Spanish Decadence

The Recovery of Bahía de Todos los Santos by Maíno (1632).

The Spanish Decadence was the gradual process of exhaustion and attrition suffered by the Spanish Monarchy throughout the 17th century, during the reigns of the so-called minor Habsburgs (the last kings of the House of Austria. Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II); a historical process simultaneous to the so-called general crisis of the 17th century, but which was especially serious for Spain, to such an extent that it went from being the hegemonic power in Europe and the largest economy in the world in the 17th century to becoming an impoverished and semi-peripheral country.

The decline was reflected in all areas: demographic (recrudescence of the plague and other epidemics, depopulation), economic (chronification of fiscal problems, monetary alterations, inflation and the decline of precious metal remittances from America), social (maintenance of religious and inquisitorial tension, expulsion of the Moors, refeudalization, search for escapist solutions such as ennoblement, the purchase of positions, the increased presence of religious orders and the picaresque), or political and territorial (initiated with the truce of the twelve years and the maneuvers of the Duke of Lerma's valence, spectacularly manifested from the so-called crisis of 1640, after the attempt to restore the reputation of the monarchy with the aggressive policy of the Count Duke of Olivares, and later evidenced with the Peace of Westphalia -1648-, the Treaty of the Pyrenees -1659-, the pathetic situation of the last years of the century that in spite of being solved economically by the men of confidence of Charles II, in all the European chancelleries they walked pending of the uncertain future of the Hispanic throne of the bewitched king and his extraordinary inheritance that reached both hemispheres. And after a series of complex palace intrigues, Cardinal Luis Fernández Portocarrero supported the succession in favor of the interests of Louis XIV of France, who wanted the Spanish crown for his grandson Philip of Anjou. It was finally resolved after the death of Charles II of Spain with the War of Succession -1700-1715- and the Treaty of Utrecht -1713-, which divided its territories between Habsburgs and Bourbons, with substantial benefits for England). And that gave way to the Austracist exile and a violent Bourbon repression.

By contrast, Spanish Decadence coincided with the most brilliant manifestations of art and culture, in what has been called the Spanish Golden Age (in Spanish: Siglo de Oro Español). In many of these artistic and cultural manifestations there is a true awareness of decadence, which in some cases has been described as negative introspection (Quevedo, the arbitristas). Specifically, the Spanish Baroque (the culteranismo or the churrigueresque) has been interpreted as an art of appearance, scenographic, which hides under the external tinsel the weakness of the structure or the poverty of the content.

The historiographic interpretation of the causes of the decadence has been one of the most discussed issues, and on many occasions it has been attributed to the clichés that would characterize a Spanish national stereotype linked to the black legend present in the anti-Spanish propaganda since the mid-16th century: the pride of old Christian caste, the obsession with a nobility incompatible with work and prone to violence in the defense of an archaic concept of honor, the uncritical submission (by superstition or fear rather than faith) to a despotic power, both political and religious, adherent to the most closed version of Catholicism, which led to quixotic adventures in Europe against the Protestants and a cruel imposition on the American Indians of evangelization and the rule of the conquistadors. An alternative pink legend, which attributes to the fidelity to Catholicism precisely the achievements of the Spanish Empire, is in the interpretation of history proper to the reactionary side of Spanish nationalism, and which in its most extravagant cases attributes the decadence to an alleged international conspiracy, in which, in spite of the implausibility of such conspiracy theories, it gives a decisive role to the Jews and to the secret societies that they imagine as ancestors of Freemasonry (in addition to linking both crypto-powers, as appropriate, to Protestants and Muslims).

From more dispassionate points of view, current historiography tends to consider the authoritarian monarchy of the Habsburgs as a model of state of very weak entity and effective presence, and certainly with much less absolutist pretensions than the absolute monarchy that the Bourbons were developing at the same time in France. Nevertheless, the real divergences of the socio-economic models associated with Catholicism and Protestantism in different parts of Europe (and their numerous exceptions), analyzed from the sociology of Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905), continue to be considered.

