Spain

As the costs of warfare mounted, the government resumed the inflationary minting of vellón coinage and had to declare yet another moratorium on its debts, in 1627. In 1628 the vellón coins were withdrawn, causing a collapse of prices and a recession. In the 1630s new taxes were instituted in Castile along with outright confiscations from private individuals, both of income from government annuities and of American silver imported in commercial transactions. Not surprisingly, Madrid was becoming obsessed with what it considered to be the injustice of Catalonia’s immunity from taxation. In 1639 Olivares opened a campaign against southern France from Catalonia. It had no rational strategic objective except to pitchfork Catalonia into the war. If the Catalans had to defend their country, Olivares argued, they would have to support the army.

Olivares’s logic was lost on the Catalans. The peasants, urged on by their clergy, refused to support the troops. During the winter the soldiers were quartered in the countryside. Soon there were clashes with the population, then riots and open rebellion. Too late, Olivares attempted to draw back and appease the Catalans. On June 7 the mob murdered the viceroy in Barcelona. The higher nobility and the urban aristocracies were still anxious for an accommodation, but the countryside was now completely out of control. The Diputació, which was the only remaining legal authority, was led by a strong-minded cleric named Pau Claris, canon of Urgel, located west of Barcelona, who was unwilling to make concessions. In the autumn of 1640 Olivares scraped together the last available troops and sent them against the Catalan rebels. Claris countered by transferring Catalan allegiance to the king of France, “as in the time of Charlemagne” (January 1641). French troops now entered Catalonia, and only after French forces withdrew with the renewed outbreak of the French civil wars (the Fronde) were the Castilians able to reconquer Catalonia (1652). The Catalan upper classes were relieved, for they had found the French even less congenial masters than the Castilians. Not repeating its previous mistakes, Madrid fully restored the liberties and privileges of Catalonia. The revolt of Portugal

The revolt of Catalonia gave the Portuguese their opportunity. The lower classes and the clergy had always hated the Castilians, and the Portuguese aristocracy and the commercial classes—previously content with the patronage and the economic opportunities that the union with Spain had provided—had become dissatisfied during the preceding 20 years. They resented the introduction of Castilians into their government (1634), the ineffectiveness of Spanish naval support in the defense of Brazil against the Dutch, and the growing reaction of the Spanish colonies against Portuguese economic penetration during this period of contracting economic activity. Rather than allow themselves to be sent to fight the Catalan rebels, the Portuguese nobility seized power in Lisbon and proclaimed the duque de Bragança as King John IV of Portugal (December 1640). Madrid, with an aristocratic conspiracy in Andalusia on its hands (1641), no longer had the means to react. The last years of Philip IV

The disasters on Spain’s periphery were matched by continued mismanagement of Spanish finances at the centre. Once more the government tampered with the vellón coinage and then reversed course into a sudden and catastrophic deflation (1641–42). In January 1643 the Castilian grandees were finally able to force Philip IV to dismiss Olivares. The king now decided to run his own government. He dissolved the juntas, and the councils resumed their authority. Soon control of the government slipped into the hands of Olivares’s nephew, Luis Méndez de Haro, a clever but colourless politician with neither his uncle’s imperial vision nor his panache.

The defeats continued. In 1643 the French king’s cousin, Louis II de Bourbon (the Great Condé), broke the Spanish tercios and their reputation for invincibility at the Battle of Rocroi in northeastern France. Popular revolutions broke out in Naples and Palermo (Sicily) in 1647, and soon both cities were controlled by revolutionary governments. The excessive taxation, imposed for Spain’s war effort, had precipitated the rebellion, at least in Naples. The Spanish monarchy, wrote the Venetian ambassador to Madrid at the time,

resembled that great colossus that during an earthquake had collapsed in a few moments while everyone hurried along to enrich himself with the fragments.

In fact, Spain survived and even managed to hold on to much of its empire. The revolts of Naples and Sicily, directed as much against the local nobility as against Spain, were suppressed in 1648. When the emperor conceded French claims to Alsace and the Rhine bridgeheads, the “Spanish Road” to the Netherlands was irrevocably cut, and the close alliance between the Spanish and the Austrian branches of the house of Habsburg came to an end. With Portugal in revolt and Brazil no longer an issue between the Dutch and the Spaniards, Philip IV drew the only possible conclusion from this situation and rapidly came to terms with the United Provinces, recognizing their full independence and agreeing to stop overseas trade on the Schelde, a river emptying into the North Sea west of Antwerp (Treaty of Münster, January 1648). But Philip IV had not changed his basic policy. He wanted to have his hands free for a final effort against France, even after Catalonia had surrendered. Once again the temporary weakness of France during the Fronde confirmed the Spanish court in its disastrous military policy. Haro passed up the chance of concluding a very favourable peace in 1656.

The war dragged on, with England joining France, capturing Jamaica, and contributing to the Spanish defeat in the Battle of the Dunes on the northern coast of France (1658). The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) cost Spain Artois (now northernmost France), Roussillon, and part of Cerdagne. More important than these relatively minor territorial losses was the realization throughout Europe that Spain’s pretensions to hegemony had definitely and irremediably failed. The Spaniards themselves were slow to admit it. Philip IV had made concessions to France in order, once again, to have his hands free against the last unforgiven enemy, Portugal. There was no longer any rational basis for his hopes of success. All schemes for financial and tax reforms were still being blocked by vested interests, and the government again had declared bankruptcies in 1647 and 1653. Once more the Council of Finance issued a debased coinage to pay for the Portuguese campaign. But the Portuguese routed the last Spanish armies at Ameixial (1663) and at Villaviciosa on the northern coast of Spain (1665). Spain finally formally recognized Portugal’s independence in 1668. Charles II

For 10 years Philip IV’s widow, Maria Anna of Austria, acted as regent for Charles II (1665–1700). She allowed her government to be dominated by her confessor, the Austrian Jesuit Johann Eberhard (Juan Everardo) Nithard. It was weakness, rather than strength, that prompted this government not to summon the Cortes any more. But this policy paved the way for the introduction of effective royal absolutism in the 18th century. In 1669 Nithard was overthrown by Juan José de Austria, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, but the regent still managed to keep him out of the central government. In 1677 Juan José led an army against Madrid and made himself Charles II’s principal minister. This first pronunciamiento, or military coup, inaugurated a tradition that was to bear bitter fruit in the political life of Spain and Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Juan José himself planned some promising reforms but died in 1679. Thereafter, the high nobility dominated the government as effectively as it had in the days of Philip III, playing court intrigues, first with the regent and later with the two successive wives of the incapable Charles II. The majority of these aristocrats were self-seeking and incompetent. Some, however—notably Manuel Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo y Portugal, the conde de Oropesa—had considerable ability. They finally restored the coinage in 1680, though not before they had caused another catastrophic deflation. They established a committee for commerce that pursued orthodox mercantilist policies, encouraging trade and industry. They even took the unprecedented step of investigating the Inquisition and recommending a right of appeal to the secular courts.

Even though the woolen industry of Segovia and some other towns expanded and the imports of American silver, now routed through Cadiz rather than Sevilla, recovered at least in some years to about their former levels, a broadly based economic recovery still lay in the future. Until the mid-1680s the Castilian economy declined at such a rate that the French ambassador claimed to see an appalling deterioration between his two visits, in 1668–69 and in 1671–73. In the 1690s the Venetian ambassador characterized the reign of Charles II as “an uninterrupted series of calamities.” The population of Castile declined from about 6.5 million at the end of the 16th century to under 5 million about 1680. Figures for the whole of Spain followed a similar pattern, declining from 8.5 million to about 6.6 million. The reasons for this decline were not so much emigration to the overseas colonies, which averaged 4,000–5,000 per year in the 17th century, as military casualties from all causes, which averaged the frightening figure of 10,000–12,000 a year. More devastating still were the recurrent plagues and, perhaps, the sheer misery of the rural population, who lived on estates that their noble and ecclesiastical owners could not be bothered to manage with even a minimum of efficiency. The shortage of labour, especially skilled labour, and high wages attracted many foreign workers, perhaps as many as 70,000 Frenchmen. Nevertheless, Castilian industries continued to decline. The nadir was reached in the decade 1677–86 with crop failures, earthquakes, an epidemic that sharply reversed a slight upward trend in population dating from about 1650, and, on top of these natural disasters, the government’s deflation of the coinage. The French wars

In these circumstances it is not surprising that Spain now became the victim rather than the initiator of aggression. In three successive wars with France (1667–68, 1672–78, 1689–97), Spain lost Franche-Comté (Nijmegen" class="md-crosslink">Treaty of Nijmegen, 1678) and some Belgian frontier towns to France but still managed to hold on to the greater part of the southern Netherlands and the Italian dominions. The reason was less Spain’s own military efforts, which were puny compared with those of the first half of the century, than the unwillingness of other European powers, especially the United Provinces, to see the Spanish dominions in Europe swallowed up by France. After the last and, for Spain, most disastrous of these wars, the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97), Louis XIV himself restored Flanders and Catalonia, which his troops had occupied, for he now had his eye on the inheritance of the whole Spanish empire.

The last years of the childless and clearly dying Charles II were occupied by the maneuvers of the European powers for the Spanish succession or, alternatively, for the partition of the Spanish empire. Amid cabals, intrigues, exorcisms of evil spirits, and blood feuds at court, while riots were going on in the streets of Madrid, the rule of the house of Austria came to an end with the death of Charles II, on November 1, 1700. The decline of Spain

Although there is no doubt that Spain suffered economic and political decline in the 17th century, especially in its second half, it is not nearly as clear that there was also a comparable cultural decline or even decadence, as has sometimes been maintained. Certainly, Calderón, Velázquez, and Murillo had no successors of comparable stature. The court of Charles II was neither financially nor psychologically capable of playing the patronage role that Philip IV’s court had played. Some of the supposed decline, however, may have been more a matter of changing styles in painting and architecture that did not please the more conservative contemporaries, nor many later historians. A good example is the architecture of the brothers Churriguera (see Churrigueresque). Although it has often been dismissed as overly ornate, it has come to be appreciated as a delightful Mediterranean counterpart to the famous contemporary southern German Baroque-Rococo style.

The term decadence, except perhaps when applied to the person of Charles II himself, does not explain the timing of the economic and political decline nor its duration. In the first place, the economic decline was mainly a Castilian phenomenon and did not affect Catalonia or Valencia to anything near the same degree. For Castile, it is perhaps best to see the problem of decline as the arbitristas saw it: in the depreciation by Castilians of economic activity, an attitude that was rooted deeply in Castile’s past history but that was particularly baleful in a period of general European economic depression, such as the 17th century. Moreover, the aggressive militarism that was central to the Castilian aristocratic tradition led to the political hubris of Spanish imperial policy, from Philip II to Philip IV. The Castilian ruling classes never produced, or perhaps gave no chance to, a leader who could break out of this tradition. Velázquez seems to have known it or felt it instinctively when he painted The Surrender of Breda as the beginning of a hoped-for reconciliation of enemies and when, in his portraits of Philip IV, he showed the pathos of a man half aware of his personal inadequacy for the role he was called upon to play. It was the wars, however, that devoured Castile, even though they were fought beyond its borders. They do not directly explain the end of the “Golden Age,” but it may be suggested that a society that invests most of its energies and all of its pride in war, even though it may be ideal for war, is unable to provide a congenial ground for the exercise of creative genius when its ideal has failed and it is left with nothing but a now-hollow pride. Helmut Georg Koenigsberger The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica The early Bourbons, 1700–53

Although the wars of the 17th century had weakened Spain’s power in Europe, the country still remained the world’s greatest imperial power. Spain’s central problem in the 17th century had been to maintain what remained of its European possessions and to retain control of its American empire. At the beginning of the 18th century, both tasks appeared to be beyond the military and economic resources of the monarchy. In the 17th century the greatest threat had come from a land power, France, jealous of Habsburg power in Europe; in the 18th it was to come from a sea power, England, while the Austrian Habsburgs became the main continental enemy of Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession

In 1700 (by the will of the childless Charles II) the duc d’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, became Philip V of Spain. Austria refused to recognize Philip, a Bourbon, and thereby concede the defeat of its hopes of placing an Austrian candidate on the throne of Spain. To England, a Bourbon king in Spain would disrupt the balance of power in Europe in favour of French hegemony. Louis XIV conceived of Spain under a Bourbon king as a political and commercial appendage of France to be ruled by correspondence from Versailles. He wished to regenerate and strengthen his ally by a modern centralized administration, a task both complicated and facilitated by the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), wherein the allied armies of Britain and Austria invaded Spain in order to drive out Philip V and establish the “Austrian” candidate, the archduke Charles (later the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI), on the throne.

An efficient administration had to be created in order to extract resources from Spain for the war effort and thus relieve pressure on the French treasury; at the same time, financial shortages imperiled administrative reform, while war taxation and war levies drove Catalonia and Aragon to revolt against the demands of the Bourbon dynasty. The instruments of centralizing reform were French civil servants Jean-Jacques Amelot, Louis XIV’s ambassador, and Jean-Henri-Louis Orry, a financial expert, and a handful of Spanish lawyer-administrators such as Melchor de Macanaz. They were supported by the queen, María Luisa of Savoy, and her friend the 60-year-old Marie-Anne de la Trémoille, princesse des Ursins.

The opponents of reform were those who suffered by it: the grandees who had dominated the cumbersome, inefficient councils; the councils themselves; the regions such as Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia, in which the establishment of effective royal rule was seen as a Castilian centralizing imposition in conflict with the local privileges, or fueros" class="md-crosslink">fueros; and the church, whose position was threatened by the ferocious and doctrinaire regalism of Macanaz, who wished to subject the independent jurisdictions of the church (especially of the papal nuncios and the Inquisition) to the absolute monarch. The disaffection of all these elements easily turned into opposition to Philip V as king. Opposition to the new dynasty accentuated the determination of Bourbon civil servants to end special privileges that could serve as a cover for treasonable sympathy with the Austrian and English invaders.

Despite severe financial difficulties (owing to the loss of revenues from the Indies), Castile was ferociously loyal to the new dynasty throughout the war. The support of Castile and of France (until 1711) enabled Philip V to survive severe defeats and two occupations of Madrid. In 1705 the archduke Charles landed in Catalonia and took Barcelona. When Philip V tried to attack Catalonia through Aragon, the Aragonese, in the name of their fueros, revolted against the passage of Castilian troops. This revolt, backed by the local nobility, turned the king’s advisers resolutely against local privileges and aristocratic treason. After the victory over the archduke Charles at Almansa (April 1707), the fueros of the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon were abolished and the property of rebels confiscated. When the archbishop of Valencia resisted attempts to make priests of doubtful loyalty appear before civil courts, the regalism of Macanaz was given full course.

This was the last direct triumph of the reformers. With the death of Queen María Luisa in 1714 and the arrival of Philip’s new wife, Isabella Farnese, court support for radical reform disappeared. Macanaz was condemned by the Inquisition, and a less rigid administration, more inclined to compromise with the church and the higher nobility, controlled the country’s policy.

The last stages of the war were a Spanish concern. The allies deserted the archduke Charles; the French gave little help to Philip V. In 1714 Philip recaptured the archduke’s capital, Barcelona. By the Decree of Nueva Planta (1716), the fueros were abolished and Catalonia was integrated into Spain. Integration, widely criticized by later generations of Catalans as the destruction of Catalan “nationality,” was nevertheless a precondition for industrial revival; it gave Catalonia a domestic market in Spain and later an overseas market in America. Paradoxically, a disastrous war had for the first time created a unitary Spanish state: except for the Basque provinces and Navarre, Spain was under direct royal administration.

