The contemporary history of Spain is the historiographical discipline and a historical period of Spanish history. Conventionally, Spanish historiography tends to consider the beginning of the Spanish War of Independence (1808) as an initial milestone, rather than the French Revolution, the Independence of the United States or the English Industrial Revolution.Álvarez Junco, op. cit. See the concept of national history and other related concepts in Spanish nationalism.
Reign of Carlos IV (1788–1808)
The outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) altered the European international balance, putting Spain in one of the frontiers of the revolutionary focus. The measures aimed to avoid contagion were effective, because beyond isolated groups of sympathizers (Picornell's conspiracy, 1795), the social consensus in Spain was counterrevolutionary, actively promoted by the clergy and controlled by the Inquisition, which acted as a sanitary cordon.España y la Revolución francesa (in Spanish), in Artehistoria. In contrast, the attempt of the First Coalition to put an end to revolutionary France militarily (which on the Spanish-French border took the form of the War of the Pyrenees or Roussillon, 1793–1795) failed. After the redirection of the internal French process (Thermidorian Reaction, 1794) towards the personal power of Napoleon (1799), the Spanish priorities changed, and it was decided to renew the traditional Franco-Spanish alliance (Pacte de Famille) in spite of the fact that he was no longer a Bourbon king but a plebeian politician, or a self-crowned Emperor Bonaparte, who occupied power or sat on the throne of Paris, and that such upstarts maintained the revolutionary legitimacy that had led Louis XVI, cousin of the King of Spain, to the guillotine.
From 1792 the favouritism of Manuel Godoy, an ambitious military man of obscure origins protected by the queen, ennobled with the title of Prince of Peace (by the Peace of Basel, 1795), displaced from power the enlightened aristocratic elite that had been ruling the country since the reign of Charles III (Floridablanca, Aranda, Jovellanos), in some cases literally driving them into exile or into prison. The limited success of the War of the Oranges against Portugal (1801) achieved a minimal border readjustment (Olivenza); but much more decisive were the serious consequences of the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805), where the best part of the Spanish Navy was lost. Despite the defeat, the linking of Godoy's position to subordination to the emperor (who had won decisive victories in land campaigns in central Europe) led to the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1807, that foresaw the joint invasion of Portugal (weak point in the continental blockade against England) and that in fact served for several French army corps to occupy strategic areas of Spain.Who is offended and harmed?
Spain
Who prevails in the war?
England
And who gains the upper hand?
France
Popular TuneThe deep economic crisis at the turn of the century dramatically showed the structural weakness of the Ancien Régime in Spain, in the face of which the fiscal crisis of the Monarchy (Francisco Cabarrús, Banco de San Carlos), and the commercial and financial crisis caused by the wars, were only a conjunctural aspect. The exhaustion of the upward demographic cycle of the 18th century, not supported by agrarian reforms that would allow a significant increase in production (Jovellanos' Report in the never-ending Expediente de la Ley Agraria (1795),Informes en el Expediente de Ley Agraria. Andalucía y la Mancha (1768). (in Spanish) Edition and preliminary study by Gonzalo Anes. ICI, Quinto Centenario, IEF. Madrid, 1990. . Gonzalo Anes: La Ley Agraria. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1995. . Sources quoted in: [web.usal.es/~rrobledo/text/anes_1995.doc]. Texto de Jovellanos in cervantesvirtual. like the rest of the Enlightenment projects since the Catastro de Ensenada (1749), did not materialize due to the opposition of the powerful privileged groups it affected), had much deeper causes; the only exceptions had been the reduction of the privileges of the Mesta by Campomanes between 1779 and 1782,El bloqueo agrario (in Spanish), in Artehistoria. and the timid liberalizing policies of the grain market —moderated after the Esquilache riots of 1766— or of trade with America (1765 and 1778), which led to subsistence crises, hunger and increased social discontent.La crisis del cambio del siglo (España)(in Spanish), in Artehistoria
The scientific and strategic importance achieved by the Spanish expeditions (vaccine expedition, 1803) and the promising situation of Spanish science and technology, which had attained a position only slightly behind that of the most advanced European countries, deteriorated dramatically in the face of the State's inability to continue sustaining efforts that the delay in the socioeconomic structure could not be made up for by a private initiative that was incomparably weaker than that of England at the time, which was leading the Industrial Revolution. The persecution or disdain to which some of the main promoters of Spanish scientific-technological modernization were subjected (Alejandro Malaspina, Agustín de Betancourt) ended up benefiting other nations (as happened with the most promising of all enterprises: the American research of Alexander von Humboldt, initiated under Spanish sponsorship).
Godoy's growing unpopularity led to the formation of a Fernandine party within the court, which prepared the riot of Aranjuez, a coup d'état that managed to depose the valid and the abdication of King Charles IV to his eldest son Ferdinand VII, who, despite this, did not manage to settle on the throne because of the intervention of Napoleon, who managed to bring the entire royal family to join him in France, virtually as prisoners.
