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Monarchy of Spain

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The Spanish monarchy is constitutionally referred to as The Crown (Spanish: La Corona), and it comprises the reigning monarch, the royal family and the institutions whose purpose is to assist them in their public responsibilities, namely, the Royal Household and Patrimonio Nacional.

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 re-established a constitutional monarchy as the form of government for Spain after the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy in 1977. The 1978 constitution affirmed the role of the King of Spain as the living personification and embodiment of the Spanish nation and a symbol of Spain's enduring unity and permanence and is also invested as the "arbitrator and the moderator" of Spanish institutions. Constitutionally, the sovereign is the head of state and commander-in-chief of the Spanish Armed Forces. The constitution codifies the use of royal styles and titulary, royal prerogatives, hereditary succession to the crown, compensation, and a regency-guardianship contingency in cases of the monarch's minority or incapacitation. According to the Constitution, the monarch is also instrumental in promoting relations with the "nations of its historical community". The monarch serves as honorary chairperson of the Organization of Ibero-American States, representing over 700,000,000 people in twenty-four member nations worldwide.

History

The monarchy in Spain has its roots in the Visigothic Kingdom and its Christian successor states of Navarre, Asturias (later Leon and Castile) and Aragon, which fought the Reconquista or Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula following the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century. One of the earliest influential dynasties was the House of Jiménez which united much of Christian Iberia under its leadership in the 11th century. From Sancho III of Navarre (r. 1000–1035) until Urraca of León and Castile (r. 1106–1125), members of the Jiménez family claimed the historic Visigothic title Imperator totius Hispaniae or Emperor of All Spain. The Jiménez rulers sought to bring their kingdoms into the European mainstream and often engaged in cross-Pyrenees alliances and marriages, and became patrons to Cluniac Reforms (c. 950–c. 1130). Urraca's son and heir Alfonso VII of León and Castile, the first of the Spanish branch of the Burgundy Family, was the last to claim the imperial title of Spain, but divided his empire among his sons. The Castilian Civil War (1366 to 1369) ended with the death of King Peter (r. 1334–1369) at the hands of his illegitimate half-brother Henry, 1st Count of Trastámara who ruled as Henry II (r. 1369–1379). Henry II became the first of the House of Trastámara to rule over a Spanish kingdom. King Peter's heiress, his granddaughter Catherine of Lancaster, married Henry III, reuniting the dynasties in the person of their son, King John II.

Marital union of the Catholic Monarchs

In the 15th century, the marriage between Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, both members of the House of Trastámara, known as the Catholic Monarchs, united two important kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. Each kingdom retained its basic structure. The last pretender of the crown of the Byzantine Empire, Andreas Palaiologos, who styled himself as "Emperor of Constantinople", bestowed his imperial title to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in his last testament, dated 7 April 1502, although the Spanish monarchs have never used the title. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs conquered the Kingdom of Granada in southern Spain, the last Muslim territory in the Iberian peninsula. The unification of Spain is marked from this date, though the Spanish kingdoms continued past that date.

The territories of the Spanish Empire overseas were dependencies of the Crown of Castile, and Castile had an outsized influence there. Following the Spanish explorations and settlement in the Caribbean, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the crown established high courts ("Audiencias") and viceroyalties in important regions (Mexico, 1535; Panama, 1538, which was later replaced by Lima, 1542). The viceroy (vice-king) and the Audiencias were the effective administrators of royal policy.

Habsburg Monarchy

In 1505, the Spanish monarchy passed to the House of Habsburg in the person of King Charles I (also Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V), son of Queen Joanna and King Philip I of Castile (usually Philip the Handsome in English). With the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1516 the Aragonese lands were added to Charles and Joanna's territories. With his mother and co-monarch Joanna confined in Tordesillas, claimed to be mad, Charles I was the sole ruler, but the legal situation remained slightly ambiguous until her death in 1555 left Charles the undoubted sole monarch, though as Holy Roman Emperor it was not his principal title. Only in the reign of his son Philip II of Spain from 1556 did "King of Spain" become the usual way to refer to the monarch, in Spain and the rest of Europe.

Philip's reign marked the peak of the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659), a period of great colonial expansion and trade. The Hispanic Crown retained control over and profited from all operations in overseas colonies (by and large royal assets under a monopoly on trade), including slave trade, developed under the purview of the regalía late-medieval system. The death in 1700 of Charles II, last of the Spanish Habsburgs, triggered the War of the Spanish succession.

Bourbon Monarchy

With the death of the childless Charles II, the succession to the throne was disputed. Charles II had designated his sister Maria Theresa's grandson, Philip of France, Duke of Anjou, as his heir. The possible unification of Spain with France, the two big European powers at the time, sparked the Spanish War of Succession in the 18th century, culminating in the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714), which preserved the European balance of power.

Philip V was the first member of the House of Bourbon (Spanish: Borbón) to rule Spain. That dynasty still rules today under Felipe (Philip) VI.

