Spanish Decadence

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.^[1]

The decline was reflected in all areas like 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). Also 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. Later it was evidenced with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the pathetic^[2] 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. 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 (1701-1714) 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.^[3]

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.^[4]

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,^[5] 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).^[6]

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.^[7] 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.