Spain’s defeat in war cost it many of its possessions outside Iberia. The treaties of Maastricht and Utrecht (1713) stripped it of its European possessions (Belgium, Luxembourg, Milan, Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples) and gave Britain Gibraltar and Minorca and the right to send one ship a year to trade with Spanish America. “American” and “Italian” policies

Two tendencies can be discerned in Spanish policy until 1748: a desire for revenge and recovery in Italy and an “Atlantic” policy that sought to protect America from British incursions and to revive Spanish colonial rule. Both policies demanded a strong army and navy. The “Italian” tendency was influenced by Philip V’s second wife, Isabella, and her desire to get Italian thrones for her sons. The instruments of her ambitions were two foreigners: the Italian cardinal Giulio Alberoni, the exiled son of an Italian gardener, and the Dutch-born adventurer Juan Guillermo Riperdá (Johan Willem Ripperda). The attempt to recover the possessions in Italy involved Spain in an unsuccessful war with Austria, which was now the great power in Italy. Spain suffered a serious naval defeat off Cape Passero, Sicily, in 1718. Nevertheless, Isabella’s persistence was rewarded when her son, the future King Charles III of Spain, became the duke of Parma in 1731 and king of Naples in 1733, relinquishing his claims to Parma.

The American-Atlantic tendency was the work of Spanish ministers with a particular interest in the navy and foreign trade—Patiño" class="md-crosslink">José Patiño, Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea, marqués de la Ensenada, and José de Carvajal y Lancáster. The “Italian” and “Atlantic” tendencies existed side by side in the late years of Philip V’s reign. Atlantic rivalries in the form of a dispute over the interpretation of British trading privileges in Spanish America granted at Utrecht brought on the Jenkins’ Ear" class="md-crosslink">War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–43), during which the British sacked Porto Bello (now Portobelo) in the Caribbean. The Spanish fleet nevertheless was surprisingly effective and worsted Admiral Edward Vernon at Cartagena. The Italian-Mediterranean policy led directly to Spanish involvement in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). It made possible an alliance of France and Spain against Austria, giving Isabella the opportunity to settle her second son, Philip, in an Italian duchy. In 1745 Spanish troops entered Milan.

Ferdinand VI (1746–59) was concerned with the domestic recovery of Spain rather than the extension of its power in Europe. He hoped to recover Gibraltar at the general peace that ended the War of the Austrian Succession. But the Anglo-French rapprochement made recovery of Gibraltar an impossibility at the Aix-la-Chapelle" class="md-crosslink">Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748); the treaty merely strengthened Spain’s position in Italy when Philip became duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The Atlantic tendency became dominant under Ferdinand VI. Because Britain was Spain’s most significant enemy in the Americas (as Austria had been in Italy), Spain’s “natural” ally was France, as Ensenada and Carvajal had seen (hence a series of family pacts with France in 1733 and 1743). It was only in the last years of Ferdinand’s reign that his minister, Ricardo Wall, attempted a policy of strict neutrality as the best means of saving Spain from the hostility of Britain, Austria, or France.

The American interest was reflected in increased trade (the old system of convoyed fleets was abandoned for individual sailings), the creation of privileged trading companies (1725), and the founding of new naval arsenals at Ferrol and Cartagena (1726). But Spain’s central weakness as an imperial power remained; its economy could not supply America with the consumer goods it needed in return for its increased exports. Instead, these were supplied either by British merchants through the “legitimate” trade from Cadiz or by smuggling. Despite considerable efforts, the Spanish navy was unable to suppress a contraband trade that, from the colonists’ point of view, was a necessity.

Ferdinand VI’s ministers revived the reforming traditions weakened during the latter years of the rule of Philip V, whose lethargy had deepened into chronic melancholia. One of the most important imitations of French administrative practice was the use after 1749 of crown officers, or intendants, to rule in the provinces. The intendants strengthened royal control over local government, especially in its financial aspects; together with the captains general (established by Philip V), they were responsible for a renewal of provincial public works. Carvajal reorganized the postal system. Ensenada was a great road builder. He also opened the Sevilla tobacco factory, botanical gardens, and observatories, and he increased royal receipts through a rationalization of the tax structure. Charles III, Ferdinand’s successor, implemented dramatic reforms that followed along the path set by Ferdinand. The reign of Charles III, 1759–88

Two features distinguished the reforms of Charles III (the “Caroline” reforms) from those of the early Bourbons. First, Charles was a “reformer’s king” in that he consistently supported reforming ministers. This was surprising in a monarch who had no great intellectual gifts, was obsessed by hunting, and whose court society was among the most boring in Europe. Second, the civil servants were distinguished from their predecessors by their adherence to a philosophy of government derived from the ideals of the European Enlightenment.

Nevertheless, there were sharp differences among the civil servants. conde de Aranda" class="md-crosslink">Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, conde de Aranda, and Pablo de Olavide y Jáuregui were influenced by the French philosophes; Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos y Ramírez was a disciple of the Scottish political philosopher and economist Adam Smith; Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes drew more directly on Spanish reformers such as Macanaz; José Moñino y Redondo, conde de Floridablanca, was a professional administrator. All would have taken as their slogan “Felicidad” (“Felicity”)—a well-ordered monarchy based directly on the productivity of people who are made happy by the intelligent application of the principles of political economy. There were, however, impediments (estorbos), such as traditional privileges (e.g., grazing rights held by the sheep-breeders’ corporation, the Mesta) or attitudes (e.g., the prejudice of the nobility against the “mechanical trades”); they could not be allowed to stand in the way of greater prosperity and, therefore, of a higher tax income for the state. Economic revival

After 1714 Spain experienced a gradual economic recovery, which became quite marked in the second half of the 18th century. It is doubtful that much of this revival was the work of conscious but often confused government policy. Thus, the famous decree (1783) “ennobling” the mechanical trades had little practical result; the attempt to establish government factories and replace religious charity by the productive employment of the poor was a relative failure. Government policy had little to do with the growth of population, which rose during the century from 8 million to 12 million. The increased demand for food and the consequent sharp rise in prices encouraged agriculture, benefiting the large landowners of the south and the small farmers near growing towns such as Barcelona. The most remarkable feature of this economic revival was the emergence in Catalonia after 1745 of a modern cotton-based textile industry. The industry benefited from a protected market in Spain and the colonies. In the Basque provinces the archaic iron industry began a slow process of modernization. In Galicia, Catalan immigrants established a flourishing fishing fleet. The brandy trade brought sudden prosperity to the ports of Catalonia and their hinterland. Nevertheless, government actions of earlier years, such as financial reforms and the abolition of internal customs duties, removed obstacles to the expansion of the internal market, and the opening of the American trade acted as a strong stimulant.

Most of these developments occurred not in the old Castilian core of the monarchy but in the peripheral regions and in the towns rather than in the countryside. Price rises were steepest on the periphery; in Barcelona, for example, they outstripped wages and thus created the beginnings of a social problem. The role of Catalans in the economic revival lies at the origins of the Castilian stereotype of the Catalans as selfish, thrusting businessmen, indifferent to traditional values and exploiting their fellow Spaniards. Imperial problems

Charles III maintained that the key to Spain’s prosperity lay in the development of an American market in the Indies. He saw clearly that Spain alone could not preserve an overseas market closed to the outside world against Britain. Ricardo Wall’s policy of strict neutrality had allowed Britain to make gains in Canada that were bound to weaken France—the only other anti-British power in America. If Britain would respect Spain’s possessions, or if Charles could mediate between France and Britain in such a way as to preserve the balance between them in America, then to commit Spain to the French alliance was a dynastic luxury. Once it was clear to Charles that British terms were nonnegotiable, then the Bourbon Family Compact of 1761, a mutual-defense treaty with France, was a piece of realpolitik, signed by the “Anglophile” Ricardo Wall.

The consequence of such an alliance was involvement in the Seven Years’ War—too late to save France. In 1762 the British occupied Havana—the greatest single blow sustained by Spain in the war. Spain theoretically allowed no foreigners to share directly in the colonial trade, the effect of which was to starve the colonies of necessary imports and to encourage smuggling. In 1762, 15 ships entered the port of Havana; during the 11 months of British occupation, 700 did. This was a dramatic indication to the colonists of the drawbacks of the Spanish monopoly, especially when that monopoly was exercised by what was, in European terms, an underdeveloped country.

The Treaty of Paris (1763) concluded the Seven Years’ War and destroyed France as an American power. Spain lost the territory between Florida and the Mississippi, in return gaining Louisiana from France. Spain also had to recognize Portuguese advances in the Río de la Plata (the fort of Sacramento) and the British right to cut mahogany in Central America. The Family Compact was therefore an immediate military failure, and it was only the revolt of the North American colonies against Britain that enabled Spain to recover the ground it had lost; the successful alliance with France to aid the colonists resulted in the Treaty of Versailles (1783), which gave back Sacramento, the two Floridas, and Minorca. Not until later did it become apparent that an alliance of revenge with colonial insurgents was a shortsighted policy for an imperial power.

Driven by fears of British and Russian expansion, Spain also undertook a more aggressive policy in the far north of its American possessions: California, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. These were reorganized into a single administrative unit, the Internal Provinces, under a unified military command. A string of missions was established in California to assert Spanish control.

The problems of imperial defense were thus temporarily solved by British weakness after 1765. The positive side of Charles III’s imperial policy was an attempt to create an efficiently administered colonial empire that would provide the crown with increased revenues and with a closed market for the exports of an expanding Spanish economy, a program known as the “Bourbon Reforms.”

The rationalization of the administration of the Indies had started before Charles III with the creation of a new viceroyalty at Santa Fé de Bogotá (present-day Colombia) in 1717. To protect the south against the British and against Portuguese incursions from Brazil, the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was created in 1776. The centrepiece of Caroline reform was the introduction of the intendant system in the colonies to tighten up local administration. Most dramatic of all was the abolition of the monopoly of Cadiz, by which all trade to the colonies had to go through that port. Beginning in 1778, non-Castilian ports could trade directly with the colonies.

The new policies brought some immediate and striking results. Energetic viceroys and ministers and ruthless intendants doubled or tripled imperial revenues. The volume of Spanish goods in the American trade increased 10-fold in 10 years, prompting British concern at the Spanish revival. But imperial free trade would not satisfy the growing demand from Creole producers for free trade with all nations. Nor did the colonial oligarchs desire efficient government and higher taxation; they preferred bad government that let them control their own affairs. They showed their discontent in a series of revolts in the 1780s; only the fear of the native Indians drove them back to allegiance to the Spanish crown. Domestic reforms

The domestic reforms of Charles III are more interesting for what they intended than for what they accomplished. They were not, as has often been maintained, directed at fostering a “bourgeois revolution.” The middle classes were too weak, in a predominantly agrarian country, for the role of a modernizing elite; nor did Charles III contemplate a frontal attack on the traditional nobility. The purpose of reform was to remove what seemed to civil servants to be “traditional” constrictions on economic growth and administrative anachronisms that prevented the efficient exercise of royal power. The reformers’ view of the inadequacy of the existing system was well expressed by Pablo de Olavide, an active administrator who would later fall afoul of the Inquisition:

A body composed of other and smaller bodies, separated and in opposition to one another, which oppress and despise each other and are in a continuous state of war…Modern Spain can be considered a monstrous Republic of little republics which confront each other because the particular interest of each is in contradiction with the general interest.

Reorganizations of the machinery of central government made for greater executive efficiency, but complete rationalization was never achieved; the old machinery of the councils persisted, with the Council of Castile as the ultimate decision-making body. An attempt to establish royal control of municipalities (without which reforms could not get past the oligarchic councils) was likewise only a partial success. Most of the public works that characterized the late 18th century were the achievement of vigorous captains general. The extensive civil functions of these military officials were the first signs of a hybrid military-civilian government that, in another form, was to be developed in the 19th century.

Spain’s agrarian economic structure also was not modified. All the chief reformers believed that the great and extensively cultivated estates, especially in Andalusia and Extremadura, constituted the greatest bar to agricultural prosperity. The landless underemployed proletariat who worked the large estates began to alarm reformers. The statesman and author Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos asked:

Why in our villages and towns are these men without land and in the countryside land without men? Bring them together and all will be served.

It was felt that property should be more widely distributed and that there should be a free market in land. Yet none of the reformers was radical enough to push through a wholesale assault on private property or on the civil entail (the juridical instrument by which the latifundios, or large estates, were preserved intact). Acts such as the limitation of future entail, which preserved great estates intact over generations (1789), the limitation of the privileges of the Mesta (1779), and the right to enclose olive groves and irrigated land (1788) showed that the reformers believed primarily in the right of private individuals to do what they liked with their own property; the unrestricted pursuit of private profit, they believed, would bring public prosperity. The enemy was corporate property. Hence, it was proposed that common lands owned by municipalities and the crown should be sold for individual cultivation and that ecclesiastical entail (mortmain) be ended.

The attack on the privileges of the greatest corporation in Spain, the church, was less radical than has sometimes been maintained. Charles III himself was a devoted Catholic who dedicated Spain to the Immaculate Conception. While some of his servants were fashionable anticlericals, most were regalists; that is, they asserted the right of the crown to control over the church in civil matters. In the extreme regalists’ view, the state should take care of charity and education, and it should subject priests to civil jurisdiction for civil crimes and assert the traditional rights of the crown over church appointments.

The main attack of the regalists fell on the Jesuit order. In 1766 a serious riot in Madrid revealed some of the difficulties confronting the reformers. The abolition of fixed wheat prices during a bad harvest (a step that reflected the reformers’ belief in the virtues of a free market) and an attempt to reform outlandish fashions in popular dress brought out the mob in Madrid. The Jesuits were alleged to have fostered the riot and were expelled from both Spain and America in 1767. The importance of this expulsion, however, has been overestimated. Already expelled from France and Portugal, the Jesuits were bitterly criticized by rival orders as well as by the secular clergy: 42 of the 56 bishops approved of the expulsion. Again, the expulsion was a negative achievement; more ambitious plans to establish a state university system and a state welfare organization failed.

The question arises of the extent to which the policies of Charles III resulted from the acceptance by his servants of the precepts of the Enlightenment. Certainly Aranda, the “Hammer of the Jesuits,” and Olavide were what were called esprits forts (“strong spirits”; i.e., French-influenced radicals); their views gave a sharp edge to traditional regalism. Jovellanos was a disciple of Adam Smith. Although his famous Informe sobre la ley agraria (“Report on the Agrarian Law”) is not original, the book is significant in that it attempts to apply dogmatic laissez-faire ideology to Spanish conditions and is one of the foundations of Spanish liberalism.

One of the aims of the Enlightenment was to produce a society in which no traditional prejudices or institutions should inhibit economic activity. This was the motive behind the attempt to encourage the nobility to engage in commerce by making it “honourable.” Patriotic societies, organized with government encouragement from 1765 onward, were meant to provide the provincial basis for a progressive society and to familiarize Spaniards with European advances in technology and agriculture. However, this attempt did not progress much beyond the status of local reading rooms and debating societies.

