AN ACT OF REVENGE FOR RIZAL
Illustration of the assassination of Canovas by J Passos, J. Cuchy and V. Gines . It was in one mild summer in the spa Santa Águeda, in Mondragón, Guipúzcoa, (the Basque region of Spain) when Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo met his brutal end. The assassin, Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist, posing as a tourist and traveling with a false identity, was able to approach Canovas and shot the Prime Minister point-blank. Angiolillo was subsequ ently arrested and during the investigation claimed that he acted alone and that the killing was an act of vengeance for the execution and torture of the Montjuich prisoners involved in the Barcelona 1896 Corpus Christi procession bomb attack and for the execution of Filipino patriot Jose P. Rizal. Angiolillo was sentenced to die by "garrotte," which was carried out on August 20, 1897. During the execution, he was calm and showed no remorse. Canovas del Castillo would then be succeeded by Manuel Azcarr