Spanish Monarchy Research Articles

Crafting history in real time: The count-duke of Olivares, the Holy Roman Empire and generalissimo Wallenstein on the Spanish stage (1632–1634)

This essay explores the portrayal of Albrecht von Wallenstein’s downfall on the Spanish stage during the Thirty Years’ War. El prodigio de Alemania (1634), a play written by Calderón de la Barca and Antonio Coello, serves as a topic of study for understanding international politics of the time. The death of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden at the Battle of Lützen (1632) marked a turning point in the career of Wallenstein, who had played a significant role as the general commander during the conflict. The play itself was a product of Prime Minister Olivares’ domestic and international policies and aimed to legitimize specific ideological interests. The essay focuses on the manipulation of theatre as a means of enhancing the reputation of the Spanish monarchy and examines how the construction of the play allows us to comprehend the strained relations between Spain and the Holy Roman Empire during the war. It also scrutinizes the modifications made to the literary product to align with the changing political realities and illuminates the significance of Spanish theatre in crafting historical narratives and propagating political ideologies during the first half of the seventeenth century.

Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy: The Borromeo Brothers of Milan, 1620–1680, written by Samuel Weber

Aristocratic Power in the Spanish Monarchy: The Borromeo Brothers of Milan, 1620–1680, written by Samuel Weber

A független Uruguay születése a brazil–argentin konfliktus során

The independence movements of Latin America lasted for a century, with sovereign states emerging in quick succession until 1898. Most of the Latin American countries declared war on the Spanish Monarchy to establish their autonomous governments. The case of Uruguayan independence differed from this process, as it was complicated by the rivalry between Argentina and Brazil. Both countries were dominant in the region and sought to occupy the valuable territory of Uruguay, leading to the Cisplatine War between 1825 and 1828. Uruguayan citizens had to fight against Spanish colonization and the impending occupation of two dominant neighbors concurrently. The diversity of the peoples populating Uruguay manifested in different interests, leading to the formation of various „political” groups. Some advocated for joining Argentina or Brazil, while others preferred Spanish dominance, or fought for freedom. Uruguay achieved independence on August 28, 1828, with the conclusion of the Cisplatine War, when both Brazil and Argentina accepted the independence of the country.

Interweaving Ideologies of Early Modern Empires: A Morisco View

ABSTRACT This article argues that Ahmad al-Hajarî (ca. 1569–after 1640), a Morisco exile to North Africa, helped propagate and counter the imperial ideologies of the Habsburgs in the Arab-speaking world. Thanks to his intimate acquaintance with Spain in which he was raised as a Christian, and to his knowledge of Christian scripture, he could describe and explain the apocalyptic underpinnings of imperial views of the Spanish monarchy. He could also propose his own defense of the Muslim realms, especially the Ottoman Empire, to counter the Spanish and Christian pretensions to universal millenarian monarchy. He thus helped the interweaving of imperial ideologies across boundaries and extended the domain of what the late Cornell Fleischer termed a “Mediterranean Apocalypse.”

Global Conquests, Global Infidels: The Junta of Burgos (1512) Seen Through Integrated Mediterranean and Atlantic Contexts

ABSTRACT Traditional scholarship has been marked by a sharp division between historians working on two apparently discrete maritime systems in the early modern era—the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In recent years, though, scholars have begun to recognize the extent to which these spheres were in fact imbricated, in the movement of peoples and commodities as well as in the intangibles of ideology and legal doctrines, some of which had very concrete effects on the lives and status of millions of individuals. This article examines several legal questions pertaining to the status of recently conquered peoples by bringing together sources that address the legal status of new subjects of the Spanish monarchy, including the Laws of Burgos (1512), the Amendments of Valladolid (1513), along with several treatises by jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios, theologian Matías de Paz, and Bartolomé de las Casas. This microhistorical analysis of the questions examined at the Junta of Burgos sheds light on the ways in which our understanding of the legal doctrines of empire is immensely enriched and clarified when we integrate the Mediterranean and Atlantic angles of early modern Spanish commitments.