Traditional Roman Catholic society was still strong, if under attack from a minority of intellectuals and civil servants. As the reaction of the countryside after 1808 was to show, the church was still a great social power. Wellington" class="md-crosslink">Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington, observed that “the real power in Spain is in the clergy. They kept the people right against France.” Although a number of bishops could be counted among the “enlightened” and supported much of the reform program, most of the clergy viewed the new ideas of the Enlightenment as “foreign” and dangerous. There could be no such thing as moderate progress encouraged by the king himself—the notion of a “revolution from above” that was to haunt subsequent Spanish history. Voltaire, Locke" class="md-crosslink">John Locke, and Rousseau" class="md-crosslink">Jean-Jacques Rousseau were quite simply dangerous heretics, though the Inquisition proved powerless to prevent the clandestine circulation of their works. It was the clerical attacks on heretics as much as the subversive works themselves that familiarized a narrow stratum of society with new ideas. When the French Revolution exposed the dangers of progressive thought, the traditionalist cause was immensely strengthened, and the Inquisition appeared to the crown itself to be a useful instrument to control the spread of dangerous ideas. Charles IV and the French Revolution

In 1788 Charles III, who had been the “nerve” of reform in the sense that he loyally supported able ministers, was succeeded by his son, Charles IV, a weak, amiable man dominated by a lascivious wife, María Luisa. Spain was ruled after 1792 by her favourite, Manuel de Godoy, a handsome, plump officer from the lower nobility. This choice was unfortunate not merely because Godoy was incompetent and self-seeking but also because the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars put unbearable pressures on a weak power. Reform was now dangerous. Neutrality was impossible; alliance with either France or the anti-revolutionary coalitions engineered by Britain proved equally disastrous.

Charles IV of Spain, painting by Francisco de Goya, c. 1789; in the Prado Museum, Madrid.Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis

José Moñino y Redondo, conde de Floridablanca, the prime minister, disliked both the internal effects of the French Revolution (the spread of radical as opposed to government-guided reform) and its external consequences (the weakening of the anti-British alliance). His hostility to France was the cause of his dismissal. Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, conde de Aranda, a friend of France, was discredited by the excesses of the Revolution (1792). Godoy became prime minister at age 25 because the older ministers of Charles III had failed to devise a foreign policy. In domestic affairs, Godoy supported a mild version of the enlightened reformism of his predecessors; like them, however, he failed to find a satisfactory place for Spain in the Europe of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1800–15).

Spain had no alternative but to declare war on France after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. The war was popular but disastrous; in 1794 the French armies invaded Spain, taking Bilbao, San Sebastián (Donostia–San Sebastián), and Figueres (Figueras). Godoy feared the spread of revolutionary propaganda in the wake of the French armies in Catalonia and the north (there was a republican conspiracy in 1795). Above all, he was convinced that Britain was the true enemy of Spain. Thus, the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1796) represented a deliberate choice: the French alliance, irrespective of the nature of the French regime, was the only policy for a weak imperial power.

The consequences of this choice were disastrous. War with Britain became inevitable and cut off Spain from America, opening Spain’s colonial markets to Britain and the United States. This development threatened complete bankruptcy of the royal finances, which Godoy attempted to alleviate by the issue of state bonds and the sale of church properties—a measure that alienated conservatives. Godoy invaded Portugal with success in the War of the Oranges (1801), but the defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet by the British at Trafalgar in 1805 and the “selfishness” of Napoleon caused Godoy to seek a rapprochement with the allies. Had Napoleon lost the Battle of Jena (1806) against the Prussians, Godoy would have joined the Fourth Coalition against him.

Godoy’s position was now extremely weak. Disliked by the court aristocracy, who considered him an upstart, he was unpopular at home. In addition, severe inflation produced great hardship among the poorer classes, and a campaign of gossip was mounted against him by those intellectuals whom he did not patronize. He now hoped, with French help, to dismember Portugal and to secure personal salvation in a principality. This curious hope was the basis of the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), by which Napoleon and the Spanish government agreed upon the conquest and partition of Portugal. When French troops on the way to Portugal occupied the fortresses of northern and central Spain and when Napoleon demanded territorial gains in Spain itself, Godoy’s policy was made bankrupt. It was obvious that Napoleon had lost all faith in Godoy and Spain as an ally; the “dirty intrigues” of Ferdinand, prince of Asturias and heir to the throne, against his father and Godoy led Napoleon to consider drastic intervention in Spanish affairs.

The opportunity for direct intervention by Napoleon was given by the Revolt of Aranjuez (March 17, 1808), in which the partisans of Ferdinand, an alliance of discontented aristocrats and others opposed to Godoy, compelled the abdication of Charles IV and the dismissal of Godoy. Napoleon summoned both the old king and Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, where both were compelled to abdicate. The Spanish throne was then offered to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother. The French invasion and the War of Independence, 1808–14

Joseph could count on the support of cautious, legalistic administrators and soldiers, those who believed resistance to French power impossible, and those who considered that Napoleon might “regenerate” Spain by modern reforms. These groups became convinced afrancesados, as members of the pro-French party were pejoratively called. Relying on their support, Napoleon entirely underestimated the possibility of popular resistance to the occupation of Spain by French armies. Although the uprising of May 2, 1808, in Madrid was suppressed, local uprisings against the French were successful wherever French military power was weak. The War of Independence

After the deposition of King Ferdinand, “patriot” Spain outside the control of the French armies split into a number of autonomous provinces. Resistance centred in provincial committees (juntas) that organized armies. A Central Junta at Aranjuez sought to control this nascent federalism and the local levies, and Spanish regular troops defeated a French army of inferior, ill-supplied troops under General Pierre Dupont de l’Étang at Bailén in July 1808. The French retired from Madrid. Napoleon then invaded Spain and by 1809 was in control of most of the peninsula. The Spanish regular army, led by incompetent generals, suffered defeat after defeat.

The War of Independence—or, as the English call it, the Peninsular War—became for Napoleon the “Spanish ulcer,” and he attributed his defeat in Europe to its requirements for men and money. He was defeated not by the inefficient Spanish regular army but by British troops under the duke of Wellington advancing from Portugal with the aid of Spanish guerrillas. As the main battles—Talavera (July 1809) and Vitoria (June 1813)—were fought by Wellington, the guerrillas pinned down French garrisons, intercepted dispatches, and isolated convoys.

The term guerrilla, derived from the Spanish guerra (war), was first used during the Spanish War of Independence. The guerrillas were a complex phenomenon, and they did not share a single motivation for fighting the French. Some were patriotic liberals, and others were driven primarily by their attachment to the church and fought to defend traditional institutions against French-inspired reform. The Constitution of Cadiz, 1812

The war years both recreated a patriotic spirit to cover the bare bones of Bourbon administrative centralism and resulted in the explicit formulation of a liberal ideology that was to be a dynamic factor in Spanish history. The Central Junta and its successor, the regency, were compelled to summon a Cortes in order to legitimize the situation created by the absence of Ferdinand VII, who was a prisoner in France. Conservatives conceived of this task as the mere supply of the sinews of war on behalf of an absent king. However, the Cortes, when it met at Cadiz in 1810, was dominated by liberals who wished to go beyond the mere support of the war effort and establish a constitution that would make impossible the revival of rule by a favourite like Godoy. The constitution of 1812 was to become the “sacred codex” of Latin liberalism.

The Constitution of Cadiz gave Spain a strictly limited monarchy (the king must work through his responsible ministers), a single-chamber parliament with no special representation for the church or the nobility, and a modern centralized administrative system based on provinces and municipalities. All this had little basis in the medieval precedents quoted in the debates and was inspired by the 1791 constitution of Revolutionary France. Liberal individualism inspired legislation against entail, favouring instead the sale of common lands and the individual’s right to dispose of his property as he might wish. The abolition of the Inquisition represented a mixture of historical regalism and modern anticlericalism. This measure produced a conservative reaction, as did all liberal anticlericalism through to the Second Republic in the 1930s. This reaction gave a popular underpinning to Ferdinand VII’s destruction of liberalism and all its works in 1814 (see below).

In addition to initiating a liberal tradition, the War of Independence bequeathed two problems: first, generals chafed at control by civilian juntas and on occasion overthrew them, thus initiating the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, or military revolution; second, the afrancesados, who were often of liberal inclination but were tarred with the accusation of collaborationism with the French, were left as an indigestible element within liberalism itself. Ferdinand VII, 1814–33

With the help of an army corps and of conservative sentiment that had been outraged by the liberalism of 1812, Ferdinand returned from exile in France to rule Spain as an absolute monarch. In 1820 he was forced by military sedition to return to constitutionalism during the Liberal Triennium (1820–23). For the last, “ominous” decade of his reign, he returned to a relatively enlightened form of ministerial despotism. From 1814 to 1820 Spain attempted to reestablish its rule in America and to maintain an inflated wartime army with a permanent economic deficit. The failure of liberalism

The solution of the Cadiz liberals to the imperial problem had been to make the colonies constitutionally part of metropolitan Spain by giving them representation in the Cortes. This did not stop the revolt of the colonies, where the Creoles wanted local self-government and free trade rather than liberal centralization. In 1814 it was not clear that the rebels under Simón Bolívar in the north and José de San Martín in the south would succeed; however, all Ferdinand’s efforts to assemble a large army and a fleet to send to America failed. In 1820 the army that was to subdue the colonies revolted against the king in a pronunciamiento organized by Major Rafael de Riego y Núñez and supported by the local liberals organized in Masonic lodges.

The revolution of 1820 brought into power the “jailbirds”—liberals of the 1812 vintage who had been persecuted by Ferdinand VII. The constitution of 1812 was reestablished together with other liberal legislation, including the sale of monastic property.

The liberal system failed once more because it was a minority creed sustained by a section of the army—the military radicals such as Riego—against a mounting conservative reaction that had been fed by an attack on the church, especially the monasteries. The liberals themselves split. The more conservative wing (led by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, a dramatist) wished for a more moderate constitution, based on the French Charter of 1814, which would give better representation to the upper classes and would not be totally unacceptable to the king, as was the “prison” of the constitution of 1812. The king gave no support to this movement and, in a cowardly fashion, disowned a rising of the guards’ regiments that backed it. Thus, the extreme radicals (exaltados) gained control by means of demonstrations in the streets, organized by clubs run on the lines of the Jacobins of the French Revolution. The conservative reaction developed in the north around the regency set up at Seo de Urgel. Without French help, the movement would not have been successful, but when Louis XVIII sent French troops (the “Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis”), the liberal armies disintegrated and the liberal system fell.

Once more revolution at home favoured revolution in the colonies. Mexican conservatives, who had no desire to be ruled by Spanish anticlericals, successfully established an independent Mexico under Agustín de Iturbide (1822). Spanish military power in South America finally foundered in the decisive Battle of Ayacucho (1824). Of Spain’s far-flung empire, only the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines remained. The “ominous decade,” 1823–33

The “ominous decade,” as it was called by the persecuted liberals, began with a severe purge of liberals, but in its later stages the regime became increasingly unacceptable to extreme conservatives, who looked to the king’s reactionary brother, Don Carlos (Carlos María Isidro de Borbón). Ferdinand had to rely either on inefficient traditionalists who could raise no money in the European money markets or on the more liberal ministers who were able financiers. Ministers such as Luis López Ballesteros, a friend of the afrancesados, set the tone with a serious attempt at a government-fostered economic revival.

The return to 18th-century “ministerial despotism” did not satisfy the liberal exiles, who mounted ineffective invasions in 1824 and 1830. More important, the conservatives of Don Carlos’s court faction accepted Ferdinand VII’s rule only on condition that Don Carlos would inherit the crown. In 1829 Ferdinand married his niece María Cristina of Naples, who realized that her influence depended on the elimination of that of Don Carlos. In March 1830 her faction at court persuaded the king to exclude Don Carlos from the succession even if María Cristina produced a female heir. This attack on the rights of Don Carlos was the origin of the Carlist party and of the Carlist wars, which were to be a disrupting influence in Spain for more than a half century. After the defeat of an attempt to force María Cristina to recognize Don Carlos’s rights during Ferdinand’s illness (September 1832), María Cristina’s faction became dominant at court. She succeeded in securing all important military commands in the hands of supporters of the claims of her daughter, Isabella. When, on September 29, 1833, Ferdinand died, Isabella was proclaimed queen, with María Cristina as regent, precipitating almost immediately the outbreak of the First Carlist War (1833–39). Isabella II, 1833–68 The Carlist wars

The dynastic war between Isabelline liberalism and Carlism was a savage civil war between urban liberalism and rural traditionalism, between the poorly paid and poorly equipped regular army of the liberal governments, supporting Isabella, and the semi-guerrilla forces of the Carlists. The Carlist strength lay in the north, especially in the Basque provinces and Navarre, where there was strong support for the fueros against liberal centralism and for the traditional Roman Catholic order represented by the religious bigotry of Don Carlos and his circle. But the Carlists could not break out of their bases in the north to capture an important city. The great Carlist leader Zumalacárregui y de Imaz" class="md-crosslink">Tomás Zumalacárregui y de Imaz was killed in an attempt to capture Bilbao, and Don Carlos’s expedition to Madrid failed (1837). In 1839 Rafel Maroto, the Carlist commander, staged a mutiny against the clerical court of Don Carlos and came to terms with Baldomero Espartero, the most successful of Isabella’s generals.

María Cristina allied with liberalism out of military necessity, not from conviction. She would have preferred to grant administrative reforms rather than consent that her daughter should become a constitutional monarch. But only the liberals could save her daughter’s throne from the Carlists, and the minimum demand of all liberals was a constitution. As regent from 1833 to 1840, she therefore consistently supported conservative liberals against the radicals. The Royal Statute (1834) represented this alliance between respectable upper-middle-class liberals and the crown.

This conservative constitution, with its steep property franchise and the great powers it gave the crown in the choice of ministers, could not stop the drift toward the left implicit in liberalism itself. The radicals, who were the heirs of the exaltados of 1820–23, were installed in power first by a series of provincial town uprisings in 1835 and later, after a short-lived conservative reaction, by an army mutiny that forced María Cristina to accept the constitution of 1812. The radical politicians, however, accepted a more moderate compromise constitution—that of 1837. Of more enduring importance was the sale of church lands to finance the war. The great disentailment carried out by Prime Minister Juan Alvarez Mendizábal and his successors profoundly altered the social structure of Spain by putting on the market large quantities of land, most of which were bought by large landowners or prosperous peasants. Moderates, progressives, and the generals

The Carlist wars left civilian politicians discredited, and generals became the arbiters of politics not, as in 1814–20, as intruders but as part of the political machinery. They became the “swords” of the two main political groups. The moderados (moderates), who were upper-middle-class oligarchic liberals fearful of democratic violence and upholders of the prerogatives of the crown, represented the conservative stream in liberalism. Their rivals, the progresistas (progressives), were the heirs of the exaltados and represented a lower stratum of the middle class; the progresistas were prepared to use the discontent of the urban masses in order to bring pressure on the crown to give them office. Their instrument was the Urban Militia. General Espartero used his military faction and his supporters among the younger progresista politicians and their artisan followers in the great cities to oust María Cristina and establish himself as regent (1841–43). Espartero proved a disappointment to the radical progresistas, who now allied with his conservative opponents under his military and political rival, Ramón María Narváez. In 1843 Espartero was ousted by a pronunciamiento.