Background

The roots of this decadence can be traced back to the marriage alliances between Ferdinand the Catholic and Maximilian of Habsburg, which determined the introduction of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty to the Spanish throne, seeking to isolate and surround France, the hegemonic power at the end of the Middle Ages. It was Charles of Ghent, grandson of both, who brought together the inheritances, becoming king of Castile and Aragon (with its American and Mediterranean possessions) in 1516, as well as lord of the Netherlands, the Austrian territories, the right to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, titular duke of Burgundy, sovereign of Flanders and Brabant (1519).

This complex inheritance was the one that determined the policy of Carlos I (V of Germany) and his successors, with so poor results for Castile, and that already the interested ones had noticed at the time, with the rebellions of Germanías and Comuneros. It had to face France, Pope Clement VII, the Republic of Venice, England, the Duchy of Milan, and Florence that formed the League of Cognac to defend the Aragonese possessions in Italy, and had other fronts against the rebellious German principalities, the Turkish threat in the Mediterranean and the extension of Protestantism in Europe, that undid the bond of union of the Holy Germanic Empire, reducing even more the functionality of the Imperial government. All these problems kept Spain constantly occupied in wars, to which were added the internal problems caused by the War of the Communities of Castile and the Germanías, when the middle nobility revolted against the fiscal exactions and the imposition of Flanders rulers and of the mercedes, at the head of which was the regent Adriano de Utrecht, despising the Cortes, both Castilian and Aragonese. Another cause of the decline was religious intransigence, putting an end to the coexistence of Jews, Muslims and Christians that had enriched the peninsular culture throughout the Middle Ages.

Consequences

The notorious war effort had an incalculable economic and human cost. The revenues from the export of wool and other products from the rich Castile to Flanders, and the silver that came from America, were dedicated to pay war expenses forgetting any investment in Spain, but they were not always sufficient or did not arrive on time, and the king resorted to numerous loans from German and Genoese bankers, which compromised and mortgaged seriously the economic future of his kingdoms. Thus, his son Philip II had to declare bankruptcy three times during his reign, in 1557, 1575 and 1597.

In fact, in addition to the debts, Philip had inherited his father's wars, but not the imperial title, which passed, along with the German and Austrian possessions, to his uncle Ferdinand (1555). The new king managed, not without difficulty, to definitively remove France from its interests in Italy (Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, 1559) and to stop the advance of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean (battle of Lepanto, 1571); likewise, as grandson of John III of Portugal, he incorporated Portugal and its colonies to Spain (1580), with which the Spanish overseas empire acquired colossal dimensions, although it was also going to be even more difficult to defend. Less fortunate in the fight against the Protestants, it could not prevent the secession of the United Provinces of the north of the Netherlands, in 1579, supported by England and the numerous enemies of the Spanish hegemony, nor contain the maritime expansion of England that defeated the Invincible Armada in 1588, and maintained piracy in its service. These latter failures marked the beginning of Spanish Decadence, although its hegemony in Europe was still maintained for some time. But the Castilian economy, the mainstay of these efforts, was already ruined.

Period of the minor Habsburgs

Philip III

Spanish territories in the time of Philip II.

The decline worsened under the reign of Philip III, who could not continue the very costly foreign policy of his predecessors due to lack of resources. The income of the crown was not small, but the wars consumed that and much more. This economic precariousness was aggravated by the expulsion in 1609 of the Moors, the population descended from the Muslims that still remained in the Peninsula, the main support of the agricultural economy in Valencia, in the crown of Aragon, although some supported the Barbary piracy that ravaged the coast.

The Moors were rejected by the crown, which saw with concern the possibility of a new uprising that acted as a fifth column of the Berbers or the Turks, and detested by the Church, which doubted the sincerity of their conversion, but their expulsion was an important loss of useful "arms" for the national economy. The measures that from the power were taken to face the lack of liquidity, as sale of positions or the devaluation of the currency, did not do but aggravate the situation, establishing the corruption and the absenteeism in the administration, and distorting dangerously the mercantile exchanges.

