The rifle version is most readily identified by its considerably enlarged and canted breech block operating lever, which at first glance is a very close copy of the M1867/89 Swedish rolling block smokeless powder conversion, which preceded this rifle by only a year or two at the most.  The Spanish rifle’s breech block lever differs from the Swede only slightly in shape as well as differing slightly in the shape of the firing pin extractor cam.  Markings of course differ also. 

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  The action is a Layman "Type 2" with a concave lower face breech block but with a rotary as distinguished from a bar-type extractor.  The action is very close in external appearance to the Swedish M1867/89 made for smokeless powder, but these latter rifles are fitted with type 4 flat lower face breech blocks.  While nearly all foreign RBs have concave base breech blocks, the Swede 67/89s have flat blocks.  To the best of our knowledge, the Spanish M1889 is the only rolling block variety to be fitted with both the very early design concave breech block and the late feature rotary extractor.  Also differentiated from the Swedes, the Swedes have serially numbered breech blocks with a matching hammer and have obviously been heat treated.  The Spanish rifle breech blocks have no serial number, no evidence of heat treatment, but both hammer and breech block are identically inspector marked.

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  These rifles were not conversions of earlier produced rifles and were, from the start, chambered for the Freire and Brull designed M1889 Reformado cartridge. (See the webpage regarding The M1871 and M1871/89 Spanish Remington rifle.  Hence, while they are not marked with either an “R” nor and “FB” over their barrel ahead of the receiver, they are nevertheless chambered for the Reformado cartridge.

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  Improvements were also made to the ramp & leaf rear sight.  The base is considerably longer, with a much lower profile and wider leaf, with the steps of the base now fitted within the legs of the leaf rather than straddling the leaf in the earlier 1871 model.  The volley sight extension, along with the front volley sight post, has been dispensed with.

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  An interesting observation is that the Spanish have not only maintained their “belt and suspenders” approach to their barrel bands, but with the M1889 have improved the system by substituting cross pin band retainers for the earlier band retaining springs, as with the British Martini-Henry series.  While screw-retained barrel bands are more expensive than simple spring-retained bands, the cross pins are cheaper than springs, less likely to break and work easily as well in situations in which you don’t really want your troops removing the barrel bands in the first place.

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  The cleaning rod retention system was also slightly altered.  Spanish-manufactured rods have always differed from American-designed and built rods in that they were retained via a shoulder on the rod with a flat front face around its diameter which clipped below a recessed and dedicated abutment at the bottom back of the nosecap, again somewhat similarly to the Martini-Henry rods.  This system is retained with the M1891, but there is also added a small clip at the back end of the nosecap to further secure the rod and to keep it from rattling.

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  These changes are all more in the nature of a fine tweaking then of any fundamental design changes.