Bourbon Reforms

Bourbon reformism refers to the period in the history of Spain that began in 1700, in which Carlos II, the last king of the House of Austria of the Hispanic Monarchy, named Felipe V de Borbón as his successor in his will a month before his death. —which caused the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)—, until the abdications of Bayonne in 1808 in which Carlos IV and his son Fernando VII, who had forced him to abdicate in person two months before (Aranjuez Mutiny ), they ceded under pressure to Napoleon Bonaparte their rights to the Crown, who in turn passed to his brother José I Bonaparte, which began the Spanish War of Independence.

During this period, the new dynasty built a centralized and uniformist absolute monarchy that put an end to the Austrian monarchy of the previous two centuries and applied reformist policies, part of them inspired by the principles of the Enlightenment in Spain, especially under the reigns of Fernando VI and Carlos III.

The reign of Felipe V (1700-1746): the construction of the Bourbon State

Felipe V acceded to the throne of the Spanish monarchy by virtue of the will of his great-uncle, Carlos II, facing the house of Habsburg. Castile immediately accepted the new king, but the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, prone at first, soon joined the cause of Archduke Carlos. Felipe V only had the support of France and the Castilians themselves, against the hostility of the rest, especially Aragonese, Austrians, British and Dutch, fearful that a French-style absolutist monarchy would be established in Spain. The victory went to the supporters of Felipe V and the Treaties of Utrecht in 1713 and of Rastatt in 1714 put an end to the conflict, not without serious losses for the crown in European territory.

In retaliation, Felipe V abolished the Fueros of Aragon and Valencia in 1707 and imposed the Fuero of Castile, as in Catalonia and Mallorca. The Courts of Aragon, those of Valencia and those of Catalonia successively ceased to exist, integrating the representatives of their cities, but not the nobility and the clergy, in the Courts of Castile. Philip V rewarded the loyalty of the Kingdom of Navarre and the Basque provinces to his cause, maintaining his privileges. The new regulation will be formulated through the New Plant Decrees.

The War of the Spanish Succession and the Nueva Planta Decrees

The outcome of the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714) meant for the Monarchy of Spain the enthronement of a new dynasty, the House of Bourbon, at the cost of ceding its possessions in Italy and the Netherlands to Emperor Charles VI, plus Gibraltar and Minorca, which became the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the loss of control of trade with the Empire of the Indies, due to the concession to the British of the seat of blacks and the ship of permission. With all this, according to Joaquim Albareda, "the political conclusion of Spanish decadence" was produced. Thus, Felipe V failed in the mission for which he was chosen as successor of Carlos II: to keep the territories of the Catholic Monarchy intact.

In domestic politics, Felipe V put an end to the Crown of Aragon by military means and abolished the institutions and laws that governed the states that comprised it (the Kingdom of Aragon, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca and the Principality of Catalonia) by means of the New Plant Decrees of 1707-1716 that established in its place a State, in part, absolutist, centralist and uniformist, inspired by the absolute French Monarchy of Louis XIV, grandfather of Philip V, and the imposition of laws of the Crown of Castile to the rest of the territories, except for the Kingdom of Navarre, the Lordship of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Álava, which retained their privileges for having remained faithful to Felipe V —although on the other hand, the private law of Aragon, Catalonia and Mallorca, remained-. So that,Carlos III the Archduke but of the maintenance of the composite or "federal" monarchy of the Hispanic Monarchy of the two previous centuries.

According to the historian Ricardo García Cárcel, the Bourbon victory in the war marked the "triumph of vertical Spain over the horizontal Spain of the Habsburgs", understanding by "horizontal Spain" the "Austracist Spain", the one defended by "the federal Spain that the national reality is considered as a territorial aggregate with a common link based on the assumption of a plural and «extensive» Spanish identity", while "vertical Spain" is "centralized Spain, articulated around a central axis, which has always been Castilla, structured from a dorsal spine, with a concept of a homogenized and «intensive» Spanish identity".

In addition to the abolition of their own institutions and laws, for the states of the Crown of Aragon, the "New Plant" of the Monarchy had two other important consequences. The first was the establishment of absolutism with the disappearance of the brake that "pactism" and its own institutions meant for the king's power, which were replaced by a militarized administration, of Castilian inspiration -Captain General, Royal Audience, corregidores- and French - mayors-, to control the states that had been "rebels". And secondly, the start or acceleration of the Castilianization process of its inhabitants or at least part of its leading groups, by declaring Castilian as the only official language. Abbé Miguel Antonio de la Gándara expressed it this way in 1759: «Six other units are consequently necessary to the unit of a king: a currency, a law, a measure, a language and a religion.»". A process of Castilianization that had only a relative success, greater in the Kingdom of Valencia than in the Principality of Catalonia and in the Kingdom of Majorca —in Minorca under British rule, Catalan remained the official language. According to Joaquim Albareda, "beyond this political pressure that made Spanish the official language of the administration, it must be clarified that there was a perceptible phenomenon of diglossia in the ruling strata (nobility, commercial bourgeoisie, lawyers and jurists) that started from the 19th century. XVI, a phenomenon, as Joan-Lluís Marfany has shown, of an endogenous nature, whereby Castilian became the vehicle of expression in certain social uses, especially in the written field, due to a factor of social and cultural prestige".​

The absolute Bourbon state and its limitations

The absolute monarchy was based on the idea that the king's powers were unlimited ( absolute ) and he exercised them without any restrictions. As José del Campillo, minister of Felipe V, said :It is not necessary in a monarchy that everyone reason or have great talents. It is enough that the greatest number know how to work, being few those who should command, who are the ones who need much superior lights; but the crowd need only bodily strength and docility to allow themselves to be governed.

The process of building the absolute and centralized State began during the War of the Spanish Succession, in which the French advisers that Louis XIV placed alongside his grandson Philip V had a special role. An essential step was constituted by the "New Plant Decrees" that repealed the "constitutions" and particular institutions of the States of the Crown of Aragon, although with them the complete homogenization of the territory was not achieved as the institutions and laws of the Kingdom of Navarra and the "Basque Provinces" subsisted.

A more important limitation to the absolute power of the king was the survival of seigneurial and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. In the mid-eighteenth century there were some 30,000 manors in Spain that covered half of the peasant population for whom the power of the king was seen as very distant compared to the immediate power of his lord. A situation that did not change despite that the Bourbon ministers were aware of the reduction in the king's power that their existence implied, as stated by the Count of Floridablanca in the Instruction reserved for the Junta de Estado of 1787 presented to Carlos III in which he spoke on behalf of the king:It has been thought in some times to incorporate or reduce the jurisdictions of seigneury, where the judges do not usually have the necessary qualities nor do their elections take place with the appropriate examination and knowledge. Although it is not my intention that the vassal lords be harmed or their privileges violated, the courts and prosecutors must be entrusted with much, and that they try to incorporate or test all the alienated jurisdictions from which, according to the same privileges and the laws must be returned to my Crown

The French advisers who accompanied Felipe V considered that the traditional polysynodial regime of the Austrian Monarchy was obsolete and ineffective, because decisions took time to be made, and also represented a limitation of the absolute authority of the king since the different councils, each of them specialized in a different matter, were controlled by the nobility, and especially by the Great of Spain. In the report that he prepared in 1703 entitled Plan for the administration of the affairs of the King of SpainFrench councilor Jean Orry stated that the Councils "govern the State...so that their general intention is that their King should not, properly speaking, have any active participation in the government, but should lend them his name".

As an alternative, they gave preference to the "reserved route" so called because the king reserved more and more matters for himself that he took away from the Councils and for which the king made decisions attending only to the proposals made by his Secretaries of State and of the Office., which had arisen from the development of the position created in 1621 of Secretary of the Universal Office. Thus, since 1702, Felipe V created a Cabinet or Office Council made up of very few people who advised him through "mouth-to-mouth dispatch", including the ambassador of his grandfather Louis XIV. This Council will be divided into several areas until after the war, in November 1714, it was made up of five independent offices with a Secretary of State and the Office at the head of each one: State, Justice, War, Treasury, Navy and Indies..​

However, at the end of the war and the disappearance of the "French clique" —headed by the Princess of the Ursinos and Jean Orry, and the collaboration of Melchor de Macanaz— Philip V did not completely eliminate the council system, because the Council of Castilla maintained its extensive governmental and judicial powers that now encompassed the entire kingdom and, on the other hand, the Secretaries of State and the Office never constituted an authentic government because each one of the Secretaries of State or First Secretariat [the most important], of Grace and Justice, of the Treasury, of War, of the Navy and the Indies dispatchedseparately with the monarch, although sometimes the same person accumulated more than one secretariat. It will be necessary to wait until a date as late as 1787 so that under Carlos III the count of Floridablanca constitutes the Supreme Board of State that brings together the Secretaries of State and the Office, but it had an ephemeral life since it was suppressed five years later by Carlos IV.In the report that Jean Orry prepared in 1703, in addition to questioning the system of government of the Councils, he also referred to the territorial organization and criticized that the corregidores were appointed by the Council of Castile, for which "they are his workmanship and they obey him, which comes to the same thing as excluding the king from the government of his kingdom. Instead, he proposed appointing governors or intendants in the provinces who "will be directly subordinate to the Royal Council, and will receive orders from the King through the inspector general.

This new centralized territorial organization was first applied in the Crown of Aragon with the New Plant Decrees and then began to be implemented in the Crown of Castile —with the exception of the Basque Provinces and the Kingdom of Navarre—, although slowly at times. that the process would not culminate until the reign of Carlos III. Thus, General Captaincies were created with headquarters in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Coruña, Asturias, Zamora, Badajoz, Seville and Malaga; the Royal Courts were presided over by the Captain General and the only two that were not presided over—the Chancelleries of Valladolid and Granada—finally were as well, reconverted into Courts.

Likewise, an attempt was made to introduce the figure of the intendants in Castile and in 1718 an Ordinance was promulgated in which it was decided to "form and establish in each of the provinces of the kingdom an intendency [...] of justice, police, finance and war ». But the Councils managed to paralyze the process —only four “Army” intendancies were constituted— and it will be necessary to wait until 1749, under Ferdinand VI, for 22 intendancies to be created in the Crown of Castile. One of the first missions of the mayors who were in charge of them will be to carry out the Cadastre of Ensenada in order to apply in Castile the fiscal system of the only contribution that since the end of the war was applied in the extinct Crown of Aragon. The powers of the mayors were to the detriment of the corregidores,​

The "New Tax Plant"

The territories of the former Crown of Aragon after its defeat in the War of Spanish Succession had to pay a tax —called "cadastre" in Catalonia, "equivalent" in Valencia; "single contribution" in Aragon; "size" in Majorca—which was "equivalent" in amount to the different "provincial revenues"—taxes on consumption, which included the alcabala—that were collected in Castile. This tax was not the only one they paid, since what in Castile was called "general revenues" —which were customs duties— and "stagnant revenues" —which were the state monopolies on salt, tobacco and the sealed paper. The application of this so-called "New Tax Plant" meant a radical change for Aragonese,​

The fiscal "New Plant" was completed with the extension of the Castilian coins to the Crown of Aragon, although the own coins continued to circulate although in their respective territories, and with the abolition of internal customs —"dry ports"— that existed between the states of the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile, so that in this way, it was stated in the decree of November 1714 that abolished them, " those two Kingdoms [of Aragon and Valencia] and the Principality [of Catalonia] ] as provinces united to Castile, running trade between all of them free and without any impediment ».However, when in 1717 it was decreed that the dry ports that existed between the "Vascongadas" and the kingdom of Navarre and the Crown of Castile be transferred to the coast or to the border with France, a revolt broke out in those territories —the Machinada— that he failed the attempt.