Felipe III lacked the capacity of his father and grandfather, and delegated the government in men of confidence; the figure of the valido was thus instituted. Both the Duke of Lerma, and his son and successor in the position, the Duke of Uceda, were revealed as mediocre governors, rather more worried about increasing their personal fortune than to solve the serious problems of the monarchy, that from 1618 was embarked in the war of the Thirty Years, supporting their relatives, the Habsburg emperors.

Philip IV

The ascent to the throne of Philip IV (1621) meant the assumption of the tasks of government by a new valide, the Count-Duke of Olivares. A member of a minor branch of an important noble lineage, he also took care to increase his personal income and possessions, although to a lesser extent than his predecessors. In fact, Olivares did have political ambitions and statesmanship; in the Grand Memorial he presented to the young Philip in 1624, he outlined his program. Its objective was to ensure that the monarchy effectively unified all the economic, human and military resources of its various kingdoms (Union of Arms, 1626), to use them to renew its glory, which basically meant spending them in the new wars in which it was engaged: with Holland and England for colonial dominion and with various European states —Richelieu's France and Louis XIII in the shadows— for Hapsburg supremacy on the continent. This orientation meant disrupting the political complex that constituted the very essence of the monarchy founded by the Catholic Monarchs, which was born of the confederation of different kingdoms that retained their legal, economic and administrative peculiarities. And that was something that their subjects were not willing to tolerate, especially in the crown of Aragon, since in the crown of Castile the rebellion had been crushed by Charles I.

The decade of 1640 was disastrous for Olivares' rule, and threatened to collapse the very unity of the entire Spanish Monarchy. The Portuguese installed the Braganza dynasty, naming John IV king, tired of suffering in their colonies the consequences of the European conflicts (1640). There was also an uprising in Catalonia (1640–1652) which almost separated this territory from the Spanish Monarchy and incorporated it into France, which did manage to annex the trans-Pyrenean counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya. Conspiracies and secessionist uprisings also broke out in Andalusia (1641), Sicily (1646–1652) and Naples (1647–1648). Meanwhile, on the European war scene, the battle of Nördlingen (1634) represented one of the last victories of the Spanish armies. From that moment on, fortunes became adverse for the Habsburg coalition in the Thirty Years' War, complicated by the official entry of France into the conflict in 1635. The year 1643, with the defeat by the French at Rocroi and the fall from grace of Olivares, marked the turning point, from which everything would go from bad to worse: the economy again suffered from the war efforts, complicated by bad harvests, the continuous devaluations of the currency and the alienation of positions; on the other hand, the demographic problem caused by the death or absence of so many young men became more acute. Four bankruptcies were declared (1627, 1647, 1656 and 1662), while the possessions and trade with America suffered the harassment of the English and Dutch, and France expanded at the cost of absorbing the Spanish possessions on its borders. The Treaty of Münster (1648) and the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) ratified the end of Spanish hegemony in Europe, which passed the baton to the powerful France of Louis XIV.

Charles II

Charles II.

The death of Philip IV meant the enthronement of Charles II the Bewitched, so called because of his symptoms of mental and physical retardation. His reign represented the lowest point of the Spanish Decadence, with a court full of intrigues in which during ten years the regent, the queen mother Mariana of Austria and her confessor, the German Jesuit Nithard, who pretended to act as valid, disputed the power with Don Juan José of Austria, bastard son of Felipe IV. However, in the midst of these problems and the harassment suffered by the Spanish possessions —many of which fell into the hands of his enemies—, the first glimpses of recovery took place: when Carlos was declared of age, aware of his limitations, he entrusted the government to the Duke of Medinaceli and the Count of Oropesa. The administration and finance reform projects, proposed by the arbitrists and applied, in part, by the new valides, would be the prelude to the important changes introduced in the 18th century by the enlightened ministers of the Bourbon dynasty.

