Violencia

by Jason Webster

  A hundred and forty years after Ferdinand and Isabella united the crowns of Castile and Aragon, someone was seriously working out a way for ‘Spain’ to become more than a mere concept. Yet the solution – to Castilianise the Peninsula – held the seed of its own failure. Common Spanish values would not form the basis of a united state, but the imposition of one element – admittedly the largest – on the rest.

  It would work for later generations – at least in part. But Olivares was a man ahead of his time. What’s more, he made the mistake of reigniting the war against the Dutch Protestants, reopening a wound which merely brought the same results as before: financial exhaustion and ultimate defeat. With inflation rising and the government running out of money, the currency was devalued. Another bankruptcy ensued. Olivares declared war on France, as though that would help matters. But they only worsened.

  The spark for full-scale rebellion came when troops fighting the French were stationed in Catalonia, the Catalans being made to pay for their upkeep from their own pockets. Tensions soon boiled over and in 1640 Catalonia broke out in revolt. The movement sprang up among rural farm labourers – segadors – who gave their name to what turned into a twelve-year struggle with Madrid and the temporary breakaway of Catalonia from the rest of Spain. In Barcelona, a republic was very briefly declared, only for allegiance to be sworn to the French crown in opposition to the Spanish. Yet the Catalans quickly learned that the French were no easier masters than the Castilians. Their own concerns were merely a detail within the greater struggle between Paris and Madrid. Eventually the French retreated, leaving the Catalans to their own devices. In 1652, after a lengthy and bloody siege, Barcelona was recaptured and the rebellion quashed.

  Yet on the other side of the Peninsula, the Portuguese – few of whom had ever been in favour of a Spanish king – seized their moment and placed their own man, the Duke of Braganza, on the throne. Caught up with the Catalan rebellion, the Spanish could do little to respond, not least because in Andalusia a similar independence movement decided that it would also make a break for it at the same time. The Iberian Peninsula, united only sixty years before under Philip II, was once again splintering into its constituent parts.

  Through use of force, Catalonia and Andalusia were checked and brought back into the Spanish fold. But Portugal had gone, never to return. With it went Olivares as well, fallen from grace amid the general collapse. Philip IV carried on, and for a while tried to follow his grandfather’s example by taking on the reins of government himself. But he lacked the right temperament, preferring the cultural and sexual delights offered by monarchy over the hard graft of ruling.1 Humiliation came for Spain with the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, and the loss of Roussillon to France. Henceforth the slide became unstoppable. Philip IV was sixty when he died in 1665, but looked eighty. The doctors had him sleep in the same bed as the mummified remains of the sixth-century St Isidro, yet to their surprise no miracle was forthcoming and the king breathed his last.

  Philip’s greatest failing, however, was to pass the crown to his son, Carlos II. Generations of inbreeding amongst the Habsburgs created an individual utterly incapable of ruling himself, let alone an empire still stretching over half the globe. An epileptic and paranoid schizophrenic, when he was born Carlos looked so strange that protocol was broken and he wasn’t presented before the court. As a boy he failed to develop any teeth until he was two, continued to suckle from his fourteen wet nurses until he was four, learned to walk when he was six, and was an adolescent before he could – barely – read and write. He had sticking-out eyes, a nose which drooped over his top lip and a vastly oversized jaw. People said he was so ugly ‘it was frightening’. Of him, the Papal Nuncio wrote:

  His body is as weak as his mind. On occasion he shows signs of intelligence, of memory and a certain liveliness, but not now; he generally has a slow and indifferent appearance, is awkward and indolent and comes across as rather stupid. One can do with him what one desires as he lacks any self-will.

  The poor man should have been in special care. Instead he was on the Spanish throne and expected to produce an heir, a matter further complicated by his possession of only one testicle. He became known as ‘Carlos the Bewitched’. The whole of Europe waited in anticipation: without any offspring, Spain’s line of Habsburgs would die out, and the throne would be up for grabs.