Under Ferdinand VI, the Marquis of Ensenada failed in his attempt to apply the "only contribution" system in Castile to replace the disparate tax aggregation system that the Austrians had inherited (and increased) from the Catholic Monarchs. What Ensenada did achieve was to increase the amount collected by replacing the tax leasing system with direct management by royal officials under the direction of the intendants.

On the other hand, the composition of spending did not change practically throughout the 18th century: in 1778, 72% corresponded to the Army and the Navy, 11% to the court, and only the remaining 17% was dedicated to other expenses (basically the payment of royal officials).

Naval rearmament and the creation of a permanent Army

The policy followed with the Navy tried to increase its speed and efficiency: for this the Arsenals of Cartagena, Cádiz and El Ferrol were created, in addition to that of Havana; the training of its officers was perfected; and sea registration was used to provide the ships with the necessary crew. The sea registration (similar to the "fifths" for the Army) was based on the obligation to serve in the navy for all those young people who later wanted to exercise trades related to the sea. They were registered. And only they could, for example, be fishermen, which meant that there was no volunteerism, since in fact it meant compulsory enrollment for all men of already existing fishing families.

For its part, the Army experienced an increase in its troops — some 100,000 men by the end of the century — since the recruitment of volunteers — many of whom are foreigners: Walloons, Irish and Italians — was added to the system of levies and fifths. The levy was the form of recruitment by which "vagrants"—men with no known occupation—were "picked up" in the cities and forced to serve in the Army. The fifths consisted of the call-up of a fifth part —hence the name— of the useful young men of each district. The measure soon became unpopular because of the numerous corruptions and abuses that occurred in the draws and the enormous number of people who were exempted —"a very long list of married, sick, nearsighted, only children of poor widows,​

Culture policy

During the reign of Felipe V, three cultural institutions of great importance were created that shaped what the historian Pedro Ruiz Torres has called " new academic plant ".

The first was the Royal Library founded in 1712 —it is disputed whether it was at the initiative of the French Jesuits around Felipe V or Melchor de Macanaz— with the aim of guarding the Crown's book collections —especially the library of the queen mother of Carlos II —and those that Philip V himself and his French advisers had brought from France—to which was added the very rich library of the Archbishop of Valencia, Folch de Cardona, an Austrian exile.The library saw a notable increase in the number of volumes when the royal order was promulgated that required a copy of any book printed in Spain to be deposited in it. Those responsible for it were the king's confessors and the works of the forerunners of the Enlightenment, the novatores, and the first enlightened were welcomed in it. From the Royal Library came the initiative to publish the newspaper Diario de los literatos de España whose first issue appeared in 1737 and which began to publish reviews of the books and magazines published inside and outside of Spain.However, the cultural possibilities of the Royal Library were not fully utilized and the librarians appointed during the reign of Felipe V, with the exception of Gregorio Mayans who ended up resigning after six years in office (1733-1739), "did not stand out in any renovating activity, and, of many of them, not a single printed work is known". The Royal Library did not become a true cultural focus until the reign of Fernando VI, thanks to the new royal confessor Father Rávago, and above all everything until the reform of 1761 at the beginning of the reign of Carlos III.

The second institution, the Royal Spanish Academy, had much greater importance in shaping the new Bourbon cultural model. It had its origin in the literary gathering of the felipista Marqués de Villena, which was formally established in 1713 with the aim of avoiding the corruption of the Castilian language, and which received the title of "Royal" and the approval of the monarch the following year., who granted its members the privilege of "servants of the Royal House" —this meant that "politicians, soldiers and courtiers occupied most of the positions". The most ambitious project that the Academy managed to carry out was the Dictionary of Authorities, the first volume of which appeared in 1726 and the last in 1739. The dictionary was completed with the publication in 1742 of a treatise on Spelling, although many men of letters "were not satisfied with the dictated rules... [and] followed for many years their own orthography". "But, in this field, the Academy was inflexible, and an academic of History, like Cerdá Rico, was not accepted in that of Language for not following the spelling imposed by the learned institution." Grammar would have to wait for the reign of Carlos III to be published (1771).

The work of the Royal Spanish Academy, following the model of the French Academy, was aimed at making linguistic uniformity a reality that would correspond to the new centralized Bourbon state that emerged from the Nueva Planta Decrees. In the same way that it had endowed itself with common laws, which were those of Castile —with the exception of the kingdom of Navarre and the Vascongadas—, it had to use a single language, which would be Castilian, converted from then on into the Spanish language.. "The political community around the king, the homeland that prevailed over the other homelands and was the only one that deserved such a name seen from the court, should have a single language and that language should be carefully cultivated for the greater glory of the homeland, in singular, which was identified with the dynastic state".It was a political-cultural program widely supported by the early enlightened and reformist bureaucrats. Benito Feijoo in the third volume of Teatro Crítico, published in 1728, abhorred "this pestilence called paisanismo", the love of one's homeland, which "is an incentive for civil wars and revolts against the sovereign". It was, therefore, a uniform model - the same laws, a single kingdom, a single language - completely opposed to that of the composite monarchy defended by the Austrians that admitted various "homelands" or political communities with their respective rights and freedoms.

The third pillar of the " new academic plant" was the Royal Academy of History, officially created in 1738 and whose members also received the privilege of "servants of the royal house". Its origin, like that of the Royal Spanish Academy, was a private gathering that emerged around 1735 that met in the house of the lawyer Julián de Hermosilla, in which not only questions of history were dealt with, which is why it was initially called the Universal Academy, but soon it was oriented exclusively to the history and geography of Spain. Some of its members tried to purify " the history of Spain of inventions based on false legends and chronicles", although this critical work had to be compatible with sacred history. The first official support, specifically from the king's confessor, was received the following year when the academy met at the Royal Library.However, the early historiographical activities of the Academy were unfortunate, such as the publication of Francisco Xavier de la Huerta y Vega's España Primitiva, which was based on a false 17th-century chronicle, which was denounced by the royal librarian the Illustrated Valencian Gregorio Mayáns who received pressure from the Academies of History and Language to change his criteria, but despite this the work was finally published.

The contribution of the Royal Academy of History to the Bourbon uniformitarian cultural model was even greater than that of the Royal Spanish Academy, since its objective was to create a "dynastic nationalism in the French manner, uniform and centralized around the court of the absolute monarch", which "left no room for any other type of nationalism and as such managed to prevail with relative success in the former Crown of Aragon", although the equally Spanish and Austrian-rooted alternative visions did not disappear, as demonstrated by the foundation in 1729, without official support, of the Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona, ​​heir to the Austrian Academy of the Distrustful at the beginning of the century. Royal recognition would not occur until the reign of Ferdinand VI.

Foreign policy after Utrecht-Rastatt (1714-1746)

After the signing of the Treaties of Utrecht-Rastatt, Felipe V, his second wife Isabel de Farnesio and the minister Julio Alberoni put into practice an aggressive foreign policy towards Italy that sought to "review" what was agreed in Utrecht —trying to recover the Italian states that were part of the Catholic Monarchy before 1700—and secure the throne of the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany for the newborn Infante Don Carlos. Thus in July 1717 the Spanish conquest of Sardinia took place and in the summer of the following year a new much larger expedition conquered the kingdom of Sicily.

These conquests provoked the War of the Quadruple Alliance in which Felipe V was defeated by the four guarantor powers of the status quo that emerged from the Peace of Utrecht: the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of France, the Austrian Empire and the United Provinces. Felipe V, who got rid of his minister Giulio Alberoni, was forced to sign in The Hague in February 1720 the withdrawal of the troops from Sardinia and Sicily, the renunciation of any right over the former Spanish Netherlands, now under sovereignty of Emperor Charles VI, and to reiterate his resignation from the Crown of France. The only thing Felipe V obtained in return was the promise that the succession to the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Piacenza and the Duchy of Tuscany would fall to the Infante Carlos, the first son he had had with Isabel de Farnese.

To finalize the agreements of the Treaty of The Hague, the Congress of Cambrai (1721-1724) met, which was a new failure for Felipe V because he did not achieve his great objective —that the duchies of Parma and Tuscany passed to his son Carlos— and Nor did Gibraltar return to Spanish sovereignty, because Felipe V rejected the British offer to exchange it for a part of Santo Domingo or Florida. Nor did the rapprochement that he had initiated with the Monarchy of France bear fruit because it finally backed down on the arranged marriage between the future Louis XV and the daughter of Felipe V and Isabel de Farnese, the infanta Mariana Victoria de Borbón.However, the arranged marriage between the Prince of Asturias Luis and Luisa Isabel de Orleans, daughter of the Duke of Orleans regent of France until Louis XV came of age, did take place.

When it was already evident that the Congress of Cambrai was going to suppose a new failure of the dynastic policy of Felipe V, Johan Willem Ripperdá, a Dutch nobleman who had arrived in Madrid in 1715 as an extraordinary ambassador of the United Provinces and who, after abjuring Protestantism had placed himself at the service of the monarch, earning his trust, he convinced the king and queen to send him to Vienna, committing himself to reaching an agreement with Emperor Charles VI that would put an end to the rivalry between the two for the Crown of Spain and that would allow that Prince Carlos could become the new Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany. Ultimately, what Ripperdá wanted was to dismantle the Quadruple Alliance through an approximation between Felipe V and Carlos VI.

In the court of Vienna, the approach to Felipe V was seen with caution given the critical situation he was going through, that in January 1724 he had abdicated in favor of his son Luis I and when he died a few months later he had regained the throne thanks to the intervention of Queen Elizabeth of Farnese. The imperial ambassador in Madrid, Dominik von Königsegg-Rothenfels, informed Vienna of the " imbecility of the king which from time to time incapacitates him for government ". Felipe V's mental imbalance —which some authors have related to a bipolar disorder— was accompanied by an almost pathological religious obsession with salvation that he believed he could only achieve in an environment of total tranquility.

During the year he was in Vienna, Ripperdá reached four agreements, two of them secret, which are known as the Treaty of Vienna of 1725. They definitively put an end to the War of the Spanish Succession when Emperor Charles VI renounced his rights to the Crown of Spain and recognize Felipe V as king of Spain and the Indies, and in return he recognized the emperor's sovereignty over the possessions of Italy and the Netherlands that had corresponded to the Hispanic Monarchy. In addition, Philip V granted amnesty to the Austrians and recognized the titles that Archduke Charles III would have granted them and granted important commercial advantages to the Ostend Company, and in exchange Vienna offered its support to Philip V so that he could recover Gibraltar and Menorca. As for the rights over the Duchies of Parma,​

When the kings of Spain learned that the monarchies of Great Britain and France were opposed to what was agreed in Vienna —on September 3 they had signed the Treaty of Hannover together with the kingdom of Prussia— they dismissed Ripperdá and imprisoned him in May of 1726 —although he managed to escape and fled from Spain—, although it seems that the decisive fact in his dismissal was that the emperor did not finally give his consent to the marriage of his two daughters with the Spanish infantes Carlos and Felipe and that he was not willing to enter at war with Great Britain for supporting Felipe V so that he could recover Gibraltar or Menorca.