In the mid-eighteenth century, particularly under Charles III of Spain, the Spanish Crown embarked on an ambitious and far-reaching project to implement major reforms in the administration of Spain and the Spanish Empire. These changes, collectively known as the Bourbon Reforms, attempted to rationalize administration and produce more revenue from the overseas empire.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate in 1808, and the Bourbons became a focus of popular resistance against French rule. However, Ferdinand's rejection of the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812, as well as his ministerial appointments, particularly the exclusion of liberals, gradually eroded popular support for the Spanish monarchy. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830, Ferdinand set aside the Salic law, introduced by Philip V, that prohibited women from becoming sovereigns of Spain. Thereby, as had been customary before the arrival of the Bourbons, Ferdinand VII's eldest daughter Isabella became his heiress presumptive. Opponents of the Pragmatic Sanction argued that it was never officially promulgated, claiming Ferdinand VII's younger brother, Prince Carlos, the rightful heir to the crown according to the Salic Law.

First Spanish Republic

King Amadeo I abdicated on 10 February 1873, and on 11 February a parliamentary majority made up of radicals, republicans, and democrats proclaimed the First Spanish Republic. Tensions between federal republicans and unitary republicans plagued the republic, which also inherited the ongoing Third Carlist War in Spain and the Ten Years' War in Cuba, to which was added the Cantonal Rebellion of July 1873–January 1874. The January 1874 coup by General Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque ousted the government, giving way to a military dictatorship under General Francisco Serrano. On 29 December 1874, General Arsenio Martínez Campos proclaimed Alfonso XII king of Spain in Sagunto, bringing an end to the republic.

Bourbon Restoration

King Alfonso XII taking the throne in December 1874 began the Bourbon Restoration period. After nearly a century of political instability and several civil wars, Spain attempted during the Restoration period to establish a new political system that ensured stability through the practice of turno, an intentional rotation of liberal and conservative parties in leadership, often achieved through electoral fraud. Critics of the turnismo system included republicans, socialists, communists, anarchists, Basque nationalists, and Catalan nationalists, and Carlists. However, the relative stability of the turnismo system resulted in an era of comparative peace within Spain itself, despite great social inequalities in the agricultural areas of Spain and sporadic unrest related to military defeats abroad. Spain's one-sided defeat in the Spanish-American War in 1898, in which the Spanish Navy suffered heavy losses and the Spanish Empire lost control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam, dealt the country a particularly severe blow, and Spain remained neutral during World War I (1914–1918).

King Alfonso XIII acquiesced in the 1923 military coup d'état of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, which tied the Bourbon monarchy to Primo de Rivera's subsequent dictatorship. The protracted political turmoil in the wake of an economic depression in the aftermath of World War I and Spanish military defeat in the Battle of Annual in Spanish Morocco resulted in Primo de Rivera's resignation in 1930 and the end of his dictatorship. Alfonso XIII abdicated and went into exile in Fascist Italy in 1931.

Second Spanish Republic and dictatorship of Francisco Franco

In 1931 Spanish local elections produced victories (particularly in urban areas) for candidates favoring an end to the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. Faced with unrest in the cities, Alfonso XIII went into exile, but did not abdicate. The ensuing provisional government evolved into the relatively short-lived Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and ended on 1 April 1939 with the victory of General Francisco Franco and his coalition of allied organizations commonly referred to as the Nationalists. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany aided Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union backed the Republican Government as did Mexico under the government of Lázaro Cárdenas.

After sixteen years without monarchy or kingdom, in 1947, Spain was made a kingdom again by General Franco, who claimed to rule as "Head of state of the Kingdom of Spain" through the Law of Succession. However, without a king on the throne, he ruled through a coalition of allied organizations from the Spanish Civil War including, but not limited to, the Falange political party, the supporters of the Bourbon royal family, and the Carlists, until his death in 1975.

Re-establishment of the Monarchy

Despite Franco's alliance with the Carlists, Franco appointed Juan Carlos de Borbón as his successor, who is credited with presiding over Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy by fully endorsing political reforms.

Impatient with the pace of democratic reforms, the new king, known for his formidable personality, dismissed Carlos Arias Navarro and appointed the reformer Adolfo Suárez as President of the Government in 1977.

The next year the king signed into law the new liberal democratic Constitution of Spain, which was approved by 88% of voters. Juan Carlos' "quick wit and steady nerve" cut short the attempted military coup in 1981 when the king used a specially designed command communications center in the Zarzuela Palace to denounce the coup and command the military's eleven captains general to stand down.

Following the events of 1981, Juan Carlos led a less eventful life, according to author John Hooper. Juan Carlos did not preside over ceremonies such as the opening of hospitals and bridges as often as monarchs in other nations. Instead, he worked towards establishing reliable political customs when transitioning one government administration to another, emphasizing constitutional law and protocol, and representing the Spanish State domestically and internationally, all the while aiming to maintain a professionally non-partisan yet independent monarchy.

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