  Meanwhile the country as a whole was suffering from over a century of mismanagement and wars. Famine, disease, foreign adventures and a large section of the population taking religious orders meant that over the 1600s the country’s population plummeted from nine to seven million. The ailing king in Madrid personified a nation sick to the heart, the former master of the Continent and of much of the wider world now brought very low.

  Finally, in November 1700, Carlos died at the age of only thirty-eight. An autopsy revealed ‘a heart the size of a peppercorn’, corroded lungs, gangrenous intestines and ‘a head full of water’. The king had produced no heir. The Habsburg line was finished and the country was in ruins, yet still it possessed an empire, and represented a potentially rich prize. From being the Continent’s strongman, however, it was now a mere pawn in the European game. Ordinary Spaniards could only watch as, in future years, the country’s fortunes were decided not by themselves, but by powers abroad.

  1 Philip IV fathered as many as forty-six children, thirteen of whom were legitimate.

  FRENCH SPAIN

  SPANISH SUCCESSION

  The eighteenth century was one of the more peaceful periods in Spanish history, but not to be outdone, it had – like every century in the story of Spain – its own civil war.

  The loss of Portugal in 1640 signalled the beginning of a serious decline in the fortunes of Castile. The Catalan revolt which began in the same year only enjoyed limited success, but did give the region the taste of twelve years’ separation from Madrid, and a sense that at some point in the future greater independence might be achieved. It also marked the start of an economic and demographic shift away from the centre: where Castile had once been the powerhouse, the strength of areas on the Peninsula’s periphery, such as Catalonia, Valencia and the Basque Country, now began to grow.

  The death of Carlos II brought an end to the Spanish Habsburg line, to Austrian Spain. For the country as a whole it was a low point. And yet it brought with it the chance of rebirth, and in the Spain that emerged from the ruins lay the possibility that the country might finally become a politically united nation.

  But first there had to be another civil war.

  Childless, Carlos II had named a successor to his throne on his deathbed: Philip, Duke of Anjou – a Bourbon from France and grandson of Louis XIV. Despite not being the best of friends, and having fought several wars against each other, the Habsburgs and Bourbons had intermarried in the past, meaning that Carlos was Philip’s great-uncle.

  The news of Philip’s accession came as a shock. A Bourbon on the throne of both France and Spain raised the spectre of the two countries uniting, which would create an over-powerful European super-state. Protestant England and Holland in particular were disturbed at the prospect.

  And so a second claimant to Carlos’s crown was found in the shape of the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria (there were up to three at one point, but the third, Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, died). Bourbon and Habsburg were pitted against each other again, this time for control of Spain. The result was the War of Spanish Succession. Spain itself was now a mere battlefield for much larger Continental struggles.

  But this is to see the war from only an exterior perspective. In a similar way to the Spanish Civil War – in which Hitler and Mussolini supported one side, and Stalin the other – the War of Spanish Succession was not only a conflict between outside powers, but was also concerned with local Spanish issues. And the most important of these was the ever-present struggle over the power balance within the Peninsula.

  The Bourbons were known centralists, following the example of Louis XIV
in creating a nation centred around his very royal self (‘L’etât, c’est moi’), so they were natural bedfellows for Castilians wishing to bolster their traditional yet weakening domination of the Peninsula. Meanwhile, the Habsburg pretender cleverly promised autonomy and respect for regional rights and privileges. This went down particularly well in the lands of the Crown of Aragon, who swiftly declared for him.

  War ensued. Concerned at the rise of Bourbon power, England and Holland duly joined the Habsburg forces of the Holy Roman Empire’s candidate. For a while Spain was split along old lines: the Bourbons held Castile, and the Habsburgs Catalonia, Valencia and Aragon. The union forged by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the very building block of ‘Spain’, was under threat.