Great Britain deployed its fleet in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, capturing Spanish ships without a declaration of war. As the claims before the government of London for the seizures by British ships that the Madrid court considered pirates had no effect, the new group of advisers who had replaced Ripperdà supported Philip V's decision to conquer Gibraltar. Thus, in January 1727, the Spanish ambassador to the court of George I presented a document in which he considered article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht by which Gibraltar was ceded to be worthless, alleging breaches of the same by Great Britain —it had occupied lands in the isthmus, had not guaranteed the maintenance of Catholicism and had allowed the presence of Jews and Muslims—. The matter was taken to Parliament by Prime Minister Robert Walpole and there he promised that Gibraltar would never be handed over without the express consent of Parliament. The final vote held on January 17, 1727, in which Parliament ratified British sovereignty over Gibraltar, led to the declaration of war against the Spanish Monarchy.​

The second siege of Gibraltar – the first took place in 1705 – was unsuccessful due to the superiority of the British fleet defending the Rock, which prevented the infantry from launching an assault after the artillery had bombarded the British fortifications. In June 1727 an armistice was reached but it was not until March 1728 that Felipe V —pressured by the King of France, the Emperor and the Pope to put an end to the conflict with Great Britain and who promised to hold the Congress of Soissons— did not return. to recognize the validity of article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht in the so-called Treaty of El Pardo, at a time when his mental illness worsened.

The Congress of Soissons did not produce any results, but the "three-way" negotiations between the Monarchies of Spain, Great Britain and France did, which culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Seville on November 9, 1729. In that treaty Felipe V finally obtained what he and his wife Isabel de Farnesio had been longing for since 1715, that their eldest son, the infante Carlos, occupy the throne of the Duchy of Parma and the Duchy of Tuscany —which was also recognized by the emperor in another treaty signed later. " What is striking is that in August 1731 a British fleet arrived in Cadiz to accompany Don Carlos to his destination From him ".The Spanish fleet that brought Don Carlos to Naples was used shortly after, in June 1732, in the reconquest of Oran, a North African stronghold that had been lost in 1708.

The failure of the alliance with the Austrian Empire and the signing of the Treaty of Seville led to a rapprochement with the Monarchy of France that culminated in the signing of the so-called First Family Pact on November 7, 1733 by the representatives of Felipe V de Borbón and Louis XV of Bourbon. The immediate reason was the outbreak the previous month of the War of the Polish Succession, in which the French Monarchy supported the new Polish king Stanislaus I Leszczynski, married to a daughter of Louis XV, while the Austrian and Russian empires supported Augustus III of Saxony in his aspirations to the throne of Poland. The Spanish intervention in the war focused on Italy and a Spanish army landed in the Duchy of Parma, led by the Infante Don Carlos, conquered the Kingdom of Naples, that from Utrecht was under Austrian sovereignty, and there he was proclaimed as the new king with the title of Carlos VII of Naples. Shortly after, the island of Sicily, Austrian since 1718, was occupied and remained under the sovereignty of the new Bourbon king, and the Austrians who lived in the two kingdoms joined the Austrian exile in Vienna. Zenón de Somodevilla, organizer of the naval forces that supported the land attack, received the title of Marquis of Ensenada.​

The War of the Polish Succession ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vienna in November 1738 between the King of France and the Austrian Emperor, which Felipe V joined in April of the following year. According to the terms of the treaty, Augustus III was the new king of Poland, while, among other agreements, the infant Carlos de Bourbon was recognized as king of Naples and Sicily, although the Duchy of Tuscany passed to the Duke of Lorraine, since the The Duchy of Lorraine had passed to the ousted Stanislaus I, and the Duchy of Parma to the Emperor.

The peace reached in 1738 was short-lived because in the following two years the Bourbon Monarchy was involved in two new wars that took place simultaneously. In October 1739, King George II of Great Britain declared war on Felipe V due to the conflicts that arose between British merchant ships and Spanish warships in the Caribbean and those derived from the delimitation of the borders of the two colonial empires. in that area. In Spain it was known as the War of the Seat due to the abuse that Great Britain had made of the clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht referring to the ship of permission and the seat of blacks. In Great Britain instead it was known as the "War of the Ear of Jenkins"​

The second war, which overlapped with the first, was the War of the Austrian Succession caused by the conflict that arose after the death of Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire - Archduke Charles of the War of the Spanish Succession - in October 1740 because some European states headed by the Monarchy of France and the Kingdom of Prussia refused to recognize his daughter Maria Theresa I of Austria as successor, and supported the rights of Charles Albert of Bavaria married to a daughter of the emperor prior to Charles VI, his older brother Joseph I of Austria. The main support that Maria Teresa will find will be Great Britain, in addition to Savoy/Sardinia. The French King Louis XV, for his part, will seek the support of Philip V, which in October 1743 gave birth to the Second Family Pact. In the same Louis XV,​

Felipe V died in 1746 in the middle of the war and his successor Fernando VI, helped by the Marquis of Ensenada, began peace negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Aachen. The terms of the treaty that put an end to the war of Austrian succession were fundamentally agreed upon by the representatives of George II of Great Britain and Louis XV of France, and they included the old aspiration of Philip V and his second wife, Elizabeth of Farnese: the infante don Carlos was confirmed as sovereign of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, while his younger brother, Felipe de Borbón, finally obtained the dukedoms of Parma and Plasencia. In addition, the "War of the Seat" ended "in exchange for the extension for five years of the seat of blacks agreed in the Treaty of Utrecht.

Economic, social and cultural problems

Moderate population growth

The Spanish population in the 18th century went from about 8 million in 1700 to 11.5 in 1797 (the year of the Godoy census). This moderate increase in the population (an average of 0.4% per year) followed the so-called "old-type demographic model" in which both birth rates and deaths were high. The key to growth was that mortality, although it continued to be very high (38 per thousand), fell below the birth rate (40/42 per thousand) due to the lower incidence of catastrophic deaths as a result of the disappearance of the plague, although other epidemic diseases continued, such as smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, etc. Subsistence crises and famines also receded, although they did not disappear, thanks to "the extension of the cultivated area, the improvement in crops,​

However, the final balance of the demographic advances achieved in the eighteenth century in terms of mortality was poor, since infant mortality still affected 25% of those born in the first year of life and life expectancy only increased two years compared to to the previous century, going from 25 to 27 years.Thus, throughout the 18th century, four moments of important demographic crisis are noted: that of 1706-1710, in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession, in which the effects of war, famine and epidemic coincided; that of 1762-1765, at the beginning of the reign of Carlos III, in which the famine affected above all inland Spain; that of the 1980s when smallpox and malaria, called "tertian fevers" at the time, affected one million people, causing the death of nearly 100,000; and that of 1798-99 caused by an "almost general" epidemic of "tertians and putrid fevers" that mainly affected Catalonia, Aragon and the two Castillas.

The relative backwardness of agriculture

Agriculture continued to be the main economic activity —the rural population made up of farmers and those who combined other activities with the cultivation of the land accounted for close to 90% of the total—.In the 18th century, agriculture experienced a certain growth thanks to the introduction of some technical improvements or the introduction of new crops, such as corn or potatoes, but above all it was based on the expansion of the cultivated area, which it meant putting marginal lands into cultivation with diminishing returns, and not the introduction of technical improvements that would increase the average yields per unit of sown area —in fact, they did not increase throughout the 1700s. For this reason, in the long run, production tended to decrease in the face of a population that continued to increase, which caused famines and subsistence crises.Only in some "provinces", such as Valencia and Catalonia, there were notable trials of agricultural renovation, linked above all to the development of bush crops such as the vine. Likewise, in Galicia and the Cantabrian Sea, the introduction of corn, first, and of the potato, later, supposed an increase of the agrarian productivity.

The reasons for the agrarian backwardness were denounced by many enlightened people, but the reformist governments did not dare to put into practice the necessary measures to correct them because they would have meant questioning the Old Regime itself - the long discussion about the "Agrarian Law" that lasted more than twenty years and that it was not finally specified in any legislative measure, is good proof of this.Cultivating the land is still far from the perfection to which it can be so easily led. What nation is there that, to the affront of its wisdom and opulence, and in the midst of what the arts of luxury and pleasure have advanced, does not present many testimonies of the backwardness of such an essential and necessary profession? What nation is there in which there is not much land that is either totally uncultivated or very imperfectly cultivated; many who, due to lack of irrigation, drainage or clearing, are condemned to perpetual sterility; many lost for the fruit to which Nature calls them and destined for harmful or useless productions, wasting time and work? What nation is there that does not have much to improve in the instruments, much to advance in the methods, much to correct in the work and rustic operations of its farm? In one word:

Report of the Agrarian Law File, 1794

The main reasons that would explain the Spanish "agrarian blockade" were the following:

• that a good part of the cultivated lands were "linked" —majorazgos of the nobility— or "amortized" by the "dead hands" —fundamentally the ecclesiastical institutions and the city councils— placed them outside the land market and thus enterprising people, who had bought them to obtain more yields from them, could not do so, and the lands that were for sale —as they were neither "linked" nor "amortized"— had, for that very reason, an excessively high price..
• that the income produced by the agrarian activity was not reinvested in the countryside but was mostly destined to defray the enormous expenses of the nobility and the clergy, thanks to the fact that these two privileged classes were the ones that held the "property" of around of 60% of the land, and thanks to other mechanisms of appropriation of the agrarian surplus, such as tithes in the case of the Church or "jurisdictional rights" in the case of the nobility.
• that the agrarian surplus that remained in the hands of the direct cultivator was scarce, which prevented him from introducing improvements that could increase yields. This was especially evident in the widespread case of short-term leases, since each renewal—generally every six years—almost invariably increased the rent to be paid to the landlord. Only long-term leases would incentivize the direct grower to innovate.

As for livestock, transhumance lived a period of relative prosperity, although its decline began in the 1970s, due to economic factors —the rise in the price of pasture and wages while the price of wool remained stable—and political—the reduction of the privileges of the Mesta for the benefit of farmers, allowing the clearing of pastures, meadows, and ravines.

The limited development of manufacturing: the guilds

The concern for the promotion of manufacturing, of "industry", was a constant among the reformist governments and among the enlightened ones, but from an essentially mercantilist point of view, since the objective pursued was to prevent the exit of cash abroad through the manufacture within the country of products imported from abroad.For this reason, the reformist policy focused on the protectionist measures of basic sectors —reserving the iron of Vascongadas from the exclusive to be taken to America; preference for Spanish-made ships to sail to America—and in the promotion of the Royal Factories, created with the sponsorship of the State with the double objective of substituting imports of foreign manufactures and applying technological knowledge of which the country was lacking An example of all this, among others, is the foundation in 1746 of the Real Sitio de San Fernando, as a textile factory, which involved the construction of a cloth factory, a new town for its workers and the rational organization of its surrounding territory, in accordance with to the needs of the factory and the new population, which was intended to be a "model" according to the illustrated canons. However, at the end of the century, most of these establishments were only maintained for reasons of prestige and not for economic criteria, since their production costs were very high due to the fact that they continued to work with traditional techniques. Many of them only survived thanks to subsidies from the Royal Treasury.​

According to historian Roberto Fernández, "many of these [royal] factories were born in the heat of state needs. Some were due to military imperatives. Such is the case of shipbuilding in the three large arsenals (El Ferrol, Cádiz and Cartagena) or the steel factories of Liérganes and La Cavada dedicated to providing war material to the armed forces. Others arose thinking of obtaining resources for the public treasury. Of this nature were the tobacco factory in Seville or the card factory in Malaga and Madrid. At times, attempts were made to meet the demand for luxury items generated by the wealthy classes without having to depend on foreigners, thus, tapestry manufacturing facilities appeared in Santa Bárbara, crystals in San Ildefonso or porcelain in Buen Retiro.. By last,The State also thought of covering the textile needs of articles of popular consumption by setting up factories for wool (San Fernando de Henares, Brihuega, Guadalajara), silk (Talavera de la Reina), lingerie (San Ildefonso and León) or cotton (Avila).​

However, most of the manufacturing production was carried out by artisan workshops grouped into guilds which, although they were criticized because they hindered the introduction of technological innovations that would increase productivity, maintained the monopoly of their sector of activity in the cities —which constituted his limited market—and his privileges were hardly altered by the reformist governments, since his policy in this field was maintained between the "enthusiastic defenders" of the guilds, such as Capmany or Francisco Romá y Rosell, and the "implacable detractors", such as Jovellanos. In other words, they chose to maintain the guilds given their advantages in maintaining good social and political order, but at the same time, following the "staunch reformists" such as Campomanes and Cabarrús, they tried to put an end to their stagnation so that their production would cease to be scarce., expensive and of poor quality and open to technological innovations. This is how Campomanes valued the work of the guilds in his famous Speech on the promotion of popular industry :In craft guilds there is very little teaching. Lack of drawing in apprentices, public school in each trade and prizes for those who advance or improve the profession. Everything is traditional and of little beauty in the trades, usually. (...)