Narváez jettisoned his progresista allies through a court intrigue, and between 1844 and 1854 he and his fellow generals dominated domestic politics as representatives of the moderados. Their administrative, educational, and financial measures and the formation of the Civil Guard were lasting achievements; however, the generals could not stabilize their rule on the basis of their constitution of 1845, a conservative revision of the constitution of 1837. The period was disturbed by a series of progresista military risings.

To the left of the progresistas, who were prepared to accept the monarchy if it gave them office, developed a Democratic Party, which was prepared to dethrone Isabella II, who was declared of age to rule in 1843. Never strong in numbers outside the towns, the Democrats radicalized politics. Orthodox progresista politicians were embarrassed by their extremist attitudes but could not neglect their potential role as urban revolutionaries.

It was not the Democrats but a group of discontented generals led by O’Donnell" class="md-crosslink">Leopoldo O’Donnell who successfully revolted in 1854. They were prepared to sacrifice the dynasty because the queen and her mother favoured a rigid court conservatism that effectively excluded them from influence. The rebellious military oligarchs were forced to call in civilian and radical support. This turned their pronunciamiento into a mild revolution. Isabella survived only through Espartero’s political timidity. Unprepared to accept the backing of the Democrats as the “George Washington of Spain,” he accepted an alliance with O’Donnell, who was determined to arrest the drift to radicalism. In 1856 he broke with Espartero, defeated a demonstration in his favour, and dissolved the National Militia, the instrument of the left-wing Progressives. The radical thrust was thus defeated. Economic expansion

The “revolutionary” period of 1854–56 saw no important constitutional change, but the further extension of disentailment to the lands belonging to the municipalities (the Land Reform of Madoz [1855]) and the new law for limited companies provided the legal structure for a rapid expansion of the economy. To promote this expansion, there were new injections of foreign credit—particularly French—and new banks. This capital allowed construction to begin on the railroad network that was to provide the transport infrastructure for a national market. The textile industry of Catalonia flourished as a modern wool manufacture grew up; in the Basque Country the second pole of an industrial economy developed slowly around iron. The still-dominant agricultural sector expanded as the church and common lands provided new fields for wheat, the easiest of cash crops; the growth of such towns as Barcelona created a market for vegetables, wines, and fruit.

Expansion resulted in the classic expression of 19th-century liberalism—the haute bourgeoisie of finance and industry. Members of this new class ranged from solid Catalan manufacturers demanding protective tariffs to safeguard their gains to daring speculators such as José, marqués de Salamanca, a railway financier who took an active part in political life and the urbanization of Madrid. It also included successful generals ready to forget their humble origins. Together with the large landowners, these groups formed the oligarchy of liberalism.

The government that presided over this prosperity was O’Donnell’s Liberal Union, which was an attempt to fuse all dynastic parties in a broad-based coalition. It provided a long period of stable government (1856–63), and, had the Progressive politicians been less afraid of losing their left wing to the Democrats and had the queen been willing to grant Progressives power, the dynasty might have survived. Instead, she excluded the Progressives and forced them first to withdraw formally from political life and then to contemplate revolution. Their “sword,” General Juan Prim y Prats (a pharmacist’s grandson and a striking example of the social mobility of the liberal army), was a resolute conspirator and the ablest of the political generals of the 19th century. When Isabella’s court ministers alienated O’Donnell’s followers, a powerful coalition was formed, and Prim dropped his alliance with the Democrats. A series of mediocre ultraconservative governments, a growth in democratic agitation among university intellectuals (whose main concern was the hold of the church over education), and an economic slump caused by bad harvests gave wide support to the military rising against Isabella. Her armies would not defend her, and she was forced to leave for France in September 1868. The Revolution of 1868 and the Republic of 1873

The revolution that led to the dethronement of Isabella was the work of army oligarchs led by Francisco Serrano y Domínguez and Progressive conspirators behind Prim. The Democrats became active in setting up juntas after the revolution; for the most part they rapidly became Federal Republicans under the influence of the theories of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as presented by their leader, Francisco Pi i Margall. The Democratic intellectuals’ main contribution was to add a radical democratic content to the demands of the military oligarchy.

The generals were determined to keep the leadership of the revolution in their own hands by channeling it into a constitutional monarchy. Although they had to concede universal male suffrage in the constitution of 1869, they ruthlessly suppressed republican risings in the summer of that year. Their problem was to find a constitutional monarch. Prim’s attempt to persuade a Hohenzollern to accept the throne was opposed by France and set off the Franco-German War in 1870. In November 1870 Amadeo (Amadeus), second son of Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy, was elected king, and Prim, the kingmaker, was assassinated the day Amadeo entered Madrid.

Amadeo attempted to rule as a constitutional monarch. Opposed both by Republicans and by Carlists, he could form no stable government from the “September coalition” of former conservative Liberal Unionists, the ex-Progressives, and the moderate Democrats—now called Radicals. Once Amadeo called the Radicals to power, the conservatives deserted the dynasty. Amadeo abdicated after an attack by the Radicals on the army in February 1873, and subsequently the Cortes proclaimed Spain a republic.

The Republic of 1873 came into existence to fill the political vacuum created by Amadeo’s abdication. The Republican Party was neither strong nor united. When the Republican leaders, on legal scruples, refused to declare for a federal republic, the provincial federal extremists revolted.

This Cantonalist revolt was serious in Cartagena, Alcoy, and Málaga. Simultaneously the authorities had to deal with a new uprising by the Carlists, the Second Carlist War (1873–76). The Republican leaders had allowed attacks on the army that had reduced it to impotence. To conservatives and other supporters of order, the country seemed on the verge of total dissolution; the Carlists were immensely strengthened by the “excesses” of the Cantonalists. Too late, Emilio Castelar y Ripoll, the last president of the republic, tried to recapture the loyalty of the army. In January 1874 General Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque drove the Republican deputies from the Cortes building in the hope of creating a government of order. Pavía turned power over to General Francisco Serrano to form a coalition government.

General Serrano took over as president of a unitary republic ruled from Madrid. His main task was victory over the Carlists, now a strong force in northern Spain. In this he failed, and on December 29, 1874, a young brigadier, Arsenio Martínez Campos, “declared” for Alfonso XII, the son of Isabella.

There was no resistance. The extreme threat of anarchy in 1873 had resulted in a strong conservative reaction, strengthened by the religious policies pursued since 1868. The constitution of 1869 for the first time had allowed complete freedom of religion. Despite its failure to deliver political stability, the Revolution of 1868 bequeathed to Spain the model of a modern secular state based on universal suffrage. Anarchism pentrated Spain’s extreme left, especially in rural Andalusia and in industrial Catalonia, where the lower classes deserted a long tradition of political action via the Democratic and Republican parties and moderate unionism. Although anarchists were persecuted after 1873, the movement was kept alive by small groups of enthusiasts.

The independence movement in Cuba, which, along with Puerto Rico, was the last possession of Spain in America, posed the worst problem for Spain in the period 1868–75. Cubans had long resented the failure to reform rule by captains general, to grant some autonomy, and to ease the economic sacrifices that were imposed by the Spanish tariff system. The Ten Years’ War that began in October 1868 made great demands on Spain both in terms of manpower (100,000 by 1870) and money. The war made difficulties for all governments in power in Spain after 1868 and forced abandonment of the most popular of the pledges made by the rebels in 1868: the abolition of the arbitrary and socially selective recruitment system. Like the Carlist wars, the war in Cuba tended to favour the monarchical reaction. The restored monarchy, 1875–1923

Once the Carlists had been defeated and the Cubans had accepted the peace settlement of El Zanjón (1878), the restored monarchy provided the most stable government Spain had known since 1833. This stability was sustained by an uneven but respectable economic growth. Stability, 1875–98

The architect of the restoration itself and of the constitution of 1876 was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. A superb politician, Cánovas had hoped for a civilian restoration; he accepted Martínez Campos’s coup but used the young Alfonso XII to keep the military out of politics.

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, detail of an engraving by Aruselio Carretero.Courtesy of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

The Canovite system was artificial in that it required the contrived rotation in office (turno pacífico) of a Liberal and a Conservative party; this in turn demanded governmental control of elections, which were run by caciques, or local political bosses, who controlled votes in their districts and delivered them in return for favours for themselves and their supporters. Only in this way could the government selected by the king and the politicians in Madrid obtain a parliamentary majority. Extensive corruption and the use of administrative pressures on electors were considered the only ways to make the parliamentary system work in an underdeveloped society. This system survived the death of Alfonso XII (1885) and began to falter only in the 1890s, toward the end of his wife’s regency. The Carlist threat weakened with defeat, and the majority of Republicans in Spain were domesticated and reconciled to the use of “legal” means.

“Without being a rich country,” wrote an economist in the early 1880s, “Spain has become comfortably off.” This prosperity, untroubled by the claims of organized labour, was the result of the demand for iron ore after the invention of the Bessemer process (England and France invested heavily in mineral production), the demand for Spanish wine after the devastations by phylloxera in France, and the resumption of railway construction in Spain. The third largest wool industry in Europe grew up alongside the older cotton mills in Catalonia. The boom did not break until the late 1880s, when an agricultural depression set in. A wave of economic pessimism preceded the political and intellectual reaction of 1898.

The loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898 following the Spanish-American War exposed the Spanish political system to severe criticism. No fiscal and political reform sufficient to satisfy Cuban demands could be effected within the framework of the monarchy, partly because of the pressure of the Spanish loyalist party in Cuba. A revolt in 1895 set off another costly war against Cuban guerrillas. The intervention of the United States could not be staved off by a last-minute grant of autonomy. Their humiliating and total naval defeat in 1898 became known to Spaniards as “the Disaster.” Spain now lost the Philippines and the last of its possessions in the Americas at the very time when the great European powers were building their overseas empires. These events exacerbated an already existing pessimism among intellectuals about Spain’s national and racial “degeneration.” Opposition movements, 1898–1923

Criticism of the restoration monarchy came from the Catalan and Basque regionalists, a revived Republican Party, the proletarian parties, the army, the more forward-looking of the Spanish politicians, and intellectuals.

Iberian Peninsula and Andorra, c. 1900Map of the Iberian Peninsula, Andorra, and nearby islands (c. 1900) from the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Basque regionalism, though more akin in its ideas to extreme nationalist movements, was less a challenge than Catalan regionalism. With their own language and a revived cultural tradition, known as the Renaixença, Catalan nationalists moved from a demand for protection of Catalan industry against “Castilian” free trade to a demand for political autonomy. The Regionalist League (Catalan: Lliga Regionalista), founded in 1901 and dominated by the Catalan industrialist Francesc Cambó i Batlle and the theoretician of Catalan nationalism Enric Prat de la Riba, demanded the end of the turno and a revival of regionalism within a genuine party system. Cambó wished to solve the Catalan question “within Spain”—that is, by legal means and in cooperation with monarchist politicians. The revival of Catalanism, however, set off a “Castilian” reaction in which moderate Catalans were accused of selfishness or of hiding separatist aims under “respectable” regionalism.

Anti-Catalan sentiment was particularly strong among army officers, still smarting from the defeat of 1898. A string of antimilitary cartoons in Catalan periodicals led members of the Barcelona garrison to sack the offices of these publications (the Cu-Cut!) and demand the application of military law to insults against the military. The passage of the Law of Jurisdictions (1906), which largely met the officers’ demands, led to the creation of Solidaridad Catalana, a united front of Catalanist parties.

In the 1907 election the Solidaridad Catalana defeated the establishment parties but then divided into a right wing (which accepted a solution within the monarchy) and a left wing (which was to drift to Republicanism). Cambó’s cooperation with Madrid brought Catalonia no tangible concessions.

Republicanism, which had degenerated into local politicking and lived on its memories of 1873, was revived in a number of major cities: in Valencia by the novelist-politician Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, in Gijón by Melquíades Alvarez, and, most significantly, in Barcelona by the colourful demagogue and former journalist Alejandro Lerroux. Lerroux’s Radical Party offered a program that appealed to the alienated working-class voter of Barcelona. Competing with a slow revival of anarchism, Lerroux veered between terrorism, educational propaganda, and union activity; the anarcho-syndicalist union, the National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; CNT), was founded in 1910. The socialist movement with its union (the General Union of Workers [Unión General de Trabajadores; UGT], founded 1888) was relatively weak except in the mining districts of the north and in Madrid, where it was dominated by its French-influenced founder, Pablo Iglesias. In 1909 the socialists abandoned their boycott of “bourgeois” politics and allied themselves with the Republicans. This alliance gave the party a political leverage in excess of its voting strength.

The intellectuals’ protest embraced the writers of widely differing ideas collectively known as the ’98" class="md-crosslink">Generation of ’98. Joaquín Costa, a voluminous writer, was an especially harsh critic of caciquismo (the system of electoral manipulation on the local level by political bosses); he wanted a revived, effectively democratic, modernized Spain. Miguel de Unamuno saw regeneration in terms of a return to “pure” Spanish values. The Generation of ’98 distrusted politics as managed by professional politicians, who, they said, were out of touch with the “real” Spain. Although the defeat of 1898 loomed large in these intellectuals’ thoughts, the cultural pessimism they expressed was far from a peculiarly Spanish affair. Rather, it was part of and shared many features with a more general European fin de siècle pessimism.

Among the politicians themselves, the conservative leaders Francisco Silvela and Antonio Maura and the democratic liberal José Canalejas sought to regenerate the system by widening the degree of political participation through “sincere” elections. Opposed by the professional party members, Maura only succeeded in confusing the party structure by splitting the Conservative Party. The danger of “sincere” elections to the political establishment was revealed by the Republican victories in 1903.

The call up of troops for Morocco, where Spanish troops were engaged in operations protecting the Spanish coastal possessions, set off the Tragic Week of 1909 in Barcelona. Public order collapsed, and anarchists and Radical Republicans burned churches and convents. Maura was driven from office because Alfonso XIII (who ruled in his own right from 1902) accepted the Liberals’ estimate of the harm Maura’s firm repression would inflict on the monarchy. Rather than resist a Liberal Party that had allied with the Republican parties, the king held that the Liberals were a useful “lightning conductor,” protecting the monarchy from the threat on the left. Ever since Maura’s fall, the king’s diagnosis had been challenged by conservatives.

World War I produced increased strains. Real wages fell, making the unions restive, and in 1917 junior officers formed juntas and struck for better conditions. The ensuing crisis was exploited by Catalan politicians, who increasingly pressed for autonomy. The revolutionary coalition consisting of Radical Republicans and Catalan regionalists split, and a general strike frightened Cambó and the Catalans, who threatened to call a national convention that would unite all critics of the monarchy. The formation of a national government under Maura ended the last serious attempt to regenerate the political system and to make it respond to reformist and Catalan demands. No subsequent government was strong enough to face the anarchist agitation in Catalonia and the Moroccan War.

Spain, through negotiations with France, had obtained a protectorate in Morocco in 1912. In an effort to pacify Morocco, economizing politicians were ready for compromise with tribal leaders, but the generals saw conquest as the only solution. A bid by General Fernández Silvestre, reputedly backed by Alfonso XIII, for a crowning victory ended in the terrible massacre of Spanish troops at the Battle of Anual (Anwal) in 1921. Opposition politicians were determined to expose the king’s action and criticize the army.