War of Independence (1808–1814)
The scandalous behavior of the court, the royal family and the high officials of the bureaucracy and the army before the French military occupation and the political maneuvers of Napoleon led to a social outburst whose documentary expression was fixed in the Bando of the mayors of Móstoles after the uprising of May 2, 1808 in Madrid. The rapid dissemination of the document was simultaneous with the creation of local Boards which, more or less explicitly, arrogated to themselves a sovereign representation on behalf of a captive king (Ferdinand VII the Desired); which led to increasingly revolutionary political forms: first a Supreme Central Junta (September 25, 1808), dominated by enlightened figures (Floridablanca and Jovellanos), and then a Regency Council that convened the Cortes of Cadiz (September 24, 1810), where the political group of the liberals (native denomination that ended up extending to the international political vocabularyThe term liberal applied to a party or to individuals, is of modern date and Spanish in its origin, since it began to be used in Cadiz in 1811, and later it has passed to France, England and other countries. — Antonio Alcalá Galiano. Quoted by Francisco Arias Solis in La palabra liberal . Archived on December 27, 2013.Liberalism, a Spanish movement.
The first point to be emphasized is the Spanish origin of the words ''liberal'' and ''liberalism'' in their political meaning. This fact is today recognized even in Anglo-Saxon literature. — José Luis Abellán. Historia crítica del pensamiento español: Liberalismo y romanticismo (in Spanish), Espasa-Calpe, 1979, , p. 56. —Diego Muñoz Torrero, Agustín Arguelles, the Count of Toreno—) managed to impose themselves on the absolutists (Bernardo Mozo de Rosales, Pedro de Quevedo y Quintano —bishop of Orense and general inquisitor—)In the Manifesto of the Persians, written in 1814 by the former, and signed by 69 deputies of the Cortes of Cadiz, they refer to the latter in these terms: On August 17 of the same year the Cortes, extending the legislative authority as the only one they had reserved for themselves, deprived of honors, jobs, and expatriated the reverend Bishop of Orense, for having sworn the Constitution after making several protests, and the same penalty was extended to any Spaniard who in the act of swearing it, used or had used the same reservations: and that in the case of being an ecclesiastic, the temporalities would be occupied in addition. This determination to terrify because they swore, at a time when everyone was free to express their thoughts in writing and by word of mouth, is what most proves the lack of freedom in the oath, the lack of general consent of the Nation, and the fear that there would be none (point 83). in the drafting of the Constitution of 1812 (March 19, for which it was called La Pepa) and in legislation that dismantled the economic, social and legal bases of the Old Regime —ecclesiastical goods, mayorazgos, lordships, Inquisition, etc.—.
At the same time, a good part of the social and intellectual elite, by conviction or for convenience, began to collaborate with the authorities imposed by Napoleon, receiving the name of "afrancesados" (Mariano Luis de Urquijo, Cabarrús, Meléndez Valdés, Juan Antonio Llorente, Leandro Fernández de Moratín and a very long list of others, including Goya himself). Joseph I of Spain (Joseph Bonaparte or Pepe Botella), Napoleon's brother, who had already been designated by Napoleon as king of Naples, was called to occupy the vacant throne of Spain. The fact that he was the first king to rule theoretically under a constitution or granted charter (the Statute of Bayonne of July 8, 1808) makes him the first constitutional king of a Spain constituted as a liberal state according to the criteria of the New Regime, in this case imposed by the occupiers four years before the Cadiz deputies managed to autonomously construct the concept of national sovereignty.
The military campaigns followed one after the other with spectacular alternatives. To an initial success of the Spanish army led by General Castaños, who managed to defeat and capture in the battle of Bailén (July 19, 1808) a French army corps, in what constituted the first great land defeat of the Napoleonic Wars, the Emperor himself responded with his physical presence in the Peninsula, and a massive occupation of the territory that left only a few besieged enclaves, among them, Cadiz itself, protected by the English fleet based in Gibraltar.
The invasions of Saragoza and Gerona showed an epic resistance. Popular resistance in the form of guerrillas (the Empecinado, Espoz y Mina and the priest Merino) and the advance of Spanish, English and Portuguese regular troops commanded by the Duke of Wellington finally pushed back the French army (Battle of Arapiles, July 22, 1812 and Battle of Vitoria, June 21, 1813). The consequences of the war in terms of death, starvation and destruction of equipment and the Spanish scientific infrastructure (the result of violence, and in some cases premeditation, on both sides) were immense. The end of the French exiles opened the cycle of Spanish political exiles that would be renewed successively with each change of regime until 1977.Juan Goytisolo Liberales y románticos, El País 17/12/2006 (article on the exiles of the 19th century, commenting on the centenary of their birth in Vicente Lloréns' work Liberales y románticos, una emigración española en Inglaterra (1823–1834) Mexico, 1954).
Spanish-American Independence