The promotion of the arts [trades] is incompatible with the imperfect subsistence of guilds: they make trades watertight [prevent free access], and by virtue of being unique and exclusive, they do not take the trouble to work hard in the arts, because they know well that the public must necessarily look for them, and does not stop to discern their works.Those who have a fondness for such trades cannot exercise them privately without subjecting themselves to the guild; and that retracts many, who would perhaps work better in the houses; and this concurrence would cheapen the maneuver, and would stimulate its perfection

they were an obstacle to freedom of manufacture... In the face of these criticisms, some voices of undoubted stature were raised, such as those of Francisco Romá y Rosell and, above all, that of Antonio de Capmany. In essence, the Catalan thinker believed that although it was true that union prices were less competitive, it was no less true that corporations had known how to prevent the decline of the arts and the social future of manual workers. The virtues of manufacturing freedom were yet to be seen and its first symptoms in Barcelona [where some mechanized factories were already operating] pointed towards the proletarianization and disintegration of the artisan community". The Catalan thinker believed that although it was true that union prices were less competitive, it was no less true that the corporations had known how to prevent the decline of the arts and the social future of manual workers. The virtues of manufacturing freedom remained to be seen and the first symptoms of it in Barcelona [where some mechanized factories were already operating] pointed towards the proletarianization and disintegration of the artisan community." The Catalan thinker believed that although it was true that union prices were less competitive, it was no less true that the corporations had known how to prevent the decline of the arts and the social future of manual workers. The virtues of manufacturing freedom remained to be seen and the first symptoms of it in Barcelona [where some mechanized factories were already operating] pointed towards the proletarianization and disintegration of the artisan community."​

Only in Catalonia did a modern industry emerge in the cotton sector. Entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, who had made a fortune in the aguardiente or indiana weaving sector —in 1784 there were already 72 "factories" with more than twelve looms each in the Barcelona-Mataró area—, began to import towards the end of the century English spinning machines ( jennys, water-frames and, later, mules jennys ) that gave rise to the first proper factories such as that of Joan Vilaregut in Martorell, near Barcelona, ​​which around 1807 worked with 18 English machines moved by force hydraulic.

As Enrique Giménez has pointed out, "the Catalan case was an exception in a manufacturing reality dominated at the end of the Old Regime, by a rickety market, with a low level of consumption; by a lack of incentives for investment, which continued to be attracted by the earth; and by a general lack of technological innovations".

The lack of articulation of a "national market"

The reduced domestic trade was due to the low purchasing power of the peasantry due to the limited income that remained after paying the portions due to the lords, the Church and the Crown, and the consequent self-consumption that they practiced, since the The peasant himself produced part of his own clothing and most of the work or household utensils, and the little that was not his own, he bought from local artisans. Foreign visitors and travelers recorded the limited Spanish internal trade, like the Frenchman Jean-François de Bourgoing in his Nouveau voyage en Espagne, ou tableau de l'état actuel de cette monarchie, published in Paris in 1789:Hardly any other trade is seen than that of wines and oils which, in skins loaded on mules or donkeys, pass from one province to another; that of grains, which, also making use of the exclusive help of beasts of burden, will remedy the shortage of another neighboring region with the leftovers from one region, and, above all, that of wool, which, from the sheepfolds and laundries scattered throughout the two Castillas, take the route to Bilbao, Santander and other ports on the northern coast. The materials necessary for the factories, the merchandise that, from the borders or the ports, pass into the interior of the kingdom, are almost always transported by the same slow means, and, consequently, costly.

There were other obstacles to the articulation of the "national market" that were the object of attention of the authorities, although with limitations:

• Eliminate internal customs between the old kingdoms, an objective achieved since 1717 with the exception of the kingdom of Navarra and the exempt Basque provinces —the attempt to suppress the customs of the Vascongadas, taking them to the sea, caused a popular revolt in August 1718—. However, they were not so successful with internal tolls —portazgos, pontazgos and barcajes— which remained practically unchanged as a large part of them were in the hands of the titled nobility.
• Abolition of the grain tax (decreed in 1765) with the intention of liberalizing grain traffic, which would end up causing a rapid rise in prices that gave rise to the "Esquilache riot". However, the state and local regulations that regulated trade were not abolished, nor were the fiscal monopolies of tobacco and salt tobacconists abolished, despite the fact that some economists and scholars, such as Miguel de Gándara in his Notes on the good and evil of Spain published in 1762, continued to defend the abolition of all these obstacles that limited the "freedom of trade":

Freedom is the soul of commerce; it is the growth of all the prosperity of the State, it is the dew that waters the fields; it is the beneficent sun that fertilizes monarchies; trade, in short, is the universal irrigation of everything. Its opposite are the tobacconists, the walls and rates. As long as there were rates, the fruits and species of things would be reduced. Liberty and hope make men laborious; oppression, taxes and mistrust make the most industrious lazy. This is the nature of human nature

• Improvements in the road network: some 1,200 kilometers of "highways" were built on the radial network that had Madrid as its center; a series of interregional "highways" were started and the construction of more than 700 bridges and numerous canals dedicated to stimulating agrarian commercialization was undertaken (Manzanares, Imperial de Aragón, Castilla). However, despite the relative progress that all this effort entailed, the road network continued to show significant deficiencies.

The difficulties of trade with the Indies

Trade with the American Empire —which constituted the fundamental part of Spanish foreign trade— was based on the monopoly principle —the American colonies could only trade with the mother country— and on the division of labor: the mother country, Spain, it exported manufactured products —fabrics, wine and spirits,...– and in exchange it imported raw materials —metals, sugar, tobacco, cocoa...—. That was what the "colonial pact" consisted of.

But the inability of the Spanish economy to offer manufactured products at competitive prices and in sufficient quantities created problems in the colonies, forcing them to increasingly resort to smuggling products from other countries, especially Great Britain.An attempt was made to alleviate this situation, firstly, with the creation of "privileged companies" —such as the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas, for Venezuela— to include marginal American regions and the Philippines in trade; and above all with the decree of 1778 that put an end to the monopoly of Cádiz —which had replaced Seville in 1717— for trade with America by allowing other Spanish ports —Barcelona, ​​Malaga, Alicante, Cartagena, Seville, Gijón, La Coruña, Palma de Mallorca, Tortosa, Almería and Santa Cruz de Tenerife— could trade directly with "Las Indias" —although Cádiz continued to control 2/3 of the colonial trade—.

However, the Decree of 1778 had limited effects since the new authorized ports continued to be, to a large extent, like Cádiz, mere re-export centers of manufactures produced in other European countries, which in exchange imported American raw materials and silver. Hence, the trade balance with Europe was clearly in deficit (it was imported more than it was exported, and was balanced by the outflow of cash), and also that commercial transactions were dominated by foreign trading houses installed in the Mediterranean and Atlantic ports., interested above all in trade with America.

The survival of the privileges and values ​​of the nobility

The Bourbon governments never questioned noble privileges and the nobility did not suffer any loss. Quite the contrary, the number of noble titles increased, a policy that the Bourbons carried out in order to reward subjects who stood out in their service to the Crown and which also provided a good income to the Treasury for each title granted. Thus, throughout the century, the titled nobility grew by 878 members, reaching a total figure of 1,323 by the year 1800. Half of the new titles were granted during the reign of Felipe V, who thus rewarded those who had supported him during the War of the Spanish Succession.

However, the number of nobles throughout the eighteenth century decreased because the Bourbon governments, especially during the second half of the century, expurgated the nobility from the tens of thousands of hidalgos who lived in precarious economic conditions far removed from the that supposedly demanded their high social rank, noblemen who were also socially very discredited. As the enlightened Campomanes pointed out, they were people who did not meet the two principles of nobility, " seniority of lineage " and " possession of property ". Thus, it went from 722,764 nobles in 1768 —which represented 7.2% of the population— to 402,059 in 1797, 3.8%, thanks to the demand for safer and more reliable tests for those who claimed to have the status of hidalgo.The policy regarding the nobility of the most enlightened governments of the second half of the century focused on its reform to place it at the height of the times and adapt it to the economic and mentality changes that were taking place, with the aim of creating a modern nobility capable of participating in improving the economy and leading society by exemplifying "noble virtues". For this, the governments opened the nobility to those who deserved it and could renew it, such as certain rich men or characters of recognized intellectual or political worth. The enlightened Cabarrús encouraged the nobility to come to his estates frequently —as long as the court service left them free— because in this way they vivify “the provinces with their presence,In this sense, it is worth remembering the measures aimed at making work compatible with the nobility, especially the Royal Decree of March 18, 1783, declaring honest professions and commerce.

The nobility in general, but especially those most attached to their privileges and traditional values, was the object of criticism and satire by the enlightened, such as José Cadalso who wrote the following in his Cartas Marruecas :Urging my Christian friend to explain to me what hereditary nobility is, after telling me a thousand things that I did not understand, showing me pictures that seemed magical, and figures that I had at the whim of some insane painter, and after laughing with me at many things that he said were very respectable in the world, he concluded with these voices, interrupted by as many other bursts of laughter: Hereditary nobility is the vanity that I base on the fact that eight hundred years before my birth someone died who was called as I am, and it was useful man, although I am useless for everything

The ultimate problem was that throughout the 18th century, thanks to the spread of enlightened ideas, more value was being given to "merit" than to "lineage" when determining the position of each group in the social hierarchy. Thus in the newspaper El Censor it could be read :Who makes an opulent, illustrious and respectable nation are not its hidalgos, but its capable and active merchants and artists, and its great writers. A noble without merit is like a magnificent tomb. He has the same titles and arms: and inside he is either hollow or full of stink

The regeneration of the clergy

Due to their economic, political and spiritual power, the clergy and those who were in their service who straddled the lay state and the ecclesiastical state —sacristans, acolytes, donors, servants, "relatives" of the Inquisition, etc.— they constituted a "state" within another state. In the middle of the 18th century there were 165,000 ecclesiastics in Spain, which represented 2% of the population, of which 67,000 belonged to the secular clergy and 98,000 to the regular clergy. By the end of the century their number had decreased to 148,000, although there had been an increase in the secular clergy —71,000— while the regular clergy, especially women, had been reduced —in 1797 they were 77,000—. But despite the growth of the secular clergy in 1797 there were still some 3,000 empty parishes, providing little income.

Some clerics and most of the enlightened denounced the imbalance in the distribution of the clergy in Spain, so there were neglected parishes, while there were tens of thousands of members of the regular clergy and those who benefited. This was highlighted, for example, by Cabarrús:I open the Spanish census made in 1788 and find that we have 17,000 parishioners and 15,000 parish priests, this is 2,000 less than what is needed. But for this we have 47,000 beneficiaries and 48,000 religious; so that, since there are many parishes without a pastor, better distributing our current priests could have seven in each of them. It is evident, therefore, that there is an enormous excess and that, without delving too deeply into this fatal wound, it can be attributed to the excessive ease with which religious orders and chaplaincies or blood benefices are recruited...

The reformist policy regarding the clergy focused on creating a Church subject to the power of the Monarchy in the temporal and on "regenerating" the behavior of its members so that they could better fulfill their pastoral mission and help in the task of reforming the country —for example, Cabarrús recommended that the clergy join the Societies of Friends of the Country—. Thus, they wanted to form a less numerous clergy, well distributed throughout the territory, better prepared pastorally and dedicated to the work of the " cure of souls " and the " help of the poor ". Jovellanos considered the members of the clergy " fathers and instructors of their towns ". That is why the priority concern was the parish priests and the criticism focused on the regular clergy and the beneficiaries.​

However, the measures taken by the Bourbon governments aimed at achieving the regeneration of the clergy were limited in scope: as for the regular clergy, for example, an order of the Council of Castile in 1762, under the reign of Carlos III, restricted the number from religious to those who could maintain themselves with dignity within a convent; As for the secular, an attempt was made to improve the pastoral and intellectual preparation, especially of the parish priests with the creation of seminaries and, in addition, an attempt was made to increase the income of the rural parishes so that they could be occupied, with relative success.

Social inequalities in cities

What in the 19th century will be called "bourgeoisie" included in a broad sense all those non-nobles who carried out non-manual work in any sector —commerce, finance, manufacturing, services, and also agriculture (the so-called "rich farmers"—, although in a restricted sense it referred to those who were dedicated to trade and/or finance on a large scale (the business bourgeoisie), grouped in the Consulates of Commerce. Below them would be found the intermediate groups, assimilated to the concept of bourgeoisie in the broad sense or petty bourgeoisie, and that would be represented by retail merchants, guild masters, rich farmers, Indian manufacturers, notaries, lawyers, surgeons, high officials, teachers, etc.

The number of members of the "business bourgeoisie" was small —in the 1797 census there were 6,824 people— but its economic importance was unquestionable, whose main activity was wholesale trading and/or loans, but whose profits were invested in various businesses such as urban leases; leasing of taxes and manorial rights; army supply contracts; censuses and royal vouchers; insurance; land from which to obtain income, etc.

In the cities, the largest labor sector was made up of the population that carried out the multitude of trades destined to supply the local market, especially those that had to do with housing, clothing and food. Most of the artisans were integrated into guilds —one for each trade and locality—, which during the 18th century maintained most of their privileges, despite the criticism they were subjected to by many of the enlightened. The 1797 Census registered 279,592 artisans for all of Spain, of which 220,132 were masters. By trades, there were 42,190 shoemakers, 38,150 tailors, 33,310 carpenters, 17,956 bartenders and 12,953 blacksmiths.

The plight of small farmers and day laborers

The peasantry constituted a very heterogeneous social category that encompassed groups that were quite different from each other, from well-to-do peasants who accumulated land, buying or renting it, and who on many occasions resorted to wage labor to carry out a good part of the agricultural tasks, to small peasants. who owned modest plots of land, mostly rented, which only allowed them to subsist and often had to offer themselves as day laborers. On the lowest rung were the landless peasants or laborers, who according to the 1797 census constituted almost half of the peasantry —805,235 out of a total of 1,824,353—, and who lived from seasonal agricultural work, which they did for the farmers. owners or for the lords, and of communal lands,A good part of the peasantry lived in places of lordship and had to deliver a part of the harvest or a cash census to the lord as holder of eminent domain of the land. Some economists denounced that these loads were the ones that explained the misery of the peasants of certain areas, such as those of the Jalón river valley :Because almost all the places that compose it [la fertile plain of Jalón] are stately, where the neighbors, in addition to the increased contribution they pay, are overwhelmed with the intolerable weight of treudos [censuses in kind], which generally do not go down of the eighth of the grains, without counting other feudal vexations and prohibitive rights with which the lords exercise patience and suck almost all the substance of the neighborhood

The era (1786-87), Francisco de Goya.

The critical situation of day laborers in Andalusia —who at the end of the 18th century constituted 70% of the peasant population— was also denounced by some enlightened government officials such as Pablo de Olavide :They are people who live by their arms, without tools or cattle, with great unhappiness. They only work when the administrator of the farmhouses needs hands and help. They go almost naked, they live for the bread and gazpacho they are given, they sleep on the ground, so with the rains and bad weather, many die of hunger and cold. I calculate that thousands enter Seville in the winter, since half the year they are day laborers and the other half beggars.

However, reformist policies to improve the situation of the poor peasantry and day laborers were practically non-existent. As the historian Roberto Fernández has pointed out, "in reality, what seems to have worried (and often frightened) the reformist governments was the existence of a mass of day laborers and/or small farmers that could become a focus of social and political instability., especially in times of difficulties, a possibility that the events of the Esquilache Mutiny came to reaffirm in 1766. In this context, the resolution on the freedom of agricultural wages adopted in 1767 must be understood so that the municipal organisms, controlled by the powerful, do not were the ones who manipulated the wage rate of day laborers... The successive measures approved from 1766 on the preference of day laborers in the distribution of own and vacant lots should also be understood in this way. Although at first they seemed to have some effect in certain areas, from 1770 it was the farmers ofone or more yuntas that gradually took over the plots put up for distribution... The failure of this measure was the beginning of the gradual awareness of many Andalusian braceros".

The problem of the marginalized

Economically rooted marginalization included all those groups and people who lived on the edge of subsistence and social marginality —and even delinquency—: vagrants and beggars, people without a fixed address or occupation —on many occasions day laborers without work—who populated the outskirts of the cities or who went along the roads in search of work and food, and who often lived on alms; or the "solemnly poor" - orphans, elderly, sick and widows without resources - who had to resort to public or ecclesiastical charity.

In the case of vagrants and beggars, the measures adopted by the reformist governments were of a repressive nature, since they were the main objective of the forced levies; in the case of the poor, orphans or the disabled, they were given shelter in asylums, hospices and foundling homes.

The reformist policies also confronted another type of ethnic marginality, that of the gypsies. They were a group of nomadic life, without physical roots in a specific place, who lived according to their own customs and laws, which always aroused suspicion among the population due to their attitudes that was shared by the rulers. The policy applied "was one of repression and violence to reduce the gypsies, settle them in known territories and annul their culture for the benefit of the dominant one. Whether it was Ensenada, Aranda or Campomanes, the objective was to bring a multitude of people infamous and noxious. The prisons, the mines of Almadén, the arsenals were places of frequent destination for the gypsies".

As soon as the War of the Spanish Succession was over, they were already the object of repressive measures such as the one issued in 1717 so that they were registered under penalty of 6 years in the galleys for men and 100 lashes for women who refused and for them to abandon their trades. traditions, their customs, their clothes and their language. In addition, they were forced to live in a specific area without being able to leave it. These measures were reiterated several times, which is an indication that they were not complied with. In the Order of 1745 signed by Felipe V, it was said:"... That all the gypsies, who live in the cities and towns of the allotment, return within fifteen days to the places of their domicile; penalty of being declared, after this term, by public bandits, and that, by the very fact of being found with weapons or without them outside the limits of their neighborhood, it is lawful to make weapons on them, and take their lives...

Much harsher still was the order of the Marquis of Ensenada in 1748, already under the reign of Fernando VI, and which is known as the Great Roundup, since between 9,000 and 12,000 gypsies were arrested. Men and children over the age of seven were sent to work in the mines and in the arsenals, while women and younger children were dispersed to various locations. Finally, under Carlos III, in the Pragmatics of 1783, access to any trade was offered to any gypsy who established his domicile in one place and abandoned his customs within 90 days. Those who did not accept would be marked with a fiery seal and could be executed if they repeated. In this way, more than 10,000 gypsies were able to settle, but without integrating with the rest of the population. "As in the case of other minorities,​

The ideas of the Enlightenment make their way

Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, accompanied by his faithful squire Martín Sarmiento, had been creating in his works the breeding ground to combat superstitious ideas. From the Court itself, Campomanes and others proposed economic reforms to adapt to the new situation. Together with these movements, the Spanish universities began to imitate the Sevillian one, whose reform had been undertaken by the enlightened Pablo de Olavide, and soon the enlightened spirit was sweeping across Spain in the classrooms. The University of Salamanca opposed the government reform, but a renaissance of thought was germinating in its classrooms, as a result of the work of Ramón de Salas y Cortés, which ended in an opposing reform that was ultimately imposed, although without lasting results by the French invasion of 1808.

The extension of scientific and technological knowledge and its practical application not only ran hand in hand with education, but also with a model of encounter between thinkers, intellectuals, religious and scientists that were the Economic Societies of Friends of the Country. The first was founded by a group of Basque nobles in 1774The most important of them was the Royal Economic Society of Madrid, 1775, a city that will be the center and reflection of the new social model. Without distinction of classes, these societies welcomed all sectors in the common desire to seek the economic development of the regions where they were established: new cultivation techniques, trade schools, dissemination of mechanics and production. Carlos III was the main promoter of these societies and the sharing of their knowledge. They are the first open assemblies and the embryo of future political meetings. Among others, the Royal Spanish Academy, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and the Academy of History will appear.

The Church in the Enlightenment

The Spanish enlightened had a unique concept of the Catholic Church. On the one hand, they held it responsible for the failure of the rational development of nations; on the other, they did not finish breaking with it, maintaining a relationship that only questioned traditional theology. Thus, against the ecclesiastical authority, they opposed reason and the desire to obtain the happiness of men. For the church they demanded a more austere, more intimate and personal role. This differentiation between the private and public spheres accentuated the principle of separation between the Church itself and the State or the Crown.

The Church was in this period in a moment of questioning the papal authority thanks to the continuous development of the conciliarism theories towards the establishment of independent national churches of Rome. A series of bishops, called Jansenists (although they had very little to do with the doctrines of Jansenio) constituted a group of advanced ideas and supporters of regalism, so that the enlightened political power appointed bishops related to the ideas of modernization. Among them are Félix Torres Amat, Felipe Bertrán (the latter, a disciple of the Mayans, Bishop of Salamanca and Inquisitor General), José Climent or Antonio Tavira Almazán, all of them opposed to the most conservative church and in favor of the pre-eminence of the Pope.

