Spain thread

Recently i have had a sudden interest to learn about Spain, and i have to ask, what the fuck happened? They went from the worlds greatest empire, with a massive navy, and a revolutionary army that basically terrorized Europe, in to a third rate European power, with, what Napoleon considered "the worst military in Europe", their navy was obsolete and had no modern battleship until the Espana class. Also, are there any interesting Civil War documentaries i can watch, there is a long series on youtube but its clearly biased towards the Republic. Post interesting things from Spain, favorite events, battles, wars, personalities e.t.c. I personally am fascinated by the Carlists.

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imdb.com/title/tt1718608/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

I recommend this documentary if you can find it: imdb.com/title/tt1718608/

*shameless self-bump*

How do the Spanish today feel about the monarchy? Its not as popular as the British monarchy thats for sure, but do modern Spaniards like their monarchy?

Is this a BBC documentary? Because i think i found it. Thank you very much.

sorry, but Veeky Forums doesnt like to talk about anything that is outside the world wars, hitler and their favourite youtube channel.

For your initial question, there is a lot of material written about the decline of Spain. There is really no easy answer, though it shouldnt be too hard to find some good articles about that topic.
It came down mostly to a retarded economic and fiscal policy, raging inflation, an unfair distribution of the imperial burdens, nonending war and the collapse of the agricultural system. Its actually a miