi-competent leader, who lacked clear ideas and political acumen, and who alienated his potential supporters such as the army. He did not create a base of support among the voters, and depended instead on elite elements. His actions discredited the government and ruined the regime, while heightening social tensions that led after his demise to the period known as La Gran Discordia (1938-1950).
With the support of the people and the army, Cantillo led a military coup on 13 September 1926. He then took possession of the mandate of President. He promised to eliminate corruption and to regenerate Gavrilia. In order to do this he suspended the 1851 constitution, replacing it by a new one, established martial law, imposed a strict system of censorship, and ended the system of alternating parties.
Cantillo initially said he would rule for only 90 days, however, he chose to remain in power. Little social reform took place, but he attempted to reduce unemployment by spending money on public works. To pay for this, Cantillo introduced higher taxes on the rich. When they complained he chose to change his policies and attempted to raise money by public loans. This caused rapid inflation and—after losing support of the army—he was forced to resign under popular demand in January 1938.
After 1911, post-Great War economic difficulties heightened social unrest in Gavrilia. The Parlamento (Gavrilian parliament) under the Second Republic seemed to have no solution to Gavrilia's unemployment, labor strikes, and poverty. By 1926, deputies of the Parlamento called for an investigation into the responsibility of President Serrano Ureña and the armed forces in what was to be called the “Carreras Scandal”. Rumors of corruption in the army became rampant.
On 13 September 1926, the indignant military, headed by Captain General Eugenio Cantillo Reyes in Puerto Almagro, overthrew the parliamentary government, upon which Cantillo established himself as dictator. In his typically florid prose, he issued a Manifesto explaining the coup to the people. In justifying his coup d'état, Cantillo announced: "Our aim is to open a brief parenthesis in the constitutional life of Gavrilia and to re-establish it as soon as the country offers us men uncontaminated with the vices of political organization." In other words, he believed that the old class of politicians had ruined Gavrilia, and that they sought only their own interests rather than patriotism and nationalism.
Although many leftists opposed the dictatorship, some of the public supported Cantillo. Those Gavrilians were tired of the turmoil and economic problems and hoped a strong leader, backed by the military, could put their country back on the right track. Others were enraged that the parliament had been brushed aside. As he travelled through Gavrilia, his emotional speeches left no doubt that he was a Gavrilian patriot. He proposed to keep the dictatorship in place long enough to sweep away the mess created by the politicians. In the meantime, he would use the state to modernize the economy and alleviate the problems of the working class.
Cantillo began by appointing a supreme directorate of eight military men, with himself as president. He then decreed martial law and fired civilian politicians in the provinces, replacing them with middle-ranking officers. When members of the Parlamento complained, he dismissed them, and he proceeded to suspend the constitution and dissolve the legislative body. Despite some reservations, the great Gavrilian philosopher and intellectual, Joaquín Morante Bielsa, wrote:

"The alpha and omega of the task that the military Directory has imposed is to make an end of the old politics. The purpose is so excellent, that there is no room for objections. The old politics must be ended." 

Nevertheless, other intellectuals such as Narciso Campos Priego and Vicente Mallo Gonçalves criticized the regime and were exiled.
Cantillo also worked to build infrastructure for his economically backward country. Gavrilia had few cars when he came to power. The Puerto Real (by then Puerto Almagro) Metro, started many years earlier, opened in 1927. His economic planners built dams to harness the hydroelectric power of rivers, especially the Negro and the Motagua, and to provide water for irrigation. For the first time, electricity reached some of Gavrilia's rural regions. The regime upgraded Gavrilia's railroads, and this helped the Gavrilia iron and steel industry prosper. Between 1926 and 1930, foreign trade increased of 300 %. Overall, his government intervened to protect national producers from foreign competition. Such economic nationalism was largely the brainchild of Cantillo's finance minister, José María Ruiz Sarabia.
The tranquility was, in part, due to the dictatorship's ways of accommodating the interests of Gavrilian workers. Cantillo forced management and labor to cooperate by organizing 27 corporations (committees) representing different industries and professions. Within each corporation, government arbitrators mediated disputes over wages, hours, and working conditions. This gave Gavrilian labor more influence than ever before and this might be the reason why the Gavrilian Socialist Party (PS) and Workers' General Confederation (CGT) were quick to cooperate with the government and its leaders affiliated themselves with the committees mentioned before. Individual workers also benefited because the regime undertook massive public works. The government financed such projects with huge public loans, which Ruiz Sarabia argued would be repaid by the increased taxes resulting from economic expansion. Unemployment largely disappeared.
But Cantillo brought order to Gavrilia with a price: his regime was a dictatorship. He censored the press. When intellectuals criticized the government, he closed El Thuadiano, the country's most famous political and literary club. The largely leftist Worker Force (FO) was decreed illegal and, without the support of the PS, the general strikes organised by the organisation were dismantled violently by the army. Furthermore, many of the dictator's economic reforms did not actually help the poor as huge public spending led to inflation, which the rich could cope with more easily. This led to a huge income disparity between the wealthy and working classes in Gavrilia at the time.
Despite his paternalistic conservatism, Cantillo was enough of a reformer and his policies were radical enough to threaten the interests of the traditional power elite. According to historian Gerardo Bernardino, "Gavrilia needed radical reforms and he could only govern by the permission of the two most reactionary forces in the country—the Army and the Church."
Cantillo dared not tackle what was seen as Gavrilia's most pressing problem, agrarian reform, because it would have provoked the great landholding elite. As historian Ricardo Ferreiro writes, "Cantillo was not one to awaken sleeping dogs, especially if they were big."
Cantillo chiefly failed because he did not create a viable, legitimate political system to preserve and continue his reforms. He seems to have sincerely wanted the dictatorship to be as brief as possible and initially hoped that Gavrilia could live with the Constitution of 1851 and a new group of politicians. The problem was to find new civilian leadership to take the place of the military.
In 1926, he began to create a new "apolitical" party, the Gavrilian Patriotic Party (PPG), which was formally organized the following year. Cantillo liked to claim that members of the PPG were above the squabbling and corruption of petty politics, that they placed the nation's interests above their own. He thought it would bring ideal democracy to Gavrilia by representing true public opinion. But the PPG quite obviously was a political party, despite the dictator's naive protestations. Furthermore, it failed to attract enthusiastic support or even many members.
On 3 December 1928 he moved to restore legitimate government by dismissing the military Directory and replacing it with civilians. Still, the Constitution remained suspended, and criticisms of the regime grew. By summer 1929, former politicians, led by conservative Jaime Ballester Serrano, pressed the Directory to remove Cantillo and restore constitutional government. To demonstrate his public support, Cantillo ordered the PPG to conduct a plebiscite in September. Voters could endorse the regime or abstain. About a third of those able to vote declined to go to the polls; despite this, El Correo Gavriliano called the result "a record vote", noting that the turnout was four times higher than any Gavrilian election until then. Other media were more critical: El Independiente called the vote "a farce".
Nevertheless, buoyed by his victory, Cantillo decided to promote a body tasked with the elaboration of a constitutional draft. On 10 October 1929, with himself in attendance, he opened a National Assembly. Although they met in the Parlamento chamber, members of the regime-appointed assembly could only advise Cantillo. They had no legislative power. In 1929, following guidance from the dictator, the assembly finally produced a new constitution draft. Among its provisions, it gave women the vote because Cantillo believed their political views less susceptible to political radicalism. He intended to have the nation accept the new constitution in another plebiscite, to be held in 1930.
As the economic recovery ended, Gavrilians gradually became tired of the dictatorship. The value of the real fell against foreign currencies, 1934 brought a bad harvest, and Gavrilia's imports far outstripped the worth of its exports. Conservative critics blamed rising inflation on the government's spending for public works projects. Although no one recognized it at the time, the final months of the year brought an economic slump which turned into a national malaise during the 1930s.
When Cantillo lost the support of the populace and the armed forces, his dictatorship was doomed. The Gavrilian military had never unanimously backed his seizure of power, although it had tolerated his rule. But when Cantillo began to inject politics into promotions for the artillery corps, it provoked hostility and opposition. Troubled by the regime's failure to legitimize itself or to solve the country's woes, some Directory members also began to draw away. Carlos Arriaga Mendoza, the Directory member in charge of Education, who had sponsored the establishment of Puerto Almagro's University, watched with dismay as the country's students took to the streets to protest the dictatorship. A clandestine pamphlet portrayed politicians as Cantillo's dancing partners. Yet they did not have the determination to remove Cantillo. On 26 January 1938, the dictator asked the military leaders if he still had their support. Their lukewarm responses, and his recognition that they no longer backed him, persuaded him to resign two days later. Cantillo retired and moved back to Rosario, where he died at the age of 71 from a combination of fever and diabetes on 23 July 1956.
In the late 1930s/early 1940s, Gavrilia fell again into economic and political chaos. The Directory appointed General Fernando Oliveira Calviño, one of Cantillo's opponents, to govern. This government promptly failed in its attempt to return to ordinary constitutional order. Different presidential candidates attempted to restore the legitimacy of the political class, who had discredited themselves by siding with the dictatorship. Eventually, presidential elections were called for 14 April 1939. While pro-Directory parties won in the overall polls, republican candidates commanded the majority in urban centres, winning the elections in 36 provincial capitals out of 40 including Puerto Almagro and Castillonuevo. In April 1939, General Álvaro Monzón Carrillo informed Oliveira that he could not count on the loyalty of the armed forces anymore. Oliveira went into exile two days later. The act ushered in the Third Republic, with the victory of the Socialist Party and of their candidate, Martín Pinto das Neves. However, it also led to the explosion of social and political violence, which would become known in Gavrilian history as “La Gran Discordia”, the Great Discord. By that time, many Gavrilians regarded Cantillo's relatively mild regime and its economic optimism with greater fondness.