World War I had given the anarcho-syndicalist movement great power. At the same time there grew a terrorist fringe, which the leaders of the CNT could not control. Although CNT leaders Salvador Seguí and Angel Pestaña shared the anarchist contempt for political action, they wished to build unions powerful enough to challenge the employers by direct action. They mistrusted the libertarian tradition of spontaneous revolution as a means of toppling the bourgeois state. The great Barcelona strike of 1919 was the most impressive in Spanish history. When the employers’ violent reaction discredited the moderates in the CNT, it was followed by a wave of assassinations by gangsters employed by both the anarchists and the employers.

Thus, when General Miguel Primo de Rivera staged his pronunciamiento in September 1923, he received the support of the conservative classes fearful for social order. For example, the Lliga became more concerned about suppressing strikes than about Catalan autonomy, for which it had campaigned from 1915 to 1918. He also had a tacit alliance with Alfonso XIII, who was tired of politicians who could not provide him with effective governments and afraid of being blamed for the disaster at Anual by a parliamentary committee that was scheduled to report in the fall of 1923. Primo de Rivera (1923–30) and the Second Republic (1931–36) Primo de Rivera

Primo de Rivera was a political improviser who believed his mission was to save Spain from the old politicians and to hand over government (after an interval of personal rule) to “clean” patriots. He failed to complete the process because his rule became increasingly unpopular, especially among the intellectuals and Catalans. The September 1923 coup by which he had gained power had been widely welcomed in Catalonia, where, as captain general, Primo had listened sympathetically to Catalan demands. However, Primo soon became a Spanish patriot and permitted an “anti-Catalan crusade.” His followers’ attempts to build up a political party (the Patriotic Union) to run a regenerated Spain and provide it with an ideology collapsed.

Miguel Primo de RiveraCourtesy of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

At first Primo ruled via the army. In spite of initial quarrels with the African commanders, whom he forced to retreat in Morocco, the Military Directory was responsible for final victory in the protectorate. The Spanish, collaborating for the first time with the French, landed at Alhucemas (Al-Hoceima) in September 1925 and defeated the most successful tribal leader, Abd el-Krim. By 1927 the whole of the protectorate was successfully occupied.

The Civil Directory (1925–30) was responsible for a thorough overhaul of local government and for an ambitious public works program to increase irrigation, hydraulic power, and road building. Primo’s economic nationalism entailed strict protectionist policies and an attack on foreign oil monopolies. The complicated bureaucratic control of industry did not endear him to capitalists after 1926; on the other hand, he collaborated successfully with the UGT while suppressing the CNT. The Civil Directory failed in its chief task, that of winning sufficient political support in the National Assembly summoned for 1928 to facilitate a return to quasi-constitutional government.

Primo oversaw an economic expansion based on favourable terms of trade for Spanish exports during the early years of his dictatorship. His governments carried out a policy of economic nationalism that included public works, the creation of numerous state regulatory agencies, the nationalization of foreign petroleum interests, and the establishment of a state-owned petroleum company. By 1929, however, the peseta (the Spanish currency) began to fall in value despite desperate measures to prop it up. Economic recession alone would not have forced the dictator from office, but he also lost the support of both the army and the king. The army turned against him as a result of his attempts to abolish the privileges of the artillery and engineer corps, and the king believed that student protests, the growing discontent in Catalonia, and the increasing conspiracies of the “old” politicians imperiled the dynasty.

On January 28, 1930, Alfonso forced Primo’s resignation. However, the king acted too late. His earlier support of the dictatorship tarnished him in the eyes of the politicians and public. The weak governments of General Dámaso Berenguer and Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar could barely keep order. At San Sebastián (August 17, 1930) an alliance of former liberal monarchists, Catalan politicians, and Republicans agreed to overthrow the monarchy. The failure of a Republican military rising at Jaca (December 12, 1930) saved them from having to establish a republic by force. The municipal elections of April 12, 1931, proved that the great cities were overwhelmingly Republican. Rather than face civil war and street demonstrations in Madrid, Alfonso XIII left Spain. The Second Republic

The history of the Second Republic falls into four distinct phases: (1) the Provisional Government, which lasted until the religious issue forced its resignation in October 1931, (2) the governments of the Left Republicans and Socialists, which ruled from October 1931 and were defeated in the elections of November 1933, (3) the conservative government of the Radical Republicans and the Roman Catholic right from November 1933 to February 1936, which was punctuated by the revolution of October 1934 and ended with the electoral victory of the Popular Front in February 1936, and (4) the government of the Popular Front and “the descent into violence” that culminated in the military uprising of July 1936.

The Provisional Government was a coalition government presided over by Niceto Alcalá Zamora, a former monarchist converted to republicanism, whose Catholicism reassured moderate opinion. Another conservative Catholic, Miguel Maura, was minister of the interior. The coalition included all the groups represented at San Sebastián: Lerroux’s Radicals, the Catalan left, the Socialists, and the Left Republicans dominated by Manuel Azaña y Díaz.

The elections to the Constituent Cortes strengthened the Socialists and Left Republicans and thus upset the parliamentary balance between moderate Catholic Republicans and the left. The left imprinted its views on the constitution, especially its religious clauses. Historically conditioned anticlericalism had already led the government to tolerate an outburst of church burning (May 1931). The Socialists and Left Republicans inserted in the constitution an attack on religious education and the regular orders, which forced the resignation of Alcalá Zamora and Maura.

This direct and ill-advised clash with Catholic sentiment provided a base for the formation of a right-wing party devoted to the reversal of the church settlement. This party, established by the Catholic politician José María Gil Robles, was known as Acción Popular and became the main component of the right-wing electoral grouping, the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas; CEDA). The left viewed CEDA’s “accidentalism” (the doctrine that forms of government are irrelevant provided the church can fulfill its mission) as suspect, and these suspicions were only exacerbated by a proclivity among Gil Robles’s followers, especially the youth wing, for fascist styles.

From October 1931 the government, with Azaña as premier, was controlled by Left Republicans and Socialists, with the Catholic right, the Basque Catholics, the Navarrese Carlists, and Lerroux’s Radicals in opposition. Azaña aimed to create a modern democracy; labour legislation would be the work of the Socialists, with the UGT leader, Francisco Largo Caballero, as minister of labour.

In April 1931 there was a danger that Catalonia might declare its independence within a federal state. Overcoming conservative Republican opposition to limited home rule under the Generalitat, which was controlled by the Catalan left (Esquerra) under Lluis Companys, Azaña was able to settle the Catalan question—perhaps his greatest achievement. Largo Caballero’s legislation provided labour with a strong negotiating position but could not in itself mitigate the mounting unemployment, which was particularly serious in the latifundios of the southwest. Because new machinery for the settlement of labour disputes was dominated by the UGT, it was opposed by the CNT, now influenced by the extreme revolutionary apoliticism of an anarchist group, the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica; FAI). Violent strikes were frequent.

Sedition from the right came to a head in General José Sanjurjo’s pronunciamiento in Sevilla (August 10, 1932). Politically more dangerous than Sanjurjo’s abortive coup, however, were the steady growth of Gil Robles’s Acción Popular and the Socialists’ desertion of the Azaña coalition, as Largo Caballero, influenced by increasing discontent with the slow pace of reform among Socialists, wearied of cooperation with “bourgeois” parties. In the elections of November 1933, therefore, the left was divided and the right relatively united behind CEDA. Given an electoral law that favoured electoral coalitions, the CEDA and Lerroux’s Radicals, now a respectable middle-class party, triumphed. Although the CEDA had more seats than any other party, President Alcalá Zamora refused to call on Gil Robles to form a government and turned instead to Lerroux, who was unable to govern without the support of Gil Robles. With power in sight, Gil Robles accentuated his legalism, to the distaste of the militant monarchists among his supporters.

The election defeat further radicalized the Socialists, especially Largo Caballero, who was influenced by Luis Araquistaín, Spain’s ambassador in Berlin when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933. Throughout 1934 the Socialists threatened an uprising should the CEDA, which they saw as a clearly fascist party, be invited to join the cabinet.

When four members of CEDA entered Lerroux’s government in October 1934, the Socialists staged the revolution they had been threatening. Poorly planned, it was a total failure everywhere except the coalfields of Asturias, where the failure of the Republic to bring any improvement to their situation had a particularly radicalizing effect on the miners there. Revolutionary councils were established in the mining districts of Asturias, where there was considerable destruction of property. In Barcelona the revolution was led by Catalan nationalists, who believed autonomy was imperiled by the actions of the Madrid government in overruling an agrarian law passed by the Generalitat. Unsupported by the CNT, the revolution was quickly suppressed.

The October Revolution of 1934 was the dividing point in the Second Republic. The Socialists, fearing the fate of their Austrian and German brothers, had revolted against a legal government and thereby established in the minds of the right the fear of a “Red” rebellion. In the subsequent repression by the army lay the emotional origins of the Popular Front against “fascism”—a re-creation of the Azaña coalition of Left Republicans and Socialists.

When the Radicals collapsed in late 1935 following a series of scandals, Alcalá Zamora dissolved parliament and called new elections for February 1936. The campaign was violent, and the Popular Front won by a narrow majority. Spain was politically polarized, and this division intensified. The Popular Front government was exclusively Republican. Under Largo Caballero’s leadership, the left Socialists put increasing pressure on the government, using revolutionary language if not intending revolution, and agricultural workers in the south and west staged a number of land seizures. Largo Caballero’s revolutionary rhetoric concealed his hope that the orthodox Republicans could be eased from power, leaving the field open to a pure Socialist government, which his followers, using the language of Russian Communist Party founder and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, chose to call the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Just as the fears of the “fascism” of the right justified the defensive reaction of the Socialists, so the right argued that the Republican government was a prisoner of the revolutionary left. The Falange, a fascist party founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the former dictator, grew significantly as the failure of Gil Robles’s legalist strategy became clear. The Falange was primarily responsible for the marked increase in political street violence in the months after the 1936 election. Conservatives rallied behind the right-wing National Front, which openly appealed to the military to save Spain from Marxism.

The army played a decisive role. By the early summer of 1936 a young officers’ conspiracy was backed by Generals Emilio Mola, Manuel Goded, and, finally, Francisco Franco. The murder of José Calvo Sotelo, the leader of the extreme right, with the connivance of government security forces, was the final outrage for the right and the army.

Francisco Franco, 1954.AP The Civil War

The military uprising started in Morocco on July 17, 1936, and quickly spread to the garrisons of metropolitan Spain. The Civil War took place because the rising was successful only in Old Castile, in Navarra, where Carlist support was decisive, and, of the larger towns, in Zaragoza, Sevilla, Córdoba, Valladolid, and Cádiz. Galicia soon went over to the Nationalists, as did most of Andalusia. Catalonia and the Basque provinces were loyal to the government because the republic guaranteed their autonomy. In Madrid and Barcelona the security forces, aided by the workers who were armed belatedly by the government, defeated the officers. Thus, in broadest terms, the Republic held the centre, the Levant, Catalonia, and the Basque industrial zones; the Nationalists controlled the food-producing areas, which was to cause an increasingly acute food shortage in the Republican zone.

The role of the workers in defeating the rising made their organizations the power in the Republican zone. The legal government was bypassed or totally supplanted by local committees and trade unions; the workers’ militia replaced the dissolved army. In many parts of Spain a social revolution took place in July 1936 as factories and farms were collectivized. The English novelist George Orwell described Barcelona, where the CNT was all-powerful, as “a town where the working class was in the saddle.” The success of working-class control, in terms of increased production, is difficult to estimate.

The revolution was distasteful to the Left Republicans and to the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España; PCE), the latter growing rapidly in number and in political influence because it controlled the supply of arms from the Soviet Union, which—given the refusal of Britain and France to support the legitimate and democratically elected Republican government or even to allow it to purchase arms—became the Republic’s only significant ally. In the name of an efficient war effort and the preservation of “bourgeois” elements in the Popular Front, the communists pressed for a popular army and central government control. In September–November 1936, the CNT was brought into the government of Catalonia and into Largo Caballero’s ministry in Madrid—an astonishing step for a movement that had consistently rejected “bourgeois” politics. The CNT militants did not approve the leaders’ “surrender” and the dismantling of the militia-backed revolution.

A small Marxist revolutionary party, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; POUM), which rejected the Popular Front in favour of a workers’ government, set off a rebellion in Barcelona in May 1937. The communists, Republicans, and anti-Caballero socialists used this as an excuse to oust Largo Caballero, who proved insufficiently pliable to communist demands. The government led by the socialist doctor Juan Negrín was a coalition of Republicans, socialists, and communists. Thus, the UGT and CNT trade unions were replaced by the political parties.

The communists were correct in arguing that the committee-militia system was militarily ineffective. Ferried over from Morocco, General Franco’s army cut through the militia and neared Madrid by November 1936. The successful resistance of the city, which was stiffened by the arrival of the International Brigades, organized by the Communist International, and by Soviet arms, prolonged the Civil War for two more years.

Gen. Francisco Franco's troops in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, late 1930s.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Spanish Civil WarSpanish Nationalists in position along the rugged Huesca front in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War, December 23, 1936.AP ImagesVictory ultimately went to the Nationalists, who had a better army, unified political control, and an adequate arms supply. The core of the Nationalist army was the African army commanded by General Franco. Given the confused political control in Republican Spain, the secure military and political command of Franco (from October 1936) was decisive. In April 1937 he incorporated the Falange and the Carlists into a unified movement under his leadership. Franco also benefited from the support of the Roman Catholic Church, which proclaimed his cause a “Crusade.”

The Nationalist zone saw the extensive use of terror against anyone suspected of being a “Red.” The number of people killed for political reasons is unclear, but even conservative estimates put the figure at 80,000 between the outbreak of the war and 1943. The Republican zone also saw numerous political killings, including some 7,000 members of the clergy, but the circumstances were radically different. The vast majority of the executions in the Republican zone took place in the early months of the war when government authority had broken down. In contrast, the Nationalists consciously used terror as a policy, one that continued well after the war had ended.

Both sides sought help from abroad. General Franco appealed immediately to Hitler in Germany and to Benito Mussolini in Italy, both of whom supplied aircraft early in the war. In return for mineral concessions, the Germans supplied the Condor Legion (100 combat planes), and the Italians sent some 70,000 ground troops; both supplied tanks and artillery. This support proved crucial to Franco’s victory.

The Republic consistently hoped that France and Britain would allow them to acquire arms. Owing to fears of a general war and domestic pressures, however, both powers promoted a nonintervention agreement (August 1936), which committed 29 countries to refrain from selling war matériel to either side in the Spanish conflict. The agreement was supposed to be enforced by a London-based committee, but this turned out to be nothing more than a facade that did little to hinder the blatant violations by Germany and Italy.

The Soviet Union responded to the breakdown of nonintervention by supplying arms to the Republican side. Soviet supplies were of great importance (tanks, aircraft, and a military mission) after October 1936. Mexico also provided aid to the Republicans, though its support was very limited. Soviet supplies dropped off in 1938, and thereafter the balance of arms supply decisively favoured the Nationalists. Once the Popular Army replaced the militia, the Republic held Madrid and defeated two flanking attacks in the battles of Jarama (February 1937) and Guadalajara (March 1937), where the International Brigades decisively defeated a motorized Italian corps.

After his failure at Madrid, Franco transferred his effort to the north, where the bombing of Guernica (Gernika-Lumo) on April 26, 1937, by German planes outraged public opinion in the democracies. By October 1937 Franco had captured the industrial zone, shortened his front, and won a decisive advantage. When Franco concentrated again on Madrid, the Republican army staged its most effective offensive in the Battle of Teruel (launched December 15, 1937). Franco, however, recovered Teruel and drove to the sea, but he committed his one strategic error in deciding to launch a difficult attack on Valencia. To relieve Valencia, the Republicans attacked across the Ebro (July 24, 1938); once more they failed to exploit the breakthrough, and the bloody battle exhausted the Popular Army.

