SESSION 5 PRESENTATION

SPANISH CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE

CEA BARCELONA GLOBAL CAMPUS

SUMMER 2007 PROGRAMME

Instructor: Victor Lapuente Gine

e-mail: [email protected]

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 OUTLINE OF THE SESSION

3) The roots of multi-national Spain

5) The Catholic Kings

7) The Spanish Empire

9) El Siglo de Oro (The Golden Century)

11) From Habsburg to Bourbon rule

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1. The roots of multi-national
Spain

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► Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile
married in 1469. The conquest of Granada
(1492) and the incorporation of Navarre into
Castile (1515), consolidated the territory
which corresponds almost exactly with what
we now call Spain.

► Important footnote – Ferdinand and Isabella

reigned separately over their respective
kingdoms, with separate institutions. It is only
after the Bourbon accession (18th cent.) that
you start to get common institutions. 4
 Castile before Isabella
► Castilewas a region shaped by the
reconquista. It was a society built
around the trails leading to and from
the increasingly smaller kingdom of
Granada, the last stronghold of the
Moors in continental Europe. It was
wrought around a wide-open, and
largely empty, stretch of land
populated by behetrías, or free towns,
not subject to feudal law but to a more
frontier-style egalitarian political 5

system.
 Castile before Isabella
► The institutional and juridical aspects of
Castile were centralized but weak.
► The cortes, was an increasingly dying
institution by the 15th century
► The noble class was in ascension - it was the
policy of early Castilian kings to award
nobility and land to those successful on the
battlefield. There was profuse civil war in
the decades up to Isabella’s ascension to
the throne.
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 Aragon before Ferdinand
► The union of Aragon and Catalonia in
the form of a confederation of
territories under Ramon Berenguer IV
in 1137.
► Kingdom expanded as they conquered
the Balearic islands (1229 – 1235), the
area of Valencia in 1238, Sicily and
then Sardinia at the turn of the 13th
and 14th centuries, and finally the
Kingdom of Naples in 1432. 7
The Kingdom of Aragon 1470

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► Catalonia was a commercial, trade-oriented
society. For this reason they had more
developed political institutions and a balance
of power between Crown, nobility, and
bourgeoisie

► There was a cortes (or corts in Catalan) in

every region of the confederation (Aragon,
Catalonia, and Valencia being the most
important), in Catalonia became known as the
Generalitat.

► It was this complex network of interests that 9

 ► Castilian economy end 15th
Century
► Castile was a burgeoning power,
enriching itself off of the wool trade
which had begun to fortuitously boom
on the continent and in England.

► These profits were consolidated by a

powerful nobility and small,
subservient, and foreign-dominated
bourgeoisie. It was a nobility that
would soon be humbled by Isabella’s
forces. 10
Aragonese economy end 15th
Century
► Aragon, by contrast, was an empire
which seemed at the back-end of its
greatness. Arrogance and
overextension, plague and
mismanagement had all conspired to
slow the great Mediterranean
economy, which left all of the
respective classes in a state of
upheaval, and fighting for the scraps.
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► Thus,two very different neighbors had
developed next to each other by 1479,
with different politics, different centers
of power, and economies which were
heading in exactly opposite directions.

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2. The Catholic Kings

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► The reign of Isabel and Ferdinand
marked the beginning of a long history
of what would be ‘Spain’. But at the
time, it was a contractual relationship
between Crown and each respective
region.

► Itwas a dynastic union, this meant

that there was no king of ‘Spain’. He
was King of Castile, of Aragon, count of
Flanders, Lord of Vizcaya, Duke of
Milan, etc….’Spain’ begins with Philip 14

IV and Olivares
 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Ferdinand and Isabella’s goal:

• Strong monarchy

• Weaken the nobility and the

bourgeoisie

• Centralize authority

• Common Identity – ‘creating Spain’ 15

 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire
• Spanish is the official language. Actually,
the first grammar by Nebrija appears by
1492.

Other tools that proto-states had at that

time in order to look for unity?

• Religion: Christianity as only religion -

Jews (1492) & Moors (1502) will have to
convert or exile

• Order: civil and religious enforcers (ever

heard about Inquisition)? Grand Inquisitor 16

Torquemada had Jewish origins…

 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

There is a year you should remember:

which is? 1492.
Why?

• Granada,
• Jews,
&
• Columbus (not OHIO)

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 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Granada means:

• The end of the Reconquista

(remember that this started about the
VIIth Century) and the union of what
today is Spain under the same
authority and the same religion

• The expulsion of the Moors

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 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Expulsion of the Jews

• as long as the Jews remained in
Spain, they would influence the tens
of thousands of recent Jewish
converts to Christianity to continue
practicing
• Goal was restore all of Spain to
Christianity
• Figures are not clear but about
100.000 and 200.000
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 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Columbus…
• Isabel financed the voyages and
she got the land and the wealth…

• Consequently, the empire was a

Castilian adventure

• Catalans / Aragonese prevented

from participating. Still customs
borders between parts of ‘Spain’.
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3. The Spanish
Empire

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 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Positive and negatives of Spanish

Empire

On the positive side:

• The feeling of hispanidad was
important to shape the idea of Spain.