The childless death of Charles II (1700) opened a period of uncertainty. The will of the deceased named Philip of Anjou, great-grandson of Philip IV of Spain and grandson of Louis XIV of France, as heir. But there were other candidates with rights, such as Ferdinand of Bavaria and, above all, Archduke Charles of Habsburg, who did not accept this solution and won supporters in Spain. Finally, after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Philip of Bourbon, supported by his powerful grandfather, became the founder of a new dynasty in Spain.

Society and culture

The reign of the House of Austria brought serious social problems to Spain:

• Religious persecutions due to intolerance, the Inquisition fostered corruption and delation, and was a contributing factor to Spanish Decadence. It became a method to destroy enemies, jealous friends and even to settle property disputes or to gain influence.
• Decline of industries of all kinds, due to the sale of raw materials to obtain liquidity quickly, and the great increase in imports, fatal for the loom industry.
• Desertification of Castile, due to the support given by Philip II to the Mesta to obtain a greater quantity of merino wool, so that the uncontrolled transhumant grazing ended with the cultivated fields by not respecting the royal cattle trails.
• Abandonment of large areas due to several causes: emigration to America, the wars and expulsion of the Moors and the half million victims of the great plague of 1598–1602.
• Bureaucracy: The expansion of the Spanish Empire in the New World was carried out from Seville, and the control of the Americas was carried out by viceroys that functioned with effective autonomy. The Habsburgs, a family that had traditionally ruled over several non-contiguous dominions and had been forced to delegate autonomy to local administrators, duplicated these feudal policies in Spain, particularly in the Basque Country and Aragon, so that taxes, infrastructure improvement and internal trade policies were defined independently by each region, maintaining internal customs barriers and tolls. The Count-Duke of Olivares considered it essential that the bureaucracy be centralized, and even supported the complete union of Portugal with Spain, although he never had the opportunity to make his ideas a reality. After Charles abdicated, the bureaucracy had become ever larger and more corrupt until, by the dismissal of Olivares in 1643, it became obsolete.

From the cultural point of view, the sciences shone, such as Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont with his inventions, Francisco Hernández de Toledo and his beginning of taxonomy, Juan de Herrera and the foundation in 1582 of the 'Academia Real Mathematica', the School of Salamanca with its philosophical, theological and economic theories, in addition to its leading role in the creation of the Gregorian calendar, Domingo de Soto and his postulates on gravity or Jerónimo Muñoz and his description of the supernova SN 1572.

In the arts, especially painting with authors such as Velázquez, Claudio Coello, Bartolomé Murillo and others. There were also great writers, poets and theaters or historians such as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Juan de Mariana, Quevedo or Calderón de la Barca, which has led to call the time of Philip IV the Spanish Golden Age.

See also

• Ancient Regime of Spain
• Habsburg Spain
• History of science and technology in Spain
• History of Spain
• House of Habsburg
• Spanish Empire
• The two Spains

Bibliography

• Anes, Gonzalo; García Sanz, Ángel (1994). Mesta, trashumancia y vida pastoril (in Spanish). Madrid: Investigación y Progreso. ISBN 84-8189-005-7.
• Bennassar, Bartolomé (1981). Inquisición Española: poder político y control social (in Spanish). Barcelona: Crítica. ISBN 84-7423-156-6.
• Bérenger, Jean (1993). El imperio de los Habsburgo (in Spanish). Barcelona: Crítica.
• Gallardo, Alexander (2002). Spanish Economics in the 16th Century; Theory,Policy,and Preactice. Lincoln, NE: Writiers Club Press. ISBN 0-595-26036-5.
• Kamen, Henry (2005). Spain 1469-1714. A Society of Conflict. London and New York: Pearson Longman. ISBN 0-582-78464-6.
• Parker, Geoffrey (1997). The general crisis of the seventeenth century. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16518-0.