Picasso, Pablo: GuernicaGuernica, oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso, 1937; in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía Museum), Madrid. 3.49 × 7.77 m.© Fine Art Images/age fotostock

The final Nationalist campaign in Catalonia was relatively easy. On the Republican side, the question of the feasibility of continued resistance, which was supported by the communists and Negrín, caused acute political divisions. On March 7, 1939, a civil war broke out in Madrid between communists and anticommunists. On March 28 the Nationalist forces entered a starving capital. Franco’s Spain, 1939–75

Throughout Franco’s rule, his authoritarian regime was based on the emergency war powers granted him as head of state and of the government by his fellow generals in 1936. The first decade of his government saw harsh repression by military tribunals, political purges, and economic hardship. Economic recovery was made difficult by the destruction during the Civil War (especially of railway rolling stock and communications in general), a loss of skilled labour, a series of bad droughts, and a shortage of foreign exchange and the restriction on imports of capital goods imposed by World War II and its aftermath. These difficulties were increased by Franco’s misguided policies of autarky, which aimed at economic self-sufficiency through the state control of prices and industrial development within a protected national economy cut off from the international market. The national income fell back to the levels of 1900, as industrial production and agricultural output stagnated and real wages dramatically fell. The near-famine years of the 1940s witnessed the rise of the black market and misery in rural areas that caused migration to the shantytowns of the cities. Given brutal repression and a controlled and censored press, sullen discontent could take no organized form. The regime maintained a division between the victors and the vanquished of the Civil War, with the vanquished excluded from public life.

Franco’s sympathies in World War II lay with Germany and Italy, to whom he gave moral and material support. Nevertheless, Franco demanded France’s North African colonies in compensation for military cooperation against the Western Allies, on whom Spain was dependent for food and oil imports. Hitler refused. When in 1943 it appeared that the Allies would win the war, Franco reaffirmed Spain’s nominal neutrality without gaining their benevolence.

The declared hostility of the great powers after 1945 and the diplomatic sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN), from which Spain was excluded, gave Franco’s opposition in Spain and in exile new life. Juan Carlos Teresa Silverio Alfonso de Borbón y Battenberg, conde de Barcelona (popularly known as Don Juan), heir of Alfonso XIII, presented the monarchy as something acceptable to the democratic powers and offered himself as king of all Spaniards, victors and vanquished alike. Because many of Franco’s fellow generals were monarchists hostile to the Falange, demands for a restoration were parried only with difficulty. Valiant but futile guerrilla activities, inspired largely by the Communist Party (1944–48), were brutally suppressed.

Franco met these serious difficulties with success, shifting the balance of power among his supporters from the Falange to Catholics. The Fuero de los Españoles (1945), guaranteeing personal freedoms (provided no attack was made on the regime), was a cosmetic device that failed to establish Franco’s democratic credentials with the Allies. More important for Franco was the support of the church, which was given control over education. The diplomatic ostracism imposed by the UN was skillfully turned into a means of rallying support for the regime in the name of national unity.

Franco’s confidence came from his sense that, with the onset of the Cold War, the United States would come to consider Spain a valuable ally against the Soviet Union and that France and Britain, though declaring support for the democratic opposition, would not intervene directly to overthrow him at the cost of renewed civil war. Hence, the hopes of the opposition came to nothing. In 1953 an agreement with the United States gave Franco considerable financial aid in return for the establishment of four U.S. military bases in Spain; in the same year a concordat with the Vatican gave Spain added diplomatic respectability.

By 1955, when Spain was admitted to the UN, Franco’s regime appeared secure. Internal political command remained in Franco’s hands, ensured by his control of the armed forces and by his ability to play off the groups that supported him, in particular the Falange, the monarchists, and the church. Ultimately, the Falange lost power in the National Movement, the sole legal political organization; its attempts to create a Falangist one-party state were defeated in 1956, though tensions between the Falange and the conservative elements persisted.

Opposition to the regime took the form of student unrest, strikes, and the unsuccessful efforts of the Communist Party to forge a united front and challenge the regime (1958, 1959). The moderate opposition’s attempt in 1962 to force a democratic opening in order to enter the European Economic Community (EEC) was dismissed by the regime as treason. More serious was the bankruptcy of autarky, evident in inflation, a growing deficit in the balance of payments, and strikes. This crisis was remedied by the technocrats of Opus Dei (a conservative Roman Catholic lay organization), a number of whose members were appointed to the cabinet in February 1957. The devaluation of the European currencies forced Franco to implement a stabilization plan in 1959, which provided a fierce dose of orthodox finance. Economic nationalism, protectionism, and the state intervention characteristic of autarky were abandoned in favour of a market economy and the opening of Spain to international trade and much-needed foreign investment. The stabilization plan was followed by a development plan in 1963, which was based on French indicative planning—i.e., the setting of targets for the public sector and encouragement of the private sector.

The new policies produced growth rates of more than 7 percent between 1962 and 1966, aided by a rapid increase in tourism, foreign investment, and the remittances of emigrants who, hard-hit by the immediate results of the 1959 stabilization policies, had sought employment in other European countries. There was a rural exodus from the impoverished countryside and a dramatic fall of the active population engaged in agriculture, from about two-fifths in 1960 to about one-fifth by 1976. Spain was rapidly becoming a modern industrialized country. However, the government’s policies were fiercely resisted by the Falange, who claimed that the policies were a surrender to neocapitalism. All hopes of a limited liberalization of the regime by its reformist wing were blocked by conservative elements, with the exception of Manuel Fraga’s Press Law of 1966, which gave the press greater freedom and influence.

Although the new prosperity brought a novel degree of social mobility and satisfied the enlarged middle class, the workers’ movement revived. Workers, disillusioned with the “official” syndicates run by the Falange, set up Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras; CC.OO.) to negotiate wage claims outside the official framework and called serious strikes. Sections of the church were sympathetic to claims for greater social justice and responsive to the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, many younger priests were sympathetic to the Workers’ Commissions. Although the bishops generally felt that the church should support the regime, they were increasingly aware of the long-term dangers of such an alliance.

Peripheral nationalism constituted an intractable problem. In the Basque provinces the nationalists could count on the support of the clergy, and Basque nationalism developed a terrorist wing, ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna; Basque: “Basque Homeland and Liberty”). The Burgos trials of Basque terrorists in 1970 discredited the regime abroad, and the following year the Assembly of Catalonia united the opposition with a demand for democratic institutions and the restoration of the Autonomy Statute of 1932.

In the 1960s elements in the regime were increasingly troubled by its lack of “institutionalization” and the problem of the succession, as Franco was in failing health and there was no designated successor. The Organic Law of 1969 gave the regime a cosmetic constitution, and in 1969 Franco finally recognized Juan Carlos, grandson of Alfonso XIII, as his successor as king and head of state; Juan Carlos’s designation was rejected by the democratic opposition as a continuation of the regime. To secure continuity, in June 1973 Franco abandoned the premiership to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. However, in December Carrero Blanco was assassinated by ETA.

Carlos Arias Navarro, the former minister of the interior, was selected as the new premier. His government saw a fierce struggle between reformists, led by Manuel Fraga and the new foreign minister, José Maria de Areilza, who wished to “open” the regime by limited democratization from above, and the “bunker” mentality of nostalgic Francoists. Although Arias Navarro promised liberalization in a February 1974 speech, he eventually sided with the hard-line Francoists, and his Law of Associations proved to be completely unacceptable to the opposition and a defeat for the reformists. The government severely repressed ETA’s terrorist activity in the Basque provinces, executing five terrorists in September 1975 despite international protests. Spain since 1975 Transition to democracy

After Franco’s death on November 20, 1975, the accession of Juan Carlos as king opened a new era, which culminated in the peaceful transition to democracy by means of the legal instruments of Francoism. This strategy made it possible to avoid the perils of the “democratic rupture” advocated by the opposition, which had united, uneasily, on a common platform in July 1974. Arias Navarro, incapable of making the democratic transition supported by the king, was replaced in July 1976 by Adolfo Suárez González, a former Francoist minister. Suárez persuaded the Francoist right in the Cortes to pass the Law for Political Reform (November 1976), which paved the way for democratic elections. Suárez then convinced the opposition of his willingness to negotiate and his democratic intentions; in April 1977 he legalized the PCE against the wishes of the armed forces. In the elections of June 1977, Suárez’s party, a coalition of centrist groups called the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), emerged as the strongest party, winning 165 seats in the Cortes, closely followed by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), who captured 118 seats. It was a triumph for political moderation and the consensus politics of Suárez. The PCE gained 20 seats and the right-wing Popular Alliance 16.

Suárez formed a minority government, and the political consensus held to pass the constitution of 1978. The new constitution, overwhelmingly ratified in a public referendum in December 1978, established Spain as a constitutional monarchy. Church and state were separated, and provisions were made for the creation of 17 autonomous communities throughout Spain, which extended regional autonomy beyond Euskadi (the Basque Country, encompassing the provinces of Viscaya, Guipúzcoa, and Álava) and Catalonia, both of which had already been given limited autonomy. Confronted by terrorism and economic recession, the UCD disintegrated into the factions of its “barons.” After heavy defeats in local elections and fearing a possible military coup, Suárez resigned in January 1981.

The inauguration of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, also a member of the UCD, as prime minister was interrupted by the attempted military coup of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, who occupied the Cortes (February 23, 1981) and held the government and the deputies captive for 18 hours. The coup attempt failed, however, because of King Juan Carlos’s resolute support of the democratic constitution. Calvo Sotelo, who was left with the task of restoring confidence in democracy, successfully engineered Spain’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1982. The administration of Felipe González, 1982–96

The election of October 1982 marked the final break with the Francoist legacy, returning the PSOE under its leader, Felipe González, whose government was the first in which none of the members had served under Francoism. The PSOE won a solid majority (202 seats), while the UCD was annihilated, winning only 12 seats. The conservative Democratic Coalition led by Manuel Fraga gained 106 seats and formed the official opposition.

A radical party in 1975 committed to the replacement of capitalism, the PSOE subsequently abandoned Marxism and accepted a market economy. The new government made its main concern the battle against inflation and the modernization of industry. González’s policies were resisted by the unions (the socialist UGT and the CC.OO. controlled by the PCE), which staged violent strikes against the closing of uneconomic steel plants and shipyards. The left was further alienated by the government’s decision to continue NATO membership, despite the party’s official opposition to membership during the 1982 election. To justify this radical departure from the PSOE’s traditional neutralism, membership in NATO was submitted to a referendum and made dependent on a partial withdrawal of U.S. forces stationed in Spain under the 1953 agreements. Spain also was to make its contribution to collective defense outside the integrated military command of NATO. The government won the referendum of March 12, 1986—a triumph for González rather than evidence of understanding of or enthusiasm for NATO. González also secured Spain’s entry into the EEC in January 1986 after prolonged and difficult negotiations.

The government lost some support on the left with the creation of the United Left (Izquierda Unida; IU), the core of which was remnants of the PCE, and the right capitalized on law-and-order issues, focusing on the fight against terrorism, disorder on the streets, the rise in crime, and the development of a serious drug problem. The government was accused of using its large majority to force through a major reform of university and secondary education and of abandoning socialist policies in the battle against inflation and in its support of a capitalist market economy. However, the government’s control of the PSOE was ensured by its manipulation of political patronage. It was furthermore troubled by frictions created by the demands of Euskadi and Catalonia for greater autonomy. But the success of the government’s economic policies (inflation fell and growth was resumed) and the popularity of González enabled the socialists in the election of June 1986 to retain their majority (184 seats), whereas Fraga’s conservative Popular Coalition (105 seats) failed to make any gains and fell apart.

In its second term, the government’s economic policies continued to provoke the hostility of the trade unions—unemployment ran at nearly 20 percent—and on December 14, 1988, the CC.OO. and the socialist UGT staged a general strike. In foreign policy, all the major parties, with the exception of the United Left, supported the government’s decision to offer logistical support to the United States and its allies in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War; however, massive demonstrations against the war revealed widespread neutralist sentiments. Tensions between the central government and the autonomous governments of Euskadi and Catalonia continued. Although ETA terrorists lost political support, the rise of nationalism in the disintegrating Soviet Union sparked outbursts of separatism in Spain. The Spanish government favoured greater political union with the EEC, the country’s major trading partner. Following Spain’s success in hosting football’s (soccer’s) World Cup a decade earlier, the country again achieved international prominence in 1992, when it hosted the Expo ’92 world’s fair in Sevilla and the Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Even before the glamour of those international events had faded, Spain entered a difficult period. The economy experienced a downturn, the government was rocked by a series of corruption scandals, and infighting within the PSOE reached intolerable levels. In these highly unfavourable circumstances, Felipe González called new elections for 1993. Surprisingly, the Socialists remained the largest party in the Cortes, though without an absolute majority; they were forced to rely upon the support of Catalan and Basque nationalists.

González’s fourth term got off to a rocky start. Investigations led by judge Baltasar Garzón into the “dirty war” against ETA during the mid-1980s led to accusations that senior government officials had lent support to the Antiterrorist Liberation Groups (Grupos Antiteroristas de Liberación), whose activities included the kidnapping and murder of suspected ETA militants. Another scandal, involving missing security documents, led to the resignation of two ministers, including the deputy prime minister, Narcís Serra. When Catalan leader Jordi Pujol withdrew his party’s support for the government, González called new elections for March 1996, which were won by the conservative Popular Party (Partido Popular; PP), although by a much narrower margin than had been expected and without a parliamentary majority. Overall, the PP captured 156 of the Cortes’ 350 seats, while the PSOE was reduced to 141 seats. Spain at the beginning of the 21st century The Aznar regime

The new prime minister, José María Aznar, like González, depended on the support of Basque and Catalan nationalists (he also secured the support of the small Canary Coalition party), requiring him to alter the party’s strident centralist rhetoric. Aznar’s focus on deficit reduction provoked a wave of strikes and protests, including demonstrations by government workers, a two-week strike by truck drivers, and, in 1998, violent protests by Asturian coal miners. Nevertheless, Aznar’s government reaped political benefits when Spain qualified to join the euro, the single currency of the European Union (in which the European Community [formerly EEC] was embedded in 1993); it did so by continuing many of the economic policies the Socialists had introduced to meet the Maastricht Treaty’s terms for inclusion. It also benefited from a recovery in the late 1990s that put the economy on generally firm footing as Spain entered the new millennium.