Popular Control through Public Accountability in Iberia (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)

Abstract This article analyzes the participation of the people in the Castilian procedure of accountability called juicio de residencia (comparable to the Italian sindacato) as a fertile ground for the development of popular control in urban settings. It adopts a longue-durée approach considering its transformations from its origins in the thirteenth century to the sixteenth century and from Castile to the Spanish Monarchy. In addition, it draws on a bottom-up approach and makes a case for qualitative instead of quantitative research, taking into account the massive but heterogeneous archival material related to residencias from the fifteenth century to the sixteenth century in the Hispanic Monarchy. In order to prove the main hypothesis, after presenting the limits and virtues of the Hispanic sources, I focus on two aspects. The first part presents evidence of people of all sorts consistently participating in the juicios de residencias that held officials accountable, as well as the development of a modality of collective action that was propitious for popular control: the presentaciones de capítulos. The second part shifts from the actors to the effects of that participation, testing different indicators of the potential of residencias for popular control. Ultimately, this article argues that officers’ accountability under the form of residencias was a consistent instrument for Castilian people to exert pressure on authorities and a habitual resource for popular actions.

The French and Spanish monarchies in the embassy writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini

ABSTRACT Between 1500 and 1513, Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini elaborated in their writings a crossed portrait of the French and Spanish monarchies, based on their first diplomatic missions. It appears from these texts that monarchy was hard to conceptualize and hard to name for the two young Florentines. Their goal was to identify the bases of the power of these Kingdoms, while the traditional prisms of political thought appeared obsolete in front of the brutal changes that had upset the European geopolitical field since the beginning of the Italian wars. These reflections, which occurred at a crucial moment in Machiavelli and Guicciardini’s intellectual training, represented a crucial step in the construction of their political thought and in the advent of modern historiography. But it also led to a new way of looking at and carrying out diplomatic functions.

The Crown in the Crowd: Sport and the House of Bourbon, 1975–2021

Since 1975, the Spanish royal family has used sport as a platform on which to improve its public image. With their families, Kings Juan Carlos I and Felipe VI have appeared at countless events as athletes, dignitaries, and fans of Spanish sport. Among these sporting events, this article uses the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona as a case study to examine the complex relationship between the Spanish monarchy and the stadium crowd. In the liminal space of the stadium, the crown and the crowd are simultaneously separated by hierarchy and official protocol and united in the communion of fandom.

Comic Queens: Sofía and Letizia in Spain’s Graphic Satire

With its members subject to a series of scandals, questions of legitimacy and the desirability of retaining the Spanish monarchy have repeatedly resurfaced. Leading the charge are the country’s graphic humourists, whose confrontational attacks have been met with draconian legal retaliation under the auspices of lèse-majesté. While derision is typically directed towards Juan Carlos I and Felipe VI, what of their consorts—Emerita Sofía and Letizia Ortiz—legitimized by marriage alone? This article explores how Spain’s cartoonists have used its Queen consorts as ludic sites from which to question the value of monarchy in a country marked by enduring crisis.

The Crown through Catalan Eyes: The Monarchy in Polònia (2006–2021)

Catalan journalists and performers have played a leading role in pushing the boundaries of public discourse about the Spanish monarchy in a media landscape that has been riddled with taboos since the 1975 Restoration. Polònia, a political satire created in 2006 for Catalan television, frequently targets the royal family, actively contributing to the erosion of its public image in Catalonia. While early skits featuring the royal family tended to invited viewers to laugh at them, in recent years the corrupt King and his kin are increasingly seen to be mocking their subjects.

Grotesque Monarchism in Luis García Berlanga’s Patrimonio nacional (1981)

This article reads Luis García Berlanga’s Patrimonio nacional as a critique of the recently restored Spanish monarchy. The film constructs an allegorical relationship between Luis José de Leguineche’s character and Juan Carlos, positioning him as a grotesque double of the King that parodically inverts common tropes about the ruler and highlights biographical details that had been disremembered or concealed in the interest of crafting his public image. Thus, Berlanga’s work dismantles the perception of Juan Carlos as an avatar of democracy and modernity, contesting his participation in the Transition and anticipating in 1981 what is known about him in 2023.

