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The Crown in National Disguises: The Uses of Monarchy’s Historical Past in Spanish Nation-Building, 1833–1868

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2021

David San Narciso Open the ORCID record for David San Narciso [Opens in a new window]
David San Narciso*
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Madrid, Spain
*
*Corresponding Author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The competing ideologies of nation and monarchy had a troubled beginning in the 19th century, insomuch as they derived partly from two opposing sources of legitimacy. However, from the 1830s on, their supporters achieved the establishment of an interspecific and mutually advantageous relationship. The nation gradually managed to prevail over the monarchy, justifying its presence in national terms. However, the monarchy possessed something longed for by liberal nationalists: historical legitimacy. Thus, the crown served Romantic nationalism in its search for national foundations and to generate national emotions of a collective sense of belonging. This article analyses this process by focusing on the Spanish case and using a vast range of cultural sources. I reason that the monarchy’s history was intensively used in Isabel II’s reign (1833–1868), both by the monarch herself as well as nationalist elites, to legitimate and justify their presence in the liberal world. The article is divided into three sections. The first part locates the problem into a general process that touched all the crowned heads of Europe. The second section studies the appeal of exemplary medieval monarchs in the liberal hunt for national roots. The final one focuses on the particular case of Isabel the Catholic because of the remarkable prominence it acquired.

Keywords

monarchynation-buildingnationalismSpain19th century
Type
Article
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Nationalities Papers , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 275 - 295
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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