The irruption of the Jesuits with what was called " a relaxed morality ", raised the spirit of certain ecclesiastical sectors against them. Spain was no stranger to this movement. The Jesuits had spread through the universities and educational centers of Spain, France and Portugal mainly. His critical attitude towards the Aristotelian philosophy, the desire to incorporate the new technical knowledge and the extension of his work to all social classes that in part collided with the traditional church, faithful to Rome, but only apparently since the Jesuits have among their vows blind obedience to the papacy. The conservatives carried out a relentless pursuit of innovative ideas, without the instrument of the Inquisition, in the hands of the Jansenists, and an attempt was made to control the work of the Jesuits as missionaries in America, suspected of advocating liberating ideas. The Esquilache Mutiny against the Marquis after the famine of 1766 put the Crown in check, which sought to blame the Jesuits as conspirators in the events. Expelled from Portugal and France, Carlos III found a unique opportunity to also expel them from Spain in 1767 and confiscate their property, supported by Felipe Bertrán. The new ideas of the Enlightenment would have their beginning in these appropriations.

Traditionally the Catholic Church in Spain had played a fundamental role in politics. During the War of Succession, the clergy of Castile supported the Bourbons as if it were a crusade. In compensation, they received from the hand of the Crown large extensions of territory for the government of the bishops and abbots who, as landowners, contributed large sums to the support of the State. At least a fifth of the income originating in the Castilian agricultural economy came from lands governed by the Church. However, the Crown tried to control the Spanish church. Pope Clement XI had supported the Habsburgs and the Bourbons did not want to leave the privilege of electing bishops in their hands, so they promoted and protected regalism in the church. A) Yes,

The reign of Ferdinand VI (1746-1759)

The political project

Fernando VI and the ministers with whom he surrounded himself, including the Marquis of Ensenada, Secretary of the Treasury, of War and of the Navy and the Indies, and José de Carvajal y Lancaster, Secretary of State, dedicated their efforts to putting A political project is underway based on maintaining the neutrality of the Monarchy in European affairs —which meant, among other things, putting an end to the intervention in Italian affairs that had been a priority during the reign of his father, Felipe V— to focus on internal reconstruction —which included the restitution of Gibraltar— and on the effective control of the Empire of the Indies, recovering the colonial markets increasingly controlled, legally or illegally, by foreign powers, especially Great Britain.Thus peace was the basic program because, in Ensenada's words, it was the essential assumption :if you look at the money extracted, if you number the people who are consumed, if you try to make taxes tolerable, that trade flourishes, factories are increased and cultivation is not abandoned; if one thinks, as it matters, of advancing the navy and that they take advantage of the Crown and the foreigners do not enjoy the treasures of the Indies, and, finally, if the King is to be, as there is no doubt, the father of his vassals

This political project was specified by the Marquis of Ensenada in an authentic government program presented to the king in 1751 under the title Representación a Fernando VI. Its main objectives were “ peace, the reestablishment of Spain's role in the world concert; obtain the restitution of Gibraltar [ possessed by the English with the utmost dishonor of Spain, he said elsewhere]; maintain the status quo in Italy; regain full control of the Indies and maintain friendship with Portugal ». About the first objective it was said «...may the extensive domains of Your Majesty continue in peace so that they may be populated and healed from the wounds of such incessant and cruel wars, work and misfortunes that he has suffered since the death of Ferdinand the Catholic... », but he did not forget the interests dynastics of the House of Bourbon when he then added that " Your Majesty's most important care at present is to preserve in their estates the King of Naples [his half-brother the Infante Don Carlos] and the Infante Don Felipe [his other half-brother, al front of the Duchy of Parma], without contracting war... ». As for the Indies, Ensenada proposed «return to the Crown the usurpations carried out in America by various sovereigns of Europe [...] and abolish the unseemly laws that France and England imposed on the trade of Spain... », in reference to the seat of blacks and the ship of permission established in the Treaty of Utrecht. The report concluded with the exposition of the means to achieve those objectives: to obtain " competent forces of land and sea to defend and offend as justice dictates, which is what determines peace and war ".

As Rosa Mª Capel and José Cepeda have pointed out, Ensenada was "a politician who sought armed neutrality, but never as a pacifist, because he never was." The following writing clarifies very well what his foreign policy proposal was based on :To propose that Your Majesty have the same land forces as France and the same sea as England would be delirium, because neither the population of Spain allows it, nor the treasury can meet such formidable expenses; but to propose that the army not be increased and that a decent navy not be created would be to want Spain to continue subordinate to France by land and to England by sea...

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In domestic politics, it is also necessary to highlight the Great Roundup of 1749 against the Spanish gypsies, the first attempt at the physical disappearance of a people in Europe. It is estimated that more than 10,000 men, women and children who had not committed any crime were arrested, separated from their families and taken to serve sentences of forced labor in the different arsenals of Spain.

The realizations

Ensenada proposed to increase the troops of the land army and the number of ships of the Navy to reduce the disadvantage that the Monarchy of Spain had, with respect to the British and the French. Thus, the goal was set to have 100 infantry battalions and 100 cavalry squadrons to be deployed in the campaign, to reduce the difference with France, which at that time had 377 battalions and 235 squadrons. Greater still was the effort that had to be made to reduce the distance between the Spanish Armada and the British Armada —33 ships in the former, compared to 288 in the latter—. The goal was set to launch 60 ships in five years, including 43 frigates. However, Ensenada did not reach the figures that he had proposed: between 1754 and 1756, 27 ships of the 60 planned were launched.

In order to obtain the money to finance this rearmament program —in 1751 the Navy and the Army consumed 75% of the expenditure of the Royal Treasury— Ensenada tried to launch an ambitious tax reform plan, which consisted of applying to the Crown of Castile the "only tax" that had been imposed on the extinct Crown of Aragon after its defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession, and which would replace the complex network of old Castilian tributes. However, the project was never put into practice due to the enormous resistance he encountered and that would cost him his downfall as Minister of the Monarchy. In spite of everything, Ensenada introduced some reforms in the Treasury, which, although minor, managed to increase income. The most important was the redemption of about two thirds of the leases to individuals from the collection of taxes —the system that had been used for several centuries—, for which they were managed directly by the king's officials under the orders of the intendants. Likewise, he reduced the taxes called "provincial income" that were levied on consumption —and that Ensenada, like the rest of the enlightened, considered unfair because «every poor man pays them, and few of the rich... »—increasing in their place the "general revenues"—customs duties—because " for the most part [they] are met by foreigners," and certain monopolies, such as that of tobacco « which is founded on vice ».

As for the policy of assuring control and trade in the Indies, two relative successes were achieved. The first was the signing of the Treaty of Limits on January 13, 1750 between the monarchies of Spain and Portugal, which put an end to a long dispute to delimit the American —and Pacific— territories that corresponded to the respective Crowns, thus specifying the imprecise Treaty of Tordesillas signed in the last decade of the 15th century. According to the agreement, the King of Portugal recognized that the Philippines —located to the east of the Tordesillas antemeridian— and the Río de la Plata corresponded to the King of Spain, with which he renounced the disputed colony of Sacramento and the territories that surrounded it (which coincided with present-day Uruguay), while the King of Spain accepted the Portuguese penetration in the Amazon river basin, that it had gone much further west than the meridian set at Tordesillas and that to the south it included the seven Jesuit reductions of Paraguay that the order had created there to protect the Guaraní Indians and that caused a bloody uprising. The difficult application of the Treaty caused it to be annulled in 1761 in the times of Carlos III until a new treaty signed in 1777 concluded the long conflict between the two Crowns.​

The second success of the policy regarding the Indies was the Treaty of Madrid of October 5, 1750 signed by the Secretary of State Carvajal and the ambassador of the Monarchy of Great Britain by which the seat of blacks established in the Treaty was canceled from Utrecht. As compensation, the Spanish Crown undertook to pay the South Sea Company the amount of 100,000 pounds in several installments. However, the slave trade by British traders continued illegally from the island of Jamaica and from Belize, which the British refused to abandon.

The policy of pacification in Italy, also promoted by Carvajal, who at the same time ensured the possession of Parma and Naples for the infantes Felipe and Carlos, respectively, was sealed with the signing of the Treaty of Aranjuez on June 14, 1752 between the Monarchy of Spain and the Austrian Empire, which had under its sovereignty the Duchy of Milan and the Duchy of Tuscany. The signing of the concordat of 1753 with the Holy See is also inscribed in this context, which put an end to the long conflict with the Papacy that began in 1709 when, in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Holy See recognized Archduke Carlos as King of Spain.​

The fall of Ensenada, the rise of Wall and the end of the reign (1754-1759)

The Marquis of Ensenada attempted to curb British smuggling and slave trade in the Caribbean by ordering the Coast Guard to tighten surveillance, leading to conflicts and tensions with British ships and subjects, sometimes caused by overzealousness. of the Spanish ships. So, despite the signing of the Treaty of Madrid, between 1752 and 1753 Hispanic-British relations deteriorated again and Ensenada ordered several naval units to prepare to face the English ships. That decision was taken advantage of by the British ambassador to the Madrid court, supported by the enemies of the Ensenada reforms —such as the tax lessors or the nobles who saw their fiscal privileges threatened if the "single contribution" was put in place— to report to the kingthat his almighty Secretary [Carvajal had recently died, which had strengthened Ensenada's position], without consulting him, is preparing for war against a country with which there is a signed treaty; this contempt for the king will be one of the arguments used to explain his sudden dismissal and banishment of him.

According to Pedro Voltes, the fall from grace of Ensenada before the king was a machination orchestrated by a strange character, whose influence in the court had been difficult to explain for a long time.. It was the King's majordomo, Fernando de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Huéscar who shortly after would inherit the Duchy of Alba, who had been the one who had advised Fernando VI to appoint Ricardo Wall, ambassador in London, as a substitute. of the recently deceased Carvajal —died on April 8, 1754 after a brief illness—. Counting on the support of Wall, he used as an argument to discredit Ensenada before the kings his attachment to the Jesuits, at a time when the rebellion of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay was in full swing, and to France, which according to Wall was only looking for "the oppression and decadence of the Spanish monarchy". The Duke of Huéscar also had the help of the British ambassador Benjamin Keene who, in a report sent to his government, after describing Ensenada as a "weak man, vain and above all arrogant", he affirmed: "the marquis has not wanted to be our friend and for this reason I have lost him, so that he will never be able to restore his business". And he added: «the great projects of Ensenada for the promotion of the Navy have been suspended. No more ships will be built."​

The Marquis of Ensenada was arrested in his own home at dawn on Sunday, July 21, 1754 for allegedly revealing state secrets. But the court did not want to initiate a process for that reason, and he was accused of embezzlement, but finally the process was suspended, apparently thanks to the intercession before the queen of the castrato Farinelli who had direct dealings with the kings, and he was assigned a pension of 12,000 pesos "by mere act of my clemency and by way of alms". During that time many libels circulated against him, which repeated a nickname used before: " In itself nothing ".

The new government team formed after the fall of Ensenada was integrated, in addition to Wall in the Secretary of State and the Office and in the Secretary of the Indies, by Juan Gaona Portocarrero, Count of Valparaíso, in the Secretary of Finance; General Sebastián de Eslava in the War; and Julián de Arriaga in Marina. The main problem that Wall's government had to face was the new war that broke out in Europe in May 1756 and that would be known for its duration as the Seven Years' War. This time the alliances had been reversed, and on one side were the old enemies, the Monarchy of France and the Austrian Empire, and on the other the Monarchy of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Prussia. Both sides immediately pressured the Spanish Monarchy to join one of them.​

But the problems posed by the difficult neutrality of the Spanish monarchy could not be resolved because in the summer of 1758 the queen's death definitively broke the king's physical and mental health. In addition , the problem was aggravated by the fact that his heir to the Spanish throne was the king of another country, his half-brother Carlos de Nápoles, whom his mother —and stepmother of Fernando VI— the second wife of Felipe V Isabel de Farnesio, had in well informed at all times. On August 10, 1759, Ferdinand VI died without having regained his sanity.