Vigilance and tax fraud in early modern Catalonia

ABSTRACT This article uses the concept of ‘cultures of vigilance’ (vigilanzkulturen) as an analytical tool to shed light on how early modern Catalan citizens interacted with public institutions in relation to the fight against tax fraud. By studying the surveillance mechanisms used by fiscal authorities in both local and regional scenarios, the article shows how private individuals, guilds, tax farmers and public officials collaborated in partnership to create a system of vigilance in which everybody was surveilling and under surveillance using direct and indirect methods. For public officers and institutions to benefit from practices of vigilance, citizens had to be genuinely willing to collaborate, and the article thus points towards the existence of a deeply rooted symbiosis between citizens and the state in early modern Catalonia under the Spanish monarchy.

Каталония в рамках Испанской монархии: от Католических королей до войны за испанское наследство

Catalonia maintained broad autonomy for 200 years after the unification of Castile and Aragon at the end of the 15th centu-ry. It was determined both by historical background and by the political situation on the Iberian Peninsula. Ever since joining the Crown of Aragon in the 12th century, Catalonia had self-government, which was guaranteed after the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Fernando of Aragon. Their and their successors’ attempts to unify the subject lands were not con-sistent, since there was no urgent need for the centralization. Castile and its colonies provided sufficient resources for for-eign policy. After the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, these resources were no longer enough, and the Spanish monarchs began to pursue a more active centralization policy. Catalonia responded with an uprising, which led to its transition under the French rule. After ten years of struggle, Philip IV managed to win back almost the entire rebellious region. Despite the treason, the Spanish monarchy decided to maintain Catalan privileges in order to ensure the loyalty of the region in the face of the ongoing confrontation with France.

Tacitus in the Discorso politico of Ottavio Sammarco: from threat of war into politics

ABSTRACT In 1626, the Neapolitan Ottavio Sammarco published the Discorso politico intorno la conseruatione della pace dell'Italia in which the author referred to the King of Spain as arbiter among the Italian princes and his ministers in Italy as efficient instruments to ensure the stability. This piece of political literature shows an explicit practical orientation, through which the author carries out a systematisation of the political means to achieve quietness in Italy. In articulating the praxis into formal language, Sammarco looks to the past searching for the wisdom of History and uses Tacitus’ account to build a discourse around the tools and mechanisms for preserving stability and avoiding conflicts. The aim of this article, in the first instance, is to examine Sammarco's discursive programme and the purpose of his discourse; in the second place, how Tacitus serves the author's aim and how his account means a fundamental anchor. Furthermore, it will be useful to trace how the political language that transforms the continuous threat of war into politics is modelled by 1626 in Italy and how Sammarco contextualizes his political vocabulary within the Spanish Monarchy political dialectic at the beginning of XVII century.

The Select Council of Philip I: A Spanish Institution in Tudor England, 1555–1558

Abstract Traditional interpretations of the reign of Philip and Mary in England and Ireland (1554–58) have tended to investigate this short-lived episode from a strongly Anglocentric perspective. Such an approach has often hindered interpretations of crucial aspects of the reign that have wider implications for the study of Britain, Spain and Europe in an increasingly globalised world. Philip’s creation of a new consultative body in 1555, the select council (consejo escogido), is a case in point. Conventionally viewed as a superfluous body that only worsened the alleged ungovernability of Mary’s privy council—from which, it was claimed, it was never truly separate—it has been assumed that the select council was allowed to function nominally for a while to sustain Philip’s ego. In fact, the creation of the select council responded to the deeply rooted conciliar traditions of Spain and England (based on Aristotelian notions of ‘political friendship’) and its actual level of activity disproves previous assumptions about its role and viability. The diplomatic negotiations undertaken by the English select councillors and their Spanish and Flemish counterparts place England firmly within the conciliar framework of the Spanish Monarchy and provide an invaluable window from which to explore the role of England as a fully integrated member of a composite monarchy extending from Naples and Oran to Lima and Mexico City.