José María Aznar, 2003.Staff Sgt. Michelle Michaud/U.S. Air Force

Aznar’s PP won a landslide election victory in April 2000, but it continued to face such intractable problems as the relationship between the regions and the state, Gibraltar’s status as a British colony, and the seemingly eternal scourge of Basque terrorism. International affairs caused domestic political tensions to flare in 2003, when Aznar supported the U.S.- and British-led war to oust Ṣaddām Ḥussein’s government in Iraq despite opposition by some 90 percent of Spain’s citizens (see Iraq War). On March 11, 2004, 10 bombs exploded on four trains in Madrid, killing some 200 people and injuring some 1,500 others in the worst terrorist incident in Europe since World War II. In elections held three days later, voters swept the governing PP from office in favour of the Socialist Party, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Madrid; terrorismRescue workers evacuating the bodies of victims of a terrorist train bombing near Atocha Station, Madrid, March 11, 2004.Paul White—AP/REX/Shutterstock.com Zapatero and a new generation of Socialist leadership

Zapatero had campaigned on ending Spain’s participation in the Iraq War, a promise that he fulfilled immediately, though he also increased the number of Spanish troops serving in Afghanistan. Zapatero, who became prime minister at age 44, represented a new generation of Socialist leaders and brought a new type of progressive politics to government. Half his cabinet, including his deputy prime minister, were women, and his government passed a number of laws affecting private life—the most important of which were the legalization of same-sex marriage and the criminalization of domestic violence. Zapatero had long stressed the importance of the immigration issue for Spain, and his approach to it was very different from that of most other European governments; in 2005, for example, he implemented a program that enabled some 700,000 illegal immigrants to legalize their status. Zapatero also attempted to grapple with two long-standing issues: the status of Catalonia and of the Basque Country. He supported a reform of the autonomy statute for Catalonia in 2005 and the declaration, the following year, of that region as a nation. On the Basque question, Zapatero pledged not to yield to terrorism, though he hoped to arrive at a negotiated political solution with the Basque separatist organization ETA. The prospects for a settlement brightened in 2006 when ETA declared a “permanent” cease-fire, but it was broken off 14 months later.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, 2011.Liao Pan/Color China Photo/AP Raymond Carr Adrian Shubert Economic downturn

In March 2008 the PSOE triumphed again, in a hotly contested general election, although it failed to win an absolute majority; both the PSOE and the PP gained seats in the lower house of the Cortes (of which together they constituted 90 percent). Zapatero pledged to boost Spain’s slumping economy and to continue his agenda of social and political reform. Zapatero’s progressive policies had drawn criticism from conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church during his first term, and the PSOE’s win widened the division between Spain’s right and left.

The worldwide financial crisis that began later in 2008 contributed to the precipitous decline of Spain’s already ailing economy in 2009. Of all the members of the European Union, Spain was one of the worst-affected by the recession; by early 2010 the unemployment rate had surpassed 20 percent. The administration initially responded with a hefty economic stimulus package, but in mid-2010 it was forced to implement unpopular cost-cutting measures to curb the swelling budget deficit.

In September 2010 the government met a cease-fire announcement by ETA with skepticism. Zapatero reiterated that the Spanish government would not negotiate with the Basque separatist group unless it renounced violence forever and that political parties with links to ETA—e.g., Batasuna—would continue to be banned. On January 10, 2011, ETA declared a permanent, general, and verifiable cease-fire, and that October the group announced “the complete cessation of armed activity.” After nearly 850 deaths and a dozen broken cease-fires, the organization’s 40-year armed struggle for Basque independence had ended. Austerity, indignados, and the rise of third parties The Rajoy administration

A pair of earthquakes (the stronger of which was magnitude 5.1) that struck Lorca in southeastern Spain in May 2011 compounded the country’s economic woes. At least 10 people were killed, and the city suffered extensive damage as a result of the deadliest earthquake to strike Spain in more than half a century. Later that month the PSOE suffered crushing losses in local elections as organized protests swept Spanish cities. Dubbed the indignados (“angry ones”) by the media, the protesters were predominantly young people who were dissatisfied with the pace of economic and political reform. With the unemployment rate still topping 20 percent (more than 40 percent for job seekers under age 25) and the Spanish bond market ailing, Zapatero, who had already announced that he would not seek reelection, advanced the date of the next general election from March 2012 to November 2011. In the election on November 20, 2011, the PP swept the PSOE from power in convincing fashion, winning an overall majority of 186 seats in the 350-seat parliament. Zapatero remained prime minister of a caretaker administration, while PP leader Mariano Rajoy began the work of constructing a new government. Financial markets failed to respond to the results, however, and Spain’s 10-year bond yield remained ominously close to the 7 percent threshold that had triggered bailouts for other countries embroiled in the euro-zone debt crisis. Rajoy was sworn in as prime minister on December 21, 2011, and he reaffirmed his commitment to cut spending and reduce Spain’s deficit.

Throughout early 2012 credit agencies cut the Spanish debt rating numerous times, but markets seemed to respond positively to the adoption of a new EU fiscal discipline pact in March of that year. The return on Spanish 10-year bonds receded to 5 percent that month, but the respite was short-lived, as a power struggle erupted between Rajoy and EU ministers over the deficit target of Spain’s 2012 budget. Labour unions organized a general strike on March 29, paralyzing transportation systems across the country as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Barcelona and Madrid to protest the Rajoy government’s austerity program.

The budget that Rajoy ultimately unveiled was characterized by his finance minister as the most austere since the reintroduction of democracy. It featured an array of public-sector wage freezes, cuts in social programs, and tax hikes, all aimed at Rajoy’s ultimate goal of reducing government spending by €27 billion (about $36 billion). As 10-year Spanish bond yields continued to creep upward in April 2012, Rajoy introduced an additional €10 billion (about $13 billion) in budget cuts. The Spanish economy continued to struggle in spite of those measures, as regional governments faced unsustainable debt loads, and Bankia, Spain’s largest mortgage lender, was nationalized. Rajoy’s government spent billions to prop up Spain’s ailing banks, and in June 2012 the finance ministers of the euro zone authorized a bailout of €100 billion (more than $125 billion) to recapitalize the Spanish banking sector.

One condition of that bailout was the creation of a “bad bank”—a financial institution whose sole purpose would be to take on toxic assets from other banks in an effort to restore those banks to solvency. The Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria (SAREB) became operational in November 2012 with the stated mission of managing and disposing of up to €90 billion (about $120 billion) of nonperforming real-estate loans over a period of 15 years. In the months following SAREB’s creation, Spain’s nationalized and partially nationalized banks transferred bad loans that were valued at over €50 billion (about $65 billion) to SAREB. The financial markets responded positively, and the yield on 10-year Spanish bonds, which had reached a perilous 7.5 percent in July 2012, declined to a sustainable 5 percent in January 2013. Economic recovery and Catalonian independence

The continued implementation of austerity measures triggered resentment from the Spanish public, and this was manifested in protests, general strikes, and declining electoral support for the political establishment. Pro-independence parties triumphed in elections in the Basque Country and Catalonia in late 2012, and leaders in both regions vowed to hold referenda on independence from Spain. As secession was prohibited by the 1978 constitution, any action on the proposed referenda would bring the regions into direct conflict with Madrid.

Although the economy showed signs of stabilizing in 2013, few of these gains trickled down to the general public. Unemployment remained above 25 percent, wages sagged, and household savings plummeted. Despite the hardship imposed by the ongoing austerity program, Spain fell short of its EU-mandated budget deficit target by a sizable amount. European Commission analysts predicted that the deficit goals would be unattainable prior to 2016 unless additional austerity measures were implemented.

It was against this backdrop that the Spanish monarchy, long a symbol of stability in the country, came under increased scrutiny. King Juan Carlos, who had been criticized for embarking on a lavish elephant hunt in Botswana in 2012, saw his family subjected to investigation for numerous alleged financial crimes. The king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, was accused of siphoning $8 million from a nonprofit organization, and in 2013 Spanish authorities seized his Barcelona mansion in lieu of bond. Princess Cristina, Juan Carlos’s daughter, was also identified as a suspect in the case, and in February 2014 she was called to testify before a Spanish court. With his personal approval rating suffering, the 76-year-old Juan Carlos announced in June 2014 his intention to abdicate in favour of his son, Felipe. With the approval of the Spanish legislature, Juan Carlos carried through on that plan on June 18, and the following day the crown prince became King Felipe VI.

A number of political observers linked the change reflected in Juan Carlos’s abdication with the results of the election for the European Parliament held on May 25, 2014. For the first time since Spain’s return to democracy in 1975, the PP and PSOE failed to take a combined 50 percent of the vote, with the PP down from 42 percent of the vote in 2010 to 26 percent and the PSOE down from 39 percent to 23 percent. The real winner in the election was the new radical political movement Podemos (“We Can”), which gained support and energized opponents of politics as usual. Founded in January 2014 and led by the youthful, charismatic Pablo Iglesias Turrión, Podemos ran on an anti-austerity platform while presenting itself as a movement of neither the left nor the right but one that was opposed to the corrupt and self-serving political and economic elites.

In Catalonia the region’s nationalist authorities defied the central government and the Constitutional Court by holding an unofficial referendum on independence on November 9, 2014. Some 81 percent of those who voted supported independence, but the turnout was under 40 percent of eligible voters. Nonetheless, exactly one year later the regional parliament narrowly approved a measure to implement a “peaceful disconnection from the Spanish state.” Rajoy responded to the move by making an immediate appeal to the Spanish Constitutional Court. Earlier, in September, in regional parliamentary elections in Catalonia, pro-independence parties had won 62 seats and were able to form a coalition government.

By 2015 the Spanish economy not only was showing signs of life but also had become one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe, although unemployment remained high at 21 percent. Despite the improving economy, when it came time to vote in elections for the national parliament in December 2015, many Spaniards continued to turn their backs on the establishment parties. Although the PP again finished first, it fell to 123 seats and lost its legislative majority. The PSOE again came in second but dropped from 110 seats in 2011 to 90 seats. Podemos again looked like the big winner, as it captured 69 seats. Another surging third party—the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens), which opposed the Catalan separatist movement—took 40 seats. Weeks of inconclusive political wrangling followed, and the Congress of Deputies reconvened on January 13, 2016, without a new government in place. King Felipe invited Rajoy to attempt to form a coalition, but, knowing that he lacked the necessary support, Rajoy declined. The deadlock continued for six months, and, with no party able to craft a government, new elections were scheduled for June 26, 2016.

In Catalonia the independence movement received an enormous boost in the wake of the June 23, 2016, “Brexit” vote in the United Kingdom, and for the first time opinion polls showed that a majority of Catalans favoured a split from Spain. The June 2016 Spanish general election largely mirrored the December 2015 results, with the PP finishing first but falling well short of a parliamentary majority. Spain would ultimately spend most of 2016 without an elected government, and it narrowly headed off its third election in just over a year (slated for Christmas Day) when Rajoy was able to cobble together a minority government in November. The Socialists opted to abstain from a vote of confidence, and, despite vehement objections from the Podemos party, Rajoy was reelected.

Rajoy’s government was unable to contain the Catalonian drive for independence, and a new referendum was held on October 1, 2017. Spanish police confiscated ballot papers and engaged in violent clashes with voters, leaving hundreds injured. Although widespread irregularities marred the polling, the Catalan parliament interpreted the result as a mandate to declare independence from Spain, and it voted to do so on October 27. Within minutes of the declaration, Rajoy invoked Article 155 of the Spanish constitution, stripping the Catalan parliament of power and imposing direct rule from Madrid. Rajoy’s response to the crisis in Catalonia boosted his popularity among the Spanish electorate, but an ongoing scandal within the ruling PP threatened his prime ministership.

By May 2018 more than two dozen people had been convicted on bribery and money-laundering charges in connection with a secret PP slush fund that had operated from 1999 to 2005. Although Rajoy was not directly tied to the corruption charges, PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez, with the support of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, challenged his government. On June 1, 2018, Sánchez ousted Rajoy after a motion of no confidence was narrowly approved by the Spanish parliament. Rajoy was the first Spanish leader since the restoration of democracy to be removed in this manner. Within days, Sánchez was sworn in as prime minister, despite the fact that the PSOE commanded fewer than one-fourth of the seats in the parliament. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Kings and queens regnant of Spain

A list of kings and queens regnant of Spain is provided in the table.

Kings and queens regnant of Spain Asturias (including Galicia from 739 and Leon from 855) Pelayo c. 718–c. 737 Favila c. 737–739 Alfonso I 739–757 Fruela I 757–768 Aurelio 768–774 Silo 774–783 Mauregato 783–788 Bermudo I 788–791 Alfonso II 791–842 Ramiro I 842–850 Ordoño I 850–866 Alfonso III (Kingdom divided between three sons) 866–910 Asturias Fruela II 910–925 Leon García I 910–914 Ordoño II 914–924 Galicia Ordoño II 910–924 Leon (including Asturias and Galicia) Fruela II 924–925 Alfonso IV c. 925–c. 931 Ramiro II c. 931–950 Ordoño III 950–955 Sancho I 955–958 Ordoño IV 958–960 Sancho I (2nd time) 960–966 Ramiro III 967–982 Bermudo II 982–999 Alfonso V 999–1028 Bermudo III 1028–37 Leon and Castile Ferdinand I (Fernando) (Kingdom divided between three sons) 1039–65 Leon Alfonso VI 1065–72 Castile Sancho II 1065–72 Galicia Garcia II 1065–71 Castile and Leon (including Galicia) Sancho II 1072 Alfonso VI (restored) 1072–1109 Urraca (ruled with husband, Alfonso I of Aragon) 1109–26 Alfonso VII (Kingdom divided between two sons) 1126–57 Leon Ferdinand II (Fernando) 1157–88 Alfonso IX 1188–1230 Castile Sancho III 1157–58 Alfonso VIII 1158–1214 Henry I (Enrique) 1214–17 Ferdinand III 1217–52 Castile (including Leon) Alfonso X 1252–84 Sancho IV 1284–96 Ferdinand IV (Fernando) 1296–1312 Alfonso XI 1312–50 Peter I (Pedro) 1350–66 Henry II (Enrique) 1366–67 Peter I (2nd time) 1367–69 Henry II (2nd time) 1369–79 John I (Juan) 1379–90 Henry III (Enrique) 1390–1406 John II (Juan) 1406–54 Henry IV (Enrique) 1454–74 Isabella I and Ferdinand V (Ferdinand II of Aragon) (Isabel and Fernando) 1474–1504 Joan and Philip I (Juana and Felipe) 1504–06 Ferdinand V (2nd time) 1506–16 Aragon Ramiro I 1035–63 Sancho I 1063–94 Peter I (Pedro) 1094–1104 Alfonso I 1104–34 Ramiro II 1134–37 Petronilla (ruled with husband, Ramón Berenguer IV of Barcelona) 1137–63 Alfonso II 1163–96 Peter II (Pedro) 1196–1213 James I (Jaime) 1213–76 Peter III (Pedro) 1276–85 Alfonso III 1285–91 James II (Jaime) 1291–1327 Alfonso IV 1327–36 Peter IV (Pedro) 1336–87 John I (Juan) 1387–95 Martin 1395–1412 Ferdinand I (Fernando) 1412–16 Alfonso V 1416–58 John II (Juan) 1458–79 Ferdinand II and Isabella I (1479–1504) (Fernando and Isabel) 1479–1516 Spain House of Habsburg Charles I (Carlos) 1516–56 Philip II (Felipe) 1556–98 Philip III (Felipe) 1598–1621 Philip IV (Felipe) 1621–65 Charles II (Carlos) 1665–1700 House of Bourbon (Borbón) Philip V (Felipe) 1700–24 Louis (Luis) 1724 Philip V (2nd time) 1724–46 Ferdinand VI (Fernando) 1746–59 Charles III (Carlos) 1759–88 Charles IV (Carlos) 1788–1808 Ferdinand VII (Fernando) 1808 House of Bonaparte Joseph (José) 1808–13 House of Bourbon (Borbón) Ferdinand VII (2nd time) 1814–33 Isabella II (Isabel) 1833–68 Interregnum 1868–70 House of Savoy Amadeus I (Amadeo) 1870–73 Republic 1873–74 House of Bourbon (Borbón) Alfonso XII 1874–85 Alfonso XIII 1886–1931 Republic 1931–39 Nationalist regime (Francisco Franco) 1939–75 House of Bourbon (Borbón) Juan Carlos 1975–2014 Felipe VI 2014–