The reign of Charles III (1759-1788)

Carlos III was the son of Felipe V and his second wife, Isabel de Farnesio. When he acceded to the throne, after the death without issue of his half-brother Ferdinand VI, he already had government experience since he had been Duke of Parma, first, and King of Naples, later. Precisely to accede to the Spanish Crown, he had to renounce that of the latter kingdom —which passed to his son, the young Fernando IV of Naples— and from there he brought his great collaborator, the Marquis of Esquilache, Secretary of the Treasury. and of War. Later, the Genoese Marquis of Grimaldi replaced Ricardo Wall as Secretary of State, leaving the government in the hands of "Italians", a fact that would become important during the spring riots of 1766.

His reign was characterized by the strong impulse he gave to the reforms inspired by enlightened ideas, provided that they did not endanger his absolute power and the traditional social order, and therefore Carlos III is considered the greatest exponent of the so-called enlightened despotism. or enlightened absolutism. In a letter addressed to his son, the future Carlos IV, Carlos III told her: " Whoever criticizes the acts of government commits a crime, even if he is right. "

To carry out this policy, the king surrounded himself with a team of reformist ministers, among whom José Moñino, Count of Floridablanca, stands out. However, a few years into his reign, Carlos III experienced his worst crisis, which highlighted the contradictions of the reformism that he advocated.

The crisis of the 1960s: the “Esquilache riot” and its consequences

The strong man of the government, the Marquis of Esquilache, who accumulated the Secretaries of War and the Treasury, recovered the "single contribution" project that the Marquis of Ensenada, fallen into disgrace before Fernando VI in 1754, could not carry out, and formed a Land Registry Board to promote it. In 1763 he imported the lottery game from Italy — initially called “beneficiata” — whose proceeds would go to charitable works, such as the Montepío Militar that he created two years earlier, a social security embryo intended for soldiers and their widows and orphans.. And in the military field he created the Royal Artillery College of Segovia in 1764, which was not only a center for military education but also for scientific research.

Esquilache was also concerned with improving Madrid's infrastructure, introducing lighting, improving the sewage system and drains, so that the "town and court" would cease to be a dark, dangerous and dirty place. These measures were complemented by others aimed at correcting clothing, to avoid large capes and wide-brimmed hats that made it easier for criminals not to be recognized and act with impunity by being able to hide their weapons.

The so-called Esquilache riot of 1766 began in Madrid and was triggered by a decree promoted by the Secretary of the Treasury, the "foreigner" Marquis of Esquilache, which sought to reduce crime and which was part of a series of urban renewal actions in the capital —street cleaning, night public lighting, sewage system—. Specifically, the rule object of the protest demanded the abandonment of long capes and wide-brimmed hats, since these garments hid faces, weapons and contraband products. The background to the riot was a subsistence crisis as a result of a very pronounced rise in the price of bread,​

During the riot, Esquilache's house was attacked —to the cry of Long live the king, die Esquilache! — and then the crowd headed for the Royal Palace where the Royal Guard had to intervene to restore order — there were many wounded and forty dead. Finally Carlos III appeased the revolt by promising the annulment of the decree, the dismissal of Esquilache and the lowering of the price of bread. However, the riot spread to other cities and reached great virulence in Zaragoza. In some places, like Elche or Crevillent, subsistence riots turned into anti-seigneurial revolts. In Guipúzcoa, the revolt was called machinada (in Basque, peasant revolt). All these riots were very harshly repressed and order was restored.The "Esquilache riot" had two important political consequences. The first was that three new positions were instituted in the municipalities, to create a channel for popular participation: the attorney trustee, who would act as spokesperson for the neighbors; the deputy of the common, who would watch over the supplies —the supply of provisions—, and the neighborhood mayors, who would ensure compliance with the ordinances.However, these positions were soon taken over by the urban oligarchies.

The second consequence was the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, accused of having instigated the riot, in application of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1767. In reality, it was one more measure of absolutist regalism, which, on the other hand, made it possible to reform the schools controlled by the company. Finally, Carlos III, like other European monarchs, pressured the Papacy to dissolve the order, which occurred in 1773.

Economic and social reforms

The ministers of Carlos III tried to give a boost to the Spanish economy, and fundamentally to agriculture, which was the most important sector, although without altering the existing social order or property structure —they only distributed land belonging to the councils and were uncultivated. The most ambitious project, under the supervision of the enlightened Pablo de Olavide, was launched in 1767 and consisted of colonizing uninhabited regions of Sierra Morena infested with bandits. This is how the Nuevas Poblaciones de Andalucía and Sierra Morena arose —such as La Carolina, in Jaén—, which were a relative success because ten years later 10,000 peasants had already settled in the repopulated areas —they received free land, houses, furniture, tools, cattle and seeds.

In addition, the transport and irrigation infrastructures were improved. The Canal de Castilla was continued and the Imperial Canal de Aragón began; 1,000 kilometers of roads were built following a radial plan with a center in Madrid, and, finally, the Banco de San Carlos was created in 1782 to finance the State debt by managing the royal vouchers.

Carlos III founded a series of luxury manufactures; in Madrid, the Retiro porcelain factory, the Royal Tapestry Factory or the Platería Martínez; in the Granja de San Ildefonso, the royal glass factory, but also a large number of factories to produce consumer goods, such as Paños de Ávila (whose building, next to the river, has recently been destroyed).

The regalist policy and the limitation of the "autonomy" of the Inquisition

The Bourbons reinforced regalism, that is, the defense of the prerogatives of the Crown (or royalties) over the Catholic Church of their States against the Holy See. In the concordat of 1753, signed during the reign of Ferdinand VI, the right of royal patronage was extended almost completely to all the territories —before it only existed over Granada and America—; the powers of the Inquisition in terms of censorship (1768) and in the judicial field (1770) were limited. The frictions with the Holy See culminated in the expulsion of the Jesuits, accused of being responsible for the Esquilache Mutiny and the reinforcement of the exequaturor royal pass, which meant that the pope's provisions had to have royal approval in order to be published and applied in the territories of the Monarchy. However, the Monarchy never questioned the extensive privileges of the Church.

According to the enlightened, the Inquisition was the most important obstacle to updating Spanish culture and adapting it to the European rhythm, but in this field the action of the Absolute Monarchy was ambiguous and contradictory. Thus, Carlos III accentuated the subordination of the Inquisition to the Monarchy, but the Holy Office kept its surveillance apparatus intact, which provided for the presence of commissioners in the seaports and on the land borders, as well as the systematic visit to the bookstores of the kingdom., which were required to submit a copy of the Index of Prohibited Books, as well as an annual inventory of their holdings. Some well-known processes opened by the Inquisition against prominent enlightened figures —such as Pablo de Olavide, who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for being "heterodox" and for reading forbidden books—were proof of the power that the Holy Office still held. Another proof of the "supervised freedom" practiced by the reformist governments was the establishment in the middle of the century of prior censorship, which requires official authorization for the dissemination of any printed matter (book, pamphlet or newspaper), as well as a license for import of foreign books. The penalties that can be imposed range from confiscation of property to death in case of serious injury to the Catholic faith. as well as a license to import foreign books. The penalties that can be imposed range from confiscation of property to death in case of serious injury to the Catholic faith. as well as a license to import foreign books. The penalties that can be imposed range from confiscation of property to death in case of serious injury to the Catholic faith.​

As the historian Carlos Martínez Shaw has pointed out, "it was Carlos III who established in a symbolic way the subordination of the Holy Office to the Crown on the occasion of the Mésenguy catechism affair, which, accepted by the king, was condemned by the Inquisitor General, who had of enduring exile from Madrid and confinement in a monastery until pardoned by the sovereign. For this reason, the government revived the old privilege of exequatur, which required prior authorization for the publication in Spain of the pontifical documents and which after some hesitation would be put into effect as of 1768. In the same year a new provision was issued on the procedure to be followed by the Inquisition in matters of censorship of books, in order to safeguard the authors from an arbitrary or unfair sentence, and which consisted of imposing a prior hearing on the author, in person or represented, before issuing the conviction, which in any case also required government authorization to its enactment. Two years later, the Holy Office was reminded of the limits of its repressive action, which should be limited to the crimes of heresy and apostasy, while restrictions were placed on preventive imprisonment prior to the demonstration of the guilt of the person involved...​

This policy of greater control of the Inquisition can be seen in the following response from the Council of Castile on the king's prerogatives over the Inquisition of 1768:The king as patron, founder and endower of the Inquisition has over it the rights inherent to all royal patrons (...) as father and protector of his vassals he can and must prevent violence and extortions, indicating to the ecclesiastical judges, even when they proceed as such, the path indicated by the canons, so that they do not deviate from its rules.

The reorganization of the administration of the Indies

Carlos III continued with the policy initiated by Felipe V and, above all, by Fernando VI of converting the American colonies into a source of wealth for the metropolis and income for the Royal Treasury. To that end, the reorganization of the American administration was completed to make it more efficient and to strengthen the State there :

• Two new viceroyalties were created, broken off from that of Peru —that of New Granada, with its capital in Bogotá, and that of the Río de la Plata, with its capital in Buenos Aires— that allowed greater political and fiscal control;
• The figure of the mayor who replaced the old governors, corregidores and mayors was also adopted there;
• The sale of positions that were taken over by the criollos —descendants of Spaniards born in America— was put an end to, so they were the ones who monopolized the main positions of the colonial Administration, and in their place officials from the Peninsula were appointed., to which was added a new wave of peninsular emigrants from Galicia, Asturias and the "Basque Provinces";
• A permanent army was created to defend the colonies of Great Britain, especially, and Creoles and mestizos were allowed to join it, as they could not recruit it exclusively with peninsulars.
• Taxes were raised and the State extended its fiscal monopoly to products such as tobacco, spirits or gunpowder, which caused discontent among Creoles, mestizos and "Indians".

After the annulment in the previous reign of the two commercial concessions made to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht —the ship of permission and the seat of blacks— that were being used to increase smuggling, the policy of revitalizing exchanges was continued. between America and Spain, following the guidelines of the "colonial pact" —making America a great center for exporting raw materials and importing manufactured products from the metropolis—. In this way, both economies would grow, so the Crown would also see its income and power increase :

• Other ports, in addition to Cádiz, where in 1717 the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla had moved, were authorized to trade directly with America, first with the Antilles, in 1765, and later with all of America, by the Free Trade Regulation from 1778;
• The policy of granting "privileged" commercial companies the monopoly exploitation of some areas was continued;
• The method of registry ships—ships that sailed in isolation, more easily eluding enemy ships, and that departed and arrived in America more regularly—was extended to replace the convoys of the Carrera de Indias.

Reforms that produced the Peruvian rebellions

The reforms to be applied in America were advised in the Report and Plan of Intendancies that the General Visitor José de Gálvez presented to Carlos III in 1768 together with the Marquis de Croix, Viceroy of New Spain. In the Viceroyalty of Peru, Chile and Río de la Plata, the General Visitor José Antonio de Areche was in charge of applying the reforms from 1776, introducing modifications and fiscal increases in the colonies, although it had already begun gradually before.

