[1714 - 1808] Bourbon Spain and Enlightenment

The year is 1714. The long, brutal War of the Spanish Succession is over. A kingdom, once the master of the world, has been bled white, its territories partitioned, its spirit weary. On the throne in Madrid sits a new king, Philip V, a French prince, the grandson of the Sun King, Louis XIV. With him comes a new dynasty, the Bourbons, and a new idea for Spain. The old, decentralized patchwork of kingdoms inherited from the Habsburgs, where regions like Catalonia and Aragon clung fiercely to their ancient laws and privileges, was to be swept away. In its place would rise a single, unified, centralized state, modeled on the absolutist power of France. The age of Bourbon Spain had begun, not with a gentle dawn, but with the hammer blow of radical reform.

The first and most seismic of these changes were the Nueva Planta decrees. For the regions of the former Crown of Aragon, which had backed the losing side in the war, this was a cataclysm. Their parliaments were dissolved, their tax systems abolished, and their laws replaced by the laws of Castile. From the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean, a single legal and administrative structure was imposed. To the new Bourbon king, this was an act of necessary, if ruthless, modernization. To many Catalans, Valencians, and Aragonese, it was the destruction of their world, an act of conquest that would leave scars for centuries. Spain was being forged into a singular nation, whether all its people wished for it or not. Power, once dispersed, now flowed directly to and from the king in Madrid.

The true architect of the Spanish Enlightenment, however, was not Philip V, but his son, Charles III, who ascended to the throne in 1759. Arriving from Naples, where he had already reigned as an enlightened reformer, Charles was a man possessed by the spirit of the age: reason, progress, and utility. He was no democrat; he was an absolute monarch who believed his power must be used to drag his kingdom into the modern world. He surrounded himself with brilliant ministers—the Count of Aranda, the Count of Floridablanca, Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes—men known as Ilustrados, or “the enlightened ones.” Their shared mission was to rationalize the state, stimulate the economy, and elevate the sciences and arts, all in the service of strengthening the Crown. A whirlwind of change swept across the peninsula. The state took a direct hand in the economy, establishing ‘Reales Fábricas’ (Royal Factories) to produce luxury goods like tapestries, porcelain at Buen Retiro, and exquisite glass at La Granja, hoping to reduce reliance on expensive imports. The centuries-old monopoly that the port of Cádiz held over trade with the American colonies was shattered, opening commerce to other Spanish ports and unshackling economic potential. A massive program of public works began, constructing over a thousand kilometers of new radial roads and canals to connect the isolated capital of Madrid with the coasts, a physical manifestation of the new centralized order. It was an era of dust, mortar, and ambition, an attempt to build a new, more prosperous Spain from the ground up. This quest for modernity inevitably collided with Spain’s most powerful and ancient institution: the Catholic Church. The Ilustrados saw the Church’s vast landholdings, its control over education, and the pervasive power of the Inquisition as brakes on progress. The ultimate confrontation came in 1767. In a swift, coordinated, and secret operation, Charles III ordered the expulsion of the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—from all Spanish territories. Accused of fomenting riots and holding allegiance to the Pope above the King, the Jesuits were rounded up and deported. It was a stunning display of royal authority, a clear message that in this new Spain, the throne, not the altar, was supreme. To foster a new national culture, the Crown established institutions like the Real Academia Española to purify and standardize the Spanish language and the Royal Academy of History to write a past worthy of a great nation. In the streets of cities like Madrid, the changes were visible to all. Charles III earned the title of “the best mayor of Madrid,” transforming a sprawling, dirty medieval town into a worthy European capital. He commissioned grand neoclassical boulevards, public parks, and monumental fountains like the iconic Cibeles and Neptune that still define the city’s heart. He laid the groundwork for what would become the Prado Museum. Yet this veneer of enlightened progress rested on a foundation of deep tradition and poverty. In the 1780s, over 80% of Spain’s roughly 10.5 million people were peasants, many trapped in a near-feudal existence. The tension between the reforming elite and the deeply traditional populace exploded in 1766 with the Esquilache Riots. The king’s Italian minister, the Marquis of Esquilache, banned traditional Spanish male attire—long capes and wide-brimmed hats—in favor of French-style short capes and three-cornered hats, citing concerns that the old clothing hid weapons and aided criminals. The population of Madrid erupted in furious protest, not just about fashion, but against a government of foreigners imposing alien customs. The king was forced to flee the city and dismiss his minister, a stark reminder that the will of the monarch had its limits. The era of bold reform and confident optimism faded with its greatest champion. The reign of Charles IV, who came to the throne in 1788, was one of weakness and crisis. Real power fell into the hands of his wife’s favorite, the ambitious but divisive Manuel Godoy. Across the Pyrenees, the French Revolution had erupted, and the ideals of Enlightenment that Spain’s kings had so carefully controlled now took on a terrifying, regicidal form. The Spanish monarchy recoiled in horror, trying to seal its borders from the contagion of revolutionary ideas. This policy soon collapsed, replaced by a ruinous and subservient alliance with the new French regime under Napoleon Bonaparte. The cost of that alliance was catastrophic. In 1805, off a cape named Trafalgar, a combined Franco-Spanish fleet sailed to challenge Great Britain. The result was annihilation. The Spanish navy was shattered, its connection to its American empire severed, its treasury empty. The defeat crippled Spain and exposed the rot at the heart of Charles IV’s government. Intrigue festered within the court itself, as the king’s own son, Prince Ferdinand, plotted against Godoy. Spain was weak, divided, and ripe for the picking. And the predator was watching. In the spring of 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte saw his chance. Under the pretext of invading Portugal, French armies poured into Spain, their supposed allies. In March, a popular uprising, the Tumult of Aranjuez, forced the hated Godoy from power and Charles IV to abdicate in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. But this was merely a prelude to Napoleon’s true plan. He lured the entire dysfunctional royal family—Charles, Ferdinand, and all—to the French city of Bayonne. There, in a move of unparalleled political treachery, he forced both father and son to renounce their claims to the Spanish throne. He then handed the crown to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte. The century that began with a French prince taking the Spanish throne ended with a French emperor stealing it. But as French troops fanned out across the peninsula, they would soon discover that while the Spanish state may have collapsed, the Spanish people were about to rise.