From the Bible to Álvaro de Luna. Historical Antecedents and Political Models in the Debate on the Valimiento in Spain (1539-1625) (original) (raw)
Monarchy and Liberalism in Spain. The Building of The Nation-State, 1780-1931, 2020
'A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. (…) Just so a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to "men's bosoms" and employ their thoughts'. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (2 nd ed., 1873), pp. 63-64. As Bagehot points out in the epigraph, the monarchy's functions around 1867 (the date of the cited work's first edition) were already perceived as part of a symbolic apparatus designed to construct the nation's first identity reference. This situation was part of a long process initiated after the revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. From then on, European monarchies had to be politically and culturally re-founded in order to confront the political and social challenges of the new times. It was an evolution during which they adopted monarchical constitutionalism in order to survive in a complex symbiosis with the liberal system. 2 Thus, the liberals supported an institution able to consolidate the new regimes and national states through their own historical and cultural legitimacy, incorporating a symbolic, representational power adapted to the ethos of the emerging post-revolutionary society. Of course, such compromise was characterised by pragmatism and utilitarianism. This was a new idea of power where the monarchy contributed a component of stability due to its own historical evolution, which was to coexist with the principles deriving from national sovereignty. The result was not a mere convergence of the royal tradition and the revolutionary heritage: this was a new approach to political power where the monarch had a neutral role as an umpire, even while embodying the nation. The power structure had a symbolic projection aimed at providing the political system with strength and security. 3 With the passage of time, its maintenance in most European countries would be linked to growing social recognition. 4 This was, therefore, a tangible legitimacy, but also an ephemeral one, which would lead monarchs to develop an empathic imperative and proximity formulae that, combined with the practices of traditional monarchies, would allow them to reinforce the institution as a national reference. Like its contemporary counterparts, the Spanish monarchy was engaged throughout the 19th century in a process aimed at the institution's very survival, based on two main pillars: dynastic continuity and the implementation of strategies increasing its ability to connect with popular audiences. As pointed out by one of Alfonso XIII's 1 This text is part of the research project 'Las monarquías en Europa meridional (siglos XIX y XX). Culturas y prácticas de la realeza' (Monarchies in Southern Europe (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Royal Cultures and Practices) (HAR2016-75954-P), sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and ERDF funds. Thanks are due to Miguel Ángel Campos-Pardillos for the translation into English. 2 biographers, 'modern, democratic monarchs' must base their authority on both their historical rights and 'on the love of their people, who must know them in order to love them'. 5 One such new resource popularising monarchies among their national audiences was the projection of the image of the 'sentimental family'. Dynastic principle and family fiction were two sides of the same coin, always perched precariously on the construction of a simultaneously close and distant family image, where the characters performed under a pre-established set of values and behaviours, not unrelated to the monarchs' awareness of their representing an inalienable power. The king, the queen and their descendants were part of an elaborate construction, aimed at enduring in an endless cycle between stately ceremonials and expressions of bourgeois domesticity, between the ritual and the prosaic. 6 They acted as role models, and at the time they needed new elements to remodel themselves. They could not start at the popular level, but neither could they rise above the heads of the people and vanish into the distance. In Spain, the stereotyped images projected by the figures of Isabel II and her consort Francisco de Asís, Amadeo of Savoy and his wife María Victoria, Alfonso XII and the regent María Cristina of Habsburg, Alfonso XIII and his wife Victoria of Battenberg are largely based on their respective family sphere. This is the case because they represent the Crown, but they also are, and must be, the model for citizens whose political patterns, cultural values and hegemonic morality are those of the bourgeoisie. Our analysis of the royal family starts from the classical distinction made by Koselleck, 7 when describing concepts, between a 'space of experience' and a 'horizon of expectation': if we apply this to the study of the monarchy, we find that the dynastic factor would act from 'experience' as a legitimising element, above social and political vicissitudes. The 'expectation' would focus on the projection of a bourgeois family ideal which, although built on the same dynastic foundations, makes it possible to project an image of the monarchs aimed at increasing their popularity in the context of the new liberal society. We shall start our study with a theoretical section, divided into three parts, followed by an analysis where we shall present how, through the abovementioned royal figures, the family image of the monarchy is progressively developed from the reign of Isabel II to the reign of Alfonso XIII.
Narratives of Power: Royal History and the Language of Legitimacy in Medieval Castile
2016
by Bretton Sigfredo Rodriguez Narratives of Power: Royal History and the Language of Legitimacy in Medieval Castile offers an interdisciplinary analysis – utilizing the skills of both literary criticism and historical inquiry – of the evolution of royal history and historians in medieval Castile between the reign of Alfonso X and that of the Catholic Monarchs. To address such a large topic, it focuses on the works of three historians – Alfonso X, Pero López de Ayala, and Fernando del Pulgar – who wrote on behalf of the Castilian crown following periods of immense political and social upheaval in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. I argue that legitimizing political power became an increasingly critical part of historical narratives in late medieval Castile, which determined the evolution of these texts while forming a lasting connection between history and legitimacy. I also assert that royal histories evolved into a prominent literary genre as well as a space for litera...