The Cultural Heritage of Montilla and the Printing Press since the Modern Age: Its Evolution and Relationship with Graphic Engineering Boosting the SDGs

On the 550th anniversary of the introduction of the printing press to Spain, it is planned to review this art. Through a literature review, we studied how the printing press has contributed to the dissemination and preservation of cultural and industrial heritage, which are key for knowledge dissemination. The main objective of this study was to characterize the Spanish printing press of the 17th century through the analysis of an etching by Stradanus, relating it to the founding of the first typographic workshops in the rural Andalusian territory, and studying, for the first time, the specific case of Montilla. No scientific research has been carried out so far on this specific case. It was a region of utmost importance in Andalusia at the time due to its relations with the Spanish monarchy. The development of the printing press from inception until today is also analyzed to study the evolution of this type of industry in relation to the times. The printing press was key for the dissemination of culture and knowledge in the Modern Age. It was used to produce books, documents, and etchings, which are key elements for the dissemination of knowledge and the preservation of human heritage. This research has allowed us to comprehend and analyze, for the first time, the process of establishing the printing press in the case of Montilla coinciding with the 450th anniversary of the founding of the first printing press in Spain. This manuscript contributes to the achievement of some of the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), protecting and disseminating the heritage of the typographic industry in Montilla-Moriles.

Siren’s song: the news of Tabarka and its impact on Spanish Mediterranean policy in the mid-sixteenth century

The island of Tabarka, off the northwestern coast of modern Tunisia, was an active coral-fishing factory during the mid-sixteenth century. Its political status was unclear, straddling Tunisian sovereignty and Spanish military control, while being economically exploited by the Genoa-based Lomellini company. It also operated as a privileged hub of information for Maghrebi affairs, supplying fresh news to the Spanish authorities during the critical phase of Ottoman Mediterranean expansion throughout the 1550s. Particularly, this information’s flow fed into a wider web, and competed with alternative sources of news to influence decision-making processes in the Spanish monarchy. This article presents a micro-historical analysis of a place, a network, and specific political conditions to go beyond the mere reconstruction of information flows and reveal the real impact of the news coming from Tabarka on Spanish Mediterranean policy in the mid-sixteenth century.

Entre lembranças, vacinas e tipografias: o governo de Torivio Montes e as formas de exercício do poder num contexto pós-revolucionário (Quito, 1812-1817)

This article constitutes an initial approach to the government of Torivio Montes as president of the Audiencia of Quito. What is considered here are certain ways in which Montes exercised power in the aftermath of an insurgent process (the Quito Revolution from 1809 to 1812). Like other royal officials, Montes participated in a certain ideal which had developed in the Spanish Monarchy during the 18th century: that governing meant above all guaranteeing order (the proper arrangement of things) in the kingdom. To examine the ways in which Montes tried to put that ideal into practice, two things are carried out: on the one hand, a rereading of research on this royal official and the independence process of Quito; on the other hand, a review of documentation produced by him and certain collaborators of his.

Lisa Kattenberg, The Power of Necessity. Reason of State in the Spanish Monarchy, c. 1590-1650

Lisa Kattenberg, The Power of Necessity. Reason of State in the Spanish Monarchy, c. 1590-1650

1668: An Annus Horribilis for the Spanish Monarchy – The Lost European Hegemony, the International Situation, the Internal Crisis

1668 seems to be a kind of annus horribilis for the Spanish Monarchy that had been able to lead European politics during an entire century. If it possible to consider the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559 - that ended with French-Spanish conflict in Italy - such as the apical moment for Habsburg power in Europe, in some way the peace of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659 between the same protagonists, can represent the final phase of such as hegemony ruled by Madrid. Indeed, 1668 represents the most crucial point of crisis for a lot of reasons clearly connected with international order and especially with the rise of France, but also with the complicated Spanish domestic situation.