  The War of Spanish Succession

  It was a close thing. The Valencians were roundly defeated in 1707, but the Habsburg alliance made a comeback, even briefly occupying Madrid. Archduke Charles installed himself in the royal palace expecting to rule. But events outside Spain changed his fortunes. Back in Austria, his brother, Joseph I, died, meaning Charles was now the heir to the Holy Roman Empire. If the concept of a Bourbon super-state worried England and Holland, the threat of a Habsburg one, with echoes of Charles V, concerned them just as much. Almost overnight, Charles lost his international supporters. As a consequence, his lines were successfully pushed back by the Bourbons, and on 11 September 1714 the last major Habsburg stronghold, Barcelona, was taken. The War of Spanish Succession came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. The Bourbon claimant, Philip V, was confirmed as king, but at high cost: the Spanish territories of Milan, Naples and Sardinia were passed to Austria, while Britain took Minorca and Gibraltar.

  Catalans to this day remember their defeat in the war, and demonstrations to commemorate it are held every year on 11 September – known as la Diada – in a movement which has taken on much greater importance in recent years. Bourbon victory brought an end to centuries-old regional rights and institutions: the city council and diputació government were dissolved, the use of Catalan for official business was banned, and power was taken away from the local aristocracy, with a new, Castilian-speaking administration put in place. The measures were formalised in the Nueva Planta, published in early 1716, a document which, according to many, marks the end of Spain as a collection of semi-autonomous regions and the final creation on paper of the country as a functioning nation state.

  This is true to an extent, but the view has to be modified. First, the reforms imposed on Catalonia and Valencia were largely punitive in nature: Navarre and the Basque Country had supported the Bourbons, with the result that their regional rights were, paradoxically, respected by the ‘centralising’ new dynasty. A precedent had been set in which Castile acted as an authoritarian husband, whipping its wayward partners into line, punishing them for misdemeanours and rewarding them for their loyalty. The pattern would be repeated many times in the future.

  Secondly, and ironically, by taking power away from the old Catalan aristocracy, the Catalan middle classes were given a boost, principally merchants who were strengthened in their position as the backbone of the local economy. This further cemented the growing economic power of the region, and with it the Catalans’ reputation as serious and hard-working (less generously, some non-Catalans would say ‘obsessed by money and tight-fisted . . .’).

  The result was that Castile could no longer dominate the Peninsula through its sheer size. From now on, Madrid would have to hold ‘Spain’ together by resorting more and more to the threat or use of violence. A country born out of war would only survive intact through many more wars to come.

  BORING DOWN

  More civil wars in Spain, however, would have to wait. At least for the time being.

  For much of the eighteenth century, the country enjoyed a period of relative stability – as did the rest of Europe in the quiet hiatus between the religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the revolutionary ones just around the corner. This was a time of ‘enlightened absolutism’, of monarchs beginning actually to care for their subjects (to some degree) and their welfare. And in the Spanish experience, the man who best exemplified this was Carlos III.

  Carlos III was a dullard. Nonetheless, apart from giving his name to one of the better mid-range Spanish brandies, he is remembered as the king who did much to unify the country. It was Carlos III who gave Spain its national flag, adopting the pennant of his navy to become the Rojigualda, as it is called.1 It was Carlos who built canals and roads to improve communications around the country and properly connect high, remote Madrid to the regions. It was Carlos who set up the national lottery, established early chambers of commerce, and gave Spain its national anthem.2 He was responsible for some of the most emblematic buildings in Madrid, including the Prado Museum, the Puerta de Alcalá Arch, and the Casa de Correos in the Puerta de Sol. He divided the country into administrative districts which are followed almost exactly to this day in the shape of the current comunidades autónomas and provincias. And although Spain never recovered Gibraltar, his reign marked something of a second summer for the Spanish Empire, with new territories from Florida to California added following the American War of Independence.

  Despite being a devout Catholic, Carlos also did his best to curb the power of the Church, expelling the Jesuit order in 1767 and clipping the wings of the Inquisition (although stopping short of abolishing it).

  Not everything went smoothly in his reign: riots broke out in 1766 when Carlos and his chief minister tried to impose French ways – including French styles of clothes – on the population. And the Gypsy community do not remember him fondly as he forced them away from their life of ‘idleness’ and into royal factories and businesses.3 Violence in the form of civil wars was less evident during this time but in many ways was becoming codified in the art form of bullfighting. La tauromaquia had existed in some description in Spain since ancient times but it was in the eighteenth century that the first specially made bullrings were built, and the pageantry associated with the modern spectacle was established. Bloodletting through internecine conflict had temporarily abated, but was still present in ritualised form.

  On the whole, Carlos III’s reign is viewed as a success, almost as a Silver Age. In the words of two Spanish historians:

  The final years in Carlos III’s reign are of maximum vitality for 18th-century Spain. There is something of a feeling of promising new times, as if the national symbols adopted then . . . acted as identifying signs of resurgence, as though a new period of plenty had begun.

  The sentiment was reflected in inscriptions on triumphal arches:

  Happy Spain, because you are ruled over by Carlos III, a great, compassionate and august king . . .

  In some ways, Carlos III fits the pattern identified earlier of the ‘Man from the East’, bringing new ways and civilisation to Spain. Although born in Madrid (to a French father and Italian mother), before becoming king of Spain he ruled in Naples for twenty years, which is where he tried out his ‘enlightened’ policies before taking them to the Peninsula. He arrived, then, in a similar vein to Hercules, Santiago, Abd al-Rahman and others, to bring a new era in Spanish history, a relatively enlightened moment which has left its indelible imprint on the country: much of what we think of when we think of ‘Spain’ is thanks to him and his reign.

  Historically speaking, though, Carlos III was also lucky: he had the good fortune to die in 1788, one year before the beginning of the French Revolution, and events and developments which would see the overthrow of his Bourbon cousins across the Pyrenees, and change the course of European history.

  But the challenges that the new order would bring he happily and ignorantly left to his descendants.

  1 The flag had to wait until 1843 to be officially recognised as the State symbol.

  2 To this day the anthem has no lyrics, as, in an eternally divided nation, no one can agree what they should be. In addition, there are those who claim,
with some justification, that the tune derives from an ancient Moorish song.

  3 This is why, some hundred years later, Mérimée’s Carmen – the inspiration for Bizet’s opera – is working in the tobacco factory in Seville: as a Gypsy, she has little choice.

  A NEW FITNA

  Spanish history from 1808 to 1874 is a big bloody mess – in every sense of the term. Civil wars, coups, invasions and massacres now shift from being merely frequent to becoming almost everyday occurrences. If it weren’t so tragic it would be farcical, with cartoon-like characters appearing briefly on stage for short cameo roles before – usually – being despatched in violent fashion to make way for the next clown. There are so many pronunciamientos – coups or coup attempts – during this period that history books refuse to count them all (in 1843 alone there were over a hundred), while at times up to three different civil wars took place simultaneously.

  Amazingly, at the end of this period, ‘Spain’ still exists, but has undergone enormous change: an absolutist monarchy has given way to a constitutional one (via a very brief foray into republicanism); its empire has been all but lost, the final remnants disappearing in 1898; and a partial move towards industrialisation has begun. Much, however, remains the same. Church power has been curtailed in part through the final suppression of the Inquisition in 1834 and the selling off of Church lands, but on a social level still has considerable authority. Regional separatism is in abeyance but only temporarily, as regional differences have been a major factor in the longest-running civil war of the century; divisions between rich and poor are still huge and, if anything, now worse as the selling off of Church and municipal lands has only concentrated land ownership in the hands of a few. And the use and threat of violence in State affairs is now deeply entrenched following decades of internal warfare and military interference in government. All these elements would go on to culminate in the massive violent conflagration of the twentieth century which we today call the ‘Spanish Civil War’.