• Extension of culture and language

• Wealth brought from America 23

 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Negative effects:
• Imposition of slavery (nothing new,
though)

• Extermination: not mainly because

of the wars but because of the…
illnesses (DIAMOND)

• Disappearance of language and

cultures
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 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire
The Habsburg Inheritance
• Isabel and Castile had the Canary
Islands & America
• Fernando and Aragon: possessions
in the Mediterranean such as:
Sardinia, Sicily and Naples
• Daughter (Juana la Loca) of
Ferdinand and Isabella married Felipe
I (El Hermoso), from the Habsburg
family, who became Charles I of
‘Spain’ and Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor. 25
26
 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire

Charles V discovered that an Empire

implied wars in a lot of fronts.

• Entire life fighing France (who

wanted to control the Holy Roman
Empire)
• Counter-reformation in Lutheran
territories of Germany and Flanders
• Against the Ottomans (who invaded
Austria and Hungary in the north and
Menorca in the south) 27
28
 Felipe II
► This continues under Felipe II 1556
-1598
► First King of ‘Spain’
► Moves the court to Madrid in 1561
(from Toledo)
► Inherits Portuguese throne – briefly
unites the entire peninsula via
dynastic inheritance (1580-640)
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30
El Escorial

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 Spain united, but still
‘federal’
► “To travel from Castile to Aragon”, wrote the
historian John Lynch of 16th century Spain,
“was to cross a frontier into a different
social and political world, where semi-
independent lords exercised numerous
feudal rights to the detriment of the crown
and of their vassals, where Castilians were
debarred from office, where laws were
different and independently administered,
and where taxation was check by the
cortes”. 32
 External Circumstances for
Internal Changes I
► The Habsburg dynasty, involved in a
war at an almost continuous rate
throughout the 16th and 17th
centuries.
► Hugely expensive to organize and
equip a standing army for an indefinite
time is a complicated task
► How did they fund it?

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Wars funded by Empire

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 4. El Siglo de Oro
The Golden Century

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 Siglo de Oro 16th-17th
centuries
► Nospecific dates set to the siglo de
oro, but it could roughly be placed
between 1492 and 1650.

► The development of a Spanish national

culture, strongly linked to Catholicism

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 Art in the Siglo de Oro
► Velazquez, Murillo, Greco, Ribera

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El Greco, Laoconte (1610)

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 José de Ribera, El martirio de San Felipe
The baroque period is one of the most famous in the
world. It mixed Dutch realism of Rubens and
Rembrandt with the religious ideology of the Italian
painters.

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Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)

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 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 
Las gallegas en la ventana (1655-60)

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 Religion in the Siglo de Oro
► Influence in protestantism’s direct
contact with God – alumbrados such as
Saint Teresa de Jesus who started
reformed Carmelite group
► Other orders – Franciscans,
Dominicans and Jesuits. Missionaries
who would bring Catholicism to the
world.

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Education in the Siglo de Oro
► 17 Universities founded between 1520
and 1572
► Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares are
older, but experience a renaissance of
their own, teaching Theology and Civil
and Ecclesiastic Law

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Literature in the Siglo de Oro
► Lazarillo de Tormes – published
anonymously, it started literary genre, the
picaresque novel, so called from Spanish
pícaro meaning "rogue" or "rascal". In these
novels, the adventures of the pícaro expose
injustice while amusing the reader.
► Garcilaso de la Vega – ‘renaissance man’,
solider- poet, who wrote tragic love poetry
► Lope de Rueda – dramatist and playwright,
he was famous for his dramatic skits and
interludes, which were both more real, and
vulgar, than what was traditional. 44
Literature in the Siglo de Oro
II
► Cervantes – novelist, poet, playwright
► Don Quixote was written to mock the
popular novels of chivalry which glorified the
ideals of courtesy, constancy, bravery and
loyalty.
► Their stereotypical plots were unreal and
extravagant, made up of the hero's battles
with other knights, beasts, giants, and
magicians. The hero always won the battles
and claimed the love of the maiden on
whose behalf he was fighting. 45
 SESSION 5 The Birth of a New State & Spanish
Empire
Religious art also highlights.
Cathedrals are finished by that time
and the typical images of Semana
Santa are developed too.

In painting..
http://museoprado.mcu.es/visitas.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/grec

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5. From Habsburg to
Bourbon rule

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► CharlesII dies without a direct heir
presented a problem for the Spanish
empire. Wills Spain to the Bourbons.

► Pretenders from both the House of

Habsburg and Bourbon claim the right
to the throne.