Citation Information

Article Title: Spain

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 11 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain

Access Date: August 16, 2019

Additional Reading General Works

Overviews of Spain include Adrian Shubert, The Land and People of Spain (1992); and Eric Solsten and Sandra W. Meditz, Spain: A Country Study, 2nd ed. (1990). Richard Carrington, The Mediterranean: Cradle of Western Culture (1971), discusses the evolution of the area’s geologic structures, flora, and fauna and surveys its history. Land

General information about Iberian geography appears in books about the physical geography of the Mediterranean area and of Europe, notably Russell King, Lindsay Proudfoot, and Bernard Smith (eds.), The Mediterranean: Environment and Society (1997), a general overview of the historical, environmental, geographical, and social features of the Mediterranean basin; Catherine Delano Smith (Catherine Delano-Smith), Western Mediterranean Europe: A Historical Geography of Italy, Spain, and Southern France Since the Neolithic (1979), a systematic approach to the historical aspects of environment, settlement, and economy; J.M. Houston, The Western Mediterranean World: An Introduction to Its Regional Landscapes, 3rd ed. (1971); and Clifford Embleton (ed.), Geomorphology of Europe (1984). Ricardo Méndez and Fernando Molinero, Geografía de España (1993), provides a general survey of the geography of Spain, with a focus on the environment and the economy. Manuel de Téran, L. Solé Sabarís, and J. Vilà Valentí (eds.), Geografía regional de España, 5th ed., rev. and updated (1987), is the most complete work on the subject. J.Ma. García Alvarado and J.A. Sotelo Navalpotro (eds.), La España de las autonomías (1999), surveys the Spanish autonomies (regions). J. Vilà Valentí, La Península ibérica (1968, reprinted 1983), gives a good concise description of the country. Adolf Schulten, Geographie des antiken Spanien, 2nd ed. (1974), vol. 1 of Iberische Landeskunde, is an exhaustive scholarly work on the geography of the Iberian Peninsula in ancient times. Antonio Gilman, John B. Thornes, and Stephen Wise, Land-Use and Prehistory in South-East Spain (1985), focuses on an earlier period. Aguilar, S.A. de Ediciones, Atlas gráfico de España, 3rd ed. (1984), is a regional approach, with clear, large-scale maps accompanied by short texts in Spanish on a variety of aspects. Catherine Delano Smith People

Adrian Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain (1990, reprinted 1992), examines Spanish society in the 19th and 20th centuries. John Hooper, The New Spaniards, new and rev. ed. (1995), is an entertaining look at the people by a British journalist. An interesting and useful survey of attitudes and opinions for the period of the democratic transition is Francisco Murillo Ferrol et al., Informe sociológico sobre el cambio social en España, 1975/1983 (1983). Carmen Martín Gaite, Usos amorosos de la postguerra Española (1987, reissued 1997), is a superb essay by a novelist on relations between the sexes in the 1940s and ’50s. Miguel Juárez, V informe sociológico sobre la situación social en España: sociedad para todos en el año 2000, 2 vol. (1994), offers a comprehensive review of Spanish social trends. Rafael Puyol (ed.), Dinámica de la población en España: cambios demográficos en último cuarto del siglo XX (1997), provides a survey of the demography of Spain. Economy

William Chislett, Spain (1992), provides a brief analysis of the Spanish economy with reference to its main regions. Joseph Harrison, An Economic History of Modern Spain (1978), is a concise overview. Reviews of the economic history of the 19th and early 20th centuries include Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz (ed.), The Economic Modernization of Spain, 1830–1930 (1987; originally published in Spanish, 1985); and Jordi Nadal, “The Failure of the Industrial Revolution in Spain, 1830–1914,” pp. 532–626 in Carlo M. Cipolla (ed.), The Emergence of Industrial Societies (1973, reissued 1976), vol. 4 of The Fontana Economic History of Europe. More-detailed coverage of 20th-century developments appears in Sima Lieberman, The Contemporary Spanish Economy: A Historical Perspective (1982); and José Luis García Delgado et al., España, economía, ante el siglo XXI (1999). Keith G. Salmon, The Modern Spanish Economy: Transformation and Integration into Europe (1991, reissued 1995), provides a sectoral analysis of Spanish economy at the end of the 20th century. Government and society

Michael T. Newton and Peter J. Donaghy, Institutions of Modern Spain: A Political and Economic Guide, new expanded, rev., and updated ed. (1997), is an essential overview of political, economic, and institutional life in modern Spain. Peter J. Donaghy and Michael T. Newton, Spain: A Guide to Political and Economic Institutions (1987), offers a superb description of the institutions of democratic Spain. Paul Heywood, The Government and Politics of Spain (1995), presents a historical discussion of the modernization of the Spanish state. Thomas D. Lancaster and Gary Prevost (eds.), Politics and Change in Spain (1985), is a collection of essays on aspects of post-1975 Spain. Frances Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy: The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1975 (1987), provides a historical review of religion and church-state relations. Cultural life

Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish Literature, rev. ed. (1991), surveys the history of Spanish literature through the 1980s. Bradley Smith, Spain: A History in Art (1966, reissued 1971), covers the period up to 1930. John F. Moffitt, The Arts in Spain (1999), offers a balanced overview of the art history of Spain, with an emphasis on Spanish singularity and Spanish responses to international art trends. Emma Dent Coad, Spanish Design and Architecture (1990), covers fashion, interior and graphic design, and furniture, as well as architecture. Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain, 2nd rev. ed. (1959), is a survey. J.M. Caparrós Lera and Rafael de España, The Spanish Cinema: An Historical Approach (1987), is a brief introduction that goes up to 1975. J.M. Caparrós Lera, Historia crítica del cine español: desde 1897 hasta hoy (1999), offers a more comprehensive history of Spanish film. Adrian Shubert Vicente Rodriguez History Pre-Roman Spain

A general book, richly illustrated, is Richard J. Harrison, Spain at the Dawn of History: Iberians, Phoenicians, and Greeks (1988). Arturo Ruiz and Manuel Molinos, The Archaeology of the Iberians (1998; originally published in Spanish, 1993), is a study of the prehistoric archaeology of Spain. Antonio Beltrán, Rock Art of the Spanish Levant, trans. from Italian (1982), gives an account of Mesolithic rock art. Richard John Harrison Roman Spain

Works on this period include C.H.V. Sutherland, The Romans in Spain, 217 B.C.–A.D. 117 (1939, reprinted 1982); S.J. Keay, Roman Spain (1988); Leonard A. Curchin, Roman Spain: Conquest and Assimilation (1991, reissued 1995); J.S. Richardson, The Romans in Spain (1996, reissued 1998); and A.T. Fear, Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 BC–AD 150 (1996). John S. Richardson Adrian Shubert Visigothic Spain

E.A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain (1969); Kenneth Baxter Wolf (trans. and ed.), Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, 2nd ed., trans. from Latin (1999); and the collection of essays in Edward James (ed.), Visigothic Spain: New Approaches (1980), are informative studies of the Visigothic period. Christian Spain from the Muslim invasion to 1479

Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (1975, reissued 1983), is the standard survey in English. Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain: Unity and Diversity, 400–1000, 2nd ed. (1995); and Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000–1500 (1977, reissued 1989), cover the medieval period. J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516, 2 vol. (1976–78), studies the late Middle Ages in greater detail. Derek W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (1978), focuses primarily on military history. A modern work on the Cid is Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (1989, reissued 1991). Also important are Thomas F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain (1995); James F. Powers, A Society Organized for War: The Iberian Municipal Militias in the Central Middle Ages, 1000–1284 (1987); and Heath Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300 (1984, reissued 1989). Robert Ignatius Burns, The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier, 2 vol. (1967), Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (1973), and Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (1975); and the excellent Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (1991), all deal with the settlement of Valencia and the fate of the Muslims who remained behind after the Christian reconquest. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (1996, reprinted with corrections, 1998), is an important discussion of relations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval Europe. Mark D. Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (2004), is an important recent study of Jews in late medieval Spain. Muslim Spain

Valuable works include Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of Al-Andalus (1996); Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (1979); Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500 (1994, reissued 1996); Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (1992, reissued 1998); and L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 (1990, reissued 1992). United Spain under the Catholic Monarchs and the Habsburgs

J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (1963, reissued 1977), is the best single work covering this period. Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict, 2nd ed. (1991), is a short introduction. Stephen Haliczer, The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution, 1475–1521 (1981), is an important corrective to the traditional overvaluation of the Catholic Monarchs. Recent work on the Inquisition includes Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1995); Angel Alcalá (ed.), The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind (1987; originally published in Spanish, 1984); Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (1997); B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (1995); and Mary E. Giles (ed.), Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (1999).

John Lynch, Spain Under the Habsburgs, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1981, reissued 1984), provides a good overview of early modern Spain. Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain, 1516–1659 (1971), is a synthesis by one of the most distinguished Spanish scholars. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vol. (1972–73, reissued 1995; trans. from French 2nd rev. ed., 1966), is an economic and historical geography of the Mediterranean basin during the 16th century, in which Spain plays a central role; this book has become a classic. M.J. Rodríguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II, and Habsburg Authority, 1551–1559 (1988), discusses Spanish foreign policy. Geoffrey Parker, Philip II, 3rd ed. (1995), is a balanced study. Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (1997), is a recent and controversial biography. John Francis Guilmartin, Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (1974), studies war in the Mediterranean. Many books were published for the 400th anniversary of the Armada campaign; among these is Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada, 2nd rev. ed. (1999). Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (1972, reprinted with corrections, 1995), is the definitive work on the Spanish army in western Europe; and R.A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668 (1992), is the equivalent for the Spanish navy. I.A.A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain, 1560–1620 (1976), studies the effects of war on government in Spain. Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 1606–1661 (1982, reprinted 1986), is also useful. J.H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640 (1963, reissued 1984), and The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (1986), are outstanding contributions to Spanish history written in English. J.H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966, reprinted 1990), is an excellent sketch of its subject. Jonathan Brown and J.H. Elliott, A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV (1980, reissued 1986), successfully attempts to integrate the history of art with political history. Henry Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation (1993), is an interesting study of 16th- and 17th-century Catalonia. Sara T. Nalle, God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650 (1992), is a fascinating study of religious practice in one Castilian province. The 18th century

John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700–1808 (1989, reprinted 1993), is an excellent survey. Two specialist studies, using modern techniques, are Richard Herr, Rural Change and Royal Finances in Spain at the End of the Old Regime (1989); and David R. Ringrose, Transportation and Economic Stagnation in Spain, 1750–1850 (1970). Other specific topics are addressed by William J. Callahan, Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874 (1984), and Honor, Industry, and Commerce in 18th Century Spain (1972); and Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (1958, reissued 1969), on the reign of Charles III. The 19th and early 20th centuries

Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Civil War, 2nd ed. (1950, reissued 1993), remains a stimulating introduction to the problems of modern Spain. General histories of political, economic, and social developments include José Alvarez Junco and Adrian Shubert (eds.), Spanish History since 1808 (2000); Adrian Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain (1990, reprinted 1992); Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808–1975, 2nd ed. (1982); Stanley G. Payne, Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (1967); and Carolyn P. Boyd, Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain (1979).

There has been a renewal of interest in the economic history of this period. The classic work is Jordi Nadal, El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España, 1814–1913, 5th ed. (1982). David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the “Spanish Miracle,” 1700–1900 (1996, reissued 1998); and Leandro Prados de la Escosura, De imperio a nación: crecimiento y atraso económico en España (1780–1930) (1988), provide revisionist views of Spain’s economic history.

Sources on early- and mid-19th-century politics include Jesus Cruz, Gentlemen, Bourgeois, and Revolutionaries: Political Change and Cultural Persistence among the Spanish Dominant Groups, 1750–1850 (1996); Renato Barahona, Vizcaya on the Eve of Carlism: Politics and Society, 1800–1833 (1989); V.G. Kiernan, The Revolution of 1854 in Spanish History (1966); and C.A.M. Hennessy, The Federal Republic in Spain: Pi y Margall and the Federal Republican Movement, 1868–74 (1962, reprinted 1980). Pamela Beth Radcliff, From Mobilization to Civil War: The Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijon, 1900–1937 (1996), is an important study of politics in one major city. Paul Heywood, Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain, 1879–1936 (1990), analyzes the socialist party. Studies of the place of the church in society and politics include William J. Callahan, Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874 (1984); and Joan Connelly Ullman, The Tragic Week: A Study of Anti-Clericalism in Spain, 1875–1912 (1968).

Among the important recent works on the late Spanish empire are Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (1999); and Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898–1923 (1997). Primo de Rivera (1923–30) and the Second Republic (1931–36)

The excellent but misleadingly titled work by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930 (1983), deals with the dictatorship, and The Origins of the Second Republic in Spain (1978), chronicles its collapse. George Esenwein and Adrian Shubert, Spain at War: The Spanish Civil War in Context, 1931–1939 (1995), is a recent synthesis. Paul Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction, and Revolution in the Second Republic, 2nd ed. (1994); Nigel Townson, The Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Centrist Politics under the Second Republic, 1931–1936 (2000); and Edward E. Malefakis, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain: Origins of the Civil War (1970), are detailed studies of aspects of politics during the Second Republic. The Civil War (1936–39) and Franco’s Spain (1939–75)

Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 3rd ed., rev. and enlarged (1977, reissued 1994), is a narrative history; Raymond Carr, The Civil War in Spain, 1936–39, new ed. (1986), takes a wider view. Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (1991), is an encyclopaedic account. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938, reissued 2000), remains a classic account of political feuds in Barcelona. Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (1994, reissued 1997), covers international aspects of the conflict; and Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War (1995), covers the role of women.

The standard work on Francoism is Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime, 1936–1975 (1987, reissued 2000). Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (1993, reissued 1995), is the definitive account of the dictator’s life. Michael Richards, A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945 (1998), is a provocative study of early Francoism. Amando de Miguel, Manual de estructura social de España (1974), discusses Francoist society. Sebastian Balfour, Dictatorship, Workers, and the City: Labour in Greater Barcelona Since 1939 (1989), is an excellent study of the labour movement. Spain since 1975

Sources on the period of political transition include Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurúa, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, 2nd ed. (1981, reissued 1991; originally published in Spanish, 1979); and Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (1986, reissued 1990). Víctor M. Pérez-Díaz, The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain (1993, reissued 1998; originally published in Spanish, 1987), is an important interpretive essay. Charles T. Powell, El piloto del cambio: el rey, la monarquía y la transición a la democracia (1991), examines the role of King Juan Carlos in the transition.

Among the many studies of regional nationalism, the most important include Daniele Conversi, The Basques, the Catalans, and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (1997, reissued 2000); Juan Díez Medrano, Divided Nations: Class, Politics, and Nationalism in the Basque Country and Catalonia (1995); and Robert P. Clark, The Basque Insurgents: ETA, 1952–1980 (1984), and Negotiating with ETA: Obstacles to Peace in the Basque Country, 1975–1988 (1990). Adrian Shubert