According to historian of the Philippines Austin Coates, "1869 and 1870 stand distinct and apart from the whole of the rest of the period as a time when for a brief moment a real breath of the nineteenth century penetrated the Islands, which till then had been living largely in the seventeenth century."

De la Torre abolishes censorship of newspapers and legalizes the holding of public demonstrations, free speech, and assembly—rights guaranteed in the 1869 Spanish constitution.

Students at the University of Santo Tomas form an association, the Liberal Young Students (Juventud Escolar Liber-al), and in October 1869 hold demonstrations protesting the abuses of the university's Dominican friar administrators and teachers.