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► Atthe reading of Charles II’s will, with
ministers from both France and Austria
present, the duke of Abrantes
approached the Austrian minister,
embracing him warmly and stating,
“Sir, it is with the greatest pleasure –
Sir, it is with the greatest satisfaction –
for my whole life – I take my leave of
the most illustrious House of Austria!”

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 The Pretenders
► Candidate # 1 - Philip V, grandson of
Infanta Maria Teresa (eldest daughter
of Philip IV) and Louis XIV of France.
► Candidate #2 - Austrian Archduke
Charles (later Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI), son of Emperor Leopold I
and a younger daughter of Philip IV.
► Contested - War of Spanish Succession
(1700-1714).
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Bourbon Kings through the 18th
century
► Philip V 1700-1724

► Louis I 1724 (dies and is replaced by father again)

► Philip V 1724-1746

► Ferdinand VI 1746-1759

► Charles III 1759-1788

► Charles IV 1788-1808
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 SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

Who backs whom?

Castile joined Philip, who would be
known as the V, they believed that he
would be the best choice to preserve
the Empire in Europe and in America.

What about in the Aragonese

territories?

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 SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

► Aragon initially supported Philip V but

they changed their support to the
Archduke Charles, fearing the
absolutist ideals of the Bourbons.

► Habsburgs supported by England, the

Netherlands and Portugal. They did
not like the idea of France and Spain
uniting under same dynasty.
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 SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

► Habsburgallies abandon the Catalans.

Bought out. Barcelona falls
September 11th 1714.

► Thisis still the most important day of

the year for many Catalans. Why?

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The first act passed by the new autonomous
Parliament of Catalonia when it was created in
1980 declared September 11th as the Catalan
national holiday

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 Bourbon changes
► Elimination of nearly all fueros
(Catalans in 1716 under the Nueva
Planta decrees)
► Use of Castilian in all state-related
business and judiciary
► Elimination of internal customs
► Monetary unification
► Sows seeds of Catalonia’s industrial
takeoff 56
► Althoughharsh - modernization of the
bureaucracy of the state was a needed
change.

► Thus, Philip V is often considered as one of

the first of the Enlightenment-influenced
leaders in Spain, ilustrados.

► Thetheme of the Enlightment, ilustrados

was: “everything for the people, but without
the people” what do you get from this? What 57
does it mean?
► 18th
Century Enlightenment meant
absolute power used in a
(theoretically) altruistic way; it is used
to change and improve the living
conditions of the people but without
considering their opinions.

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 SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

Some of the reforms are popular:

► creation of a sewer system in Madrid

► Publicly lit streets
► paved of streets.

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 Enlightenment Reforms –
Charles III (1759-1788) and
Floridablanca
► Tried to break the rural oligarchies
► expelled the Jesuits for their supposedly
insidious plots against the Crown in the
Americas and on the peninsula
► deregulated the grain market
► reigned in the Mesta by allowing people to
enclose their fields for agriculture
► He divided the Spanish state into 31
provinces in 1789
► remove the ‘wasted’ land from the Church
and nobility and to put it to more
economical use
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 Legacy of the Carolinian
reformers
► Precursors to the liberals of the 19th
century. NOT democrats, but were
precursor of liberal reforms of the 19th
century
► Like their predecessors and the
liberals who came after them,
however, their reforms largely
remained unfinished. Many reforms
also were more in theory that in
practice 61
► With Charles III, Spain progressed.
► Freed of the European wars of
Habsburgs and strengthened by an
economy in expansion.
► Partly due to political rationalisation,
but also due to another spirit of time:
the belief of economics and trade.
Adam Smith is working at this time
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 SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

► Thegovernment also created companies in

order to produce luxury goods, and make it
not necessary the importation of foreign
goods.

► Ingeneral, the Spanish economy was

healthy; per capita income was growing and
future seemed good. There is still, however,
a center-periphery divide – in terms of
political power in the center and economic
power in the trading territories in the 63
Spain at the end of the 18th century

Economically:
► An underdeveloped interior
► Agrarian and oligarchic Andalusia
► Prosperous periphery of North and East.
Politically:
► Spain is now a Bourbon, and therefore an
ally of France
► The problem, though, comes from abroad:
what is going on in 1789?
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 Relationship between
SESSION 6 The Enlightenment Period

absolute monarchy and the

Church
► PhilipV wanted to increase the control not
just over the people but over the Church
too.

► The concept of separation of powers or of

submission of the Church to the laws of the
states was not yet reality.

► But first Philip V and then Charles III moved

to increasingly have true absolute control
over Spain, including veto powers over 65

Church actions within the country.

Art
From the Baroc excess to the classic
sobriety.
Big public works: palaces, monuments,
government buildings… Madrid is the big
star

Francisco de Goya: the big painter of

people and costums, that shows the
traditional people as well as the
intelectuals
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