In March 1772, a royal decree provided for a general increase from 2% to 4% of the alcabalas tax (compulsory tax or duty on the sale of merchandise) in Peru, both on American and imported products. However, many hesitated to apply the new tariff, for not having been clearly informed of which merchandise was affected. With its application, income from alcabalas increased in some provinces more than in others, due to its direct collection through customs. In 1773 a customs house was erected in Lima. The following year in Cochabamba, established in Arque and Tapacari, which generated protests and disturbances due to attempts to make thealcabalas to the tocuyeros, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths and soap makers, and even alcabalas had to be paid for the cereals (wheat, corn) that were grown in the area. Thus, many artisans, grain merchants, and bustling travelers were involved in the riots that resulted.

The Indian merchants were reluctant to subject their products to customs control, fearing that they would be forced to pay the alcabalas without considering that until then they had been exempt from paying the products they grew on their farms or produced by themselves, although they had to pay them on the goods of Castile that they traded. In any case, although most of the products that the indigenous people traded were not affected by this increase in the alcabalas to 4%, they were reached by a new increase in the alcabalas to 6% in 1776.

That year was crucial for the growth of popular discontent that reached its culmination in 1780: because Upper Peru had been placed under the control of the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, decisively altering trade routes; the alcabalas had been increased to 6% and a new customs office had been created in La Paz. In that year, the Visitor Areche also embarked for the colonies, to personally supervise the implementation of the reforms.

Areche arrived in Peru in 1777, dedicating himself to supervising the collection of the new alcabalas rate. In August of that year, a circular was distributed among the corregimientos of Chayanta, Paria, Oruro, La Paz and Pacajes, ordering them to exert greater pressure on the collection of the new tax, which implied that the corregidores from there would not only collect the tribute and would carry out the forced distribution of merchandise, but they would also collect the alcabalas. This would make it possible for them to enter into direct conflict not only with the Indian peasants, but also with the mestizo and Creole landowners, artisans and merchants who would be affected by the new taxes.

That year also, a 12.5% ​​tax on liquor was established, although the royal decree was not approved until 1778. At the same time, Viceroy Manuel Guirior led a campaign backed by Visitor Areche, aimed at ending gold smuggling and silver from the Peruvian viceroyalty, while Viceroy Cevallos prohibited the export of gold and silver pieces from the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata to Peru. These measures affected the mining sectors, because the consumption of liquor was common among mine workers, and Guirior's measures to prevent the circulation of gold and silver not previously sealed and melted, affected mine owners and tenants.

In 1779 coca, and from 1780 the grains were included in the list of merchandise subject to sales tax. Customs until 1779 had only been established in Upper Peru (Cochabamba, Potosí, La Paz) and in Buenos Aires; the following year they were also established in Lower Peru (in Arequipa, and it seems that it would also be in Cuzco). In July 1780, all artisans were ordered to join a guild, to ensure the collection of alcabalas by being properly registered. Similarly, although chorrillos were normally exempt, they were subject to alcabalas in 1780.

Finally, the decision of Visitor Areche to take a census of the non-indigenous population, and to include the cholos among the tributaries, put mestizos and mulattoes on alert, since they understood that the Spanish crown planned to include them among the tributaries.

Immediately, and as a consequence, the general rebellion led by Túpac Amaru II would take place.

Education and culture

The governments of Carlos III, like the rest of the Bourbon governments, promoted those cultural initiatives that were more in tune with the interests of the Monarchy, but a system of "public instruction" was not created, also due to the elitism of the cultural proposals illustrated, as in the case of Jovellanos who defended an education available to all but limited to elementary levels because to go further would endanger the social order :

• The academies were maintained (the Royal Spanish Academy, 1713; of History, 1735; of Jurisprudence, 1739; of Fine Arts, 1757), with the same purpose for which they were created: to spread official opinion in the different areas of cultural activity and to introduce in this field its desire for centralization and standardization.
• Schools of Arts and Crafts (which were to survive well into the 20th century) were founded in most of the important cities of Spain, to satisfy the needs of specialized labor for the manufactures and Royal Factories, of which he created several: as King of Naples he founded the Royal Laboratory of Hard Stones of Naples (1737), the Royal Tapestry Factory of Naples (1737), the Royal Porcelain Factory of Capodimonte (1743) and the Royal Majolica Factory of Caserta ( 1753); As King of Spain, he founded the Buen Retiro Royal Laboratory of Mosaics and Hard Stones (1759), the Buen Retiro Royal Porcelain Factory (1759), the Martínez Royal Silver Factory (1778) and the Royal Clock Factory (1788)..
• An attempt was made to reform university education, with the aim of modernizing its study plans —introducing, for example, the studies of mathematics, physics, biology and other natural sciences— and secularizing the teaching staff —excluding religious ones—, but the resistance that found these initiatives made the result very unequal, so the University, with very few exceptions, was not at the forefront of the enlightened educational reform.
• The Royal Botanical Garden was created in Madrid, near El Retiro (replacing the previous one, Migas Calientes, which was near the Manzanares River).
• Attempts were made to reform the Colegios Mayores, which were " reception centers for poor students who were awarded scholarships to continue their studies..., [but which] had become a redoubt of the privileged who, controlling the allocation of scholarships, holding government positions and later occupying the main professorships, they had set in motion a whole system based on mutual support to monopolize the provision of positions in the public administration, "but the changes that were intended to be introduced to return to their initial goals found the resistance of the "caste of schoolboys, bulwark of the most ancient traditionalist and aristocratizing conception of society [that] tried to maintain this situation so favorable to their interests, against the golillas or manteístas, students of more modest extraction and lacking corporate support, among the that fermented the ideas of change and enlightened reform ".
• New higher education institutions were created aimed at improving the education of the nobility, with the foundation of Seminarios de Nobles (although Vergara's went much further and became one of the most important teaching and research centers in enlightened Spain). ); to train military specialists, such as the Military Academy of Mathematics or the Royal Colleges of Surgery, which became important centers of scientific education; to disseminate and train people in the field of "applied" sciences (Royal School of Mineralogy, Royal Asturian Institute of Mines, School of Veterinary Medicine, School of Roads, Bridges and Canals,... or the Botanical Gardens).
• Military education was promoted, such as the Cadiz Midshipmen School, the Ocaña Academy, as well as others in the American territories.
• The Economic Societies of Friends of the Country were strengthened and spread, an idea born in Azpeitia (Guipúzcoa) in 1764 by private initiative (the Basque Society of Friends of the Country), and which received official recognition the following year, approving its objectives: promotion of agriculture, industry, commerce and science. The more than 70 Societies that were subsequently founded throughout Spain, most of them at the initiative of the local authorities, dedicated themselves to writing memoirs and reports on the measures to be taken to promote the economy, and to the creation of schools of vocational training, to spread the knowledge and techniques of "useful" sciences among farmers and artisans.
• Projects considered to be of general interest were financed, such as the opening of files on economic issues (the "Single Contribution", the "Agrarian Law"), the preparation of statistical reports (such as the population censuses ordered by Aranda, Floridablanca and Godoy), cartography of the Spanish territory.
• Scientific expeditions to overseas territories were organized, such as those of Alejandro Malaspina, Celestino Mutis and others.

Foreign policy

The two moments where Carlos III's foreign policy was most important occurred at the beginning and end of his reign and had to do with the intervention of the Spanish Monarchy in the two great wars that took place in Europe and in its American dominions. and Asians before the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. The first was the Seven Years' War that had begun in 1756, during the reign of Ferdinand VI, before which he had not made any decision because of the deep melancholy in the one that was plunged after the death of his wife that incapacitated him to govern —despite the fact that in the first year of the war France had seized Menorca from the British—. So that, The most urgent problem that Carlos III had to tackle as soon as he arrived in Madrid from Naples was to define the position of the Monarchy in a war in which the British victories over the French in North America threatened the Spanish Empire. Carlos III, after the British rejection of his mediation attempt, decided to ally himself with the Monarchy of France against the British common enemy and in August 1761 the Third Family Pact was signed, which meant entering the war in January 1762 As Rosa Mª Capel and José Cepeda have pointed out, "the colonial map was at stake. [...] French America was in the process of disappearing, with which the Spanish colonies would be bordering the British for thousands of years. kilometres".​

"The course of the war was disastrous for the Bourbons." In the case of Spain, the British took Havana on August 12, 1762, and occupied Manila, at the other end of the Spanish Empire, on September 23, in the particular Anglo-Spanish war of 1761-1763. The only Bourbon victory was the taking in November 1762 of the disputed colony of Sacramento, located on the Río de la Plata and held by the kingdom of Portugal, an ally of the kingdom of Great Britain —they also managed to resist the Anglo-Portuguese invasion of the Río de la Plata. of the Silver (1763)—. The war ended with the signing of the Peace of Paris. Louis XV lost most of the French colonial empire in North America and India to George III of England, giving birth to the British Empire.and cede Florida to George III in order to recover Havana and Manila. As compensation, Louis XV for the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) had ceded the immense territory of French Louisiana, a "poisoned gift", since "most of its colonists of French origin did not accept the change of sovereignty badly and, in case It wasn't enough, there were many men from the Thirteen British Colonies who entered those lands, nominally Spanish, crossing borders impossible to establish in such vast territories... With France gone, Great Britain and Spain were left facing each other. ".

The second important "moment" in the foreign policy of Carlos III was the decision to intervene on behalf of the rebellious colonists in the war of independence from the United States. The intervention took place at the request of the French King Louis XVI - who had already entered the war in June 1778 after signing an alliance with the Thirteen Colonies that had proclaimed their independence from Great Britain two years earlier - by virtue of the signing of the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1779 by which the Third Family Pact was ratified. Thus Carlos III of Spain entered the war against George III of Great Britain on June 16, 1779, although without recognizing the North American rebels because he was not willing to support a rebellion of some subjects against their legitimate king —some advisers of Carlos III had warned him of a bad example for the Spanish colonies if the North American rebels triumphed. So the government of Carlos III adopted an "ambiguous and hypocritical" policy: it did not intervene directly as Louis XVI was doing, "but it gave millions of reales in loans and spent many others on military operations. In the long run, this lukewarmness in the form was ineffective because the aid provided was not profitable".​

In the course of the war, after a new failed siege on Gibraltar, a Franco-Spanish squad occupied Menorca in 1782. A year later, on September 3, 1783, the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. As stipulated in it, the Monarchy of Carlos III recovered Menorca, Las Floridas and restricted British access to Honduras, but did not achieve the return of Gibraltar, its main objective.

The reign of Charles IV (1788-1808)

The reign of Charles IV was marked by the impact that the French Revolution of July 1789 had on Spain and its subsequent development, especially after Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799. The initial reaction of the Madrid court was the so-called "Floridablanca panic" —a series of repressive measures that included the creation of a "sanitary cordon" on the French border to avoid revolutionary "contagion"— accompanied after the confrontation with the new revolutionary power after the removal, imprisonment and execution of Louis XVI, the head of the House of Bourbon who also reigned in Spain, which led to the Roussillon War (1793-1795) with the newly proclaimed French Republic that was a disaster for the Spanish forces.

After the short-lived Peace of Amiens in 1802, the second war with Great Britain began in which the Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated by the British fleet commanded by Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, which opened the definitive crisis of the Monarchy. absolute Bourbon, which would culminate in the conspiracy of El Escorial in November 1807 and the Aranjuez mutiny in March 1808, in which Godoy definitively lost power and Carlos IV was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Fernando VII. However, two months later both would end up signing the abdications of Bayonne by which they gave Napoleon Bonaparte his rights to the Crown, who in turn would give them to his brother José I Bonaparte. Many "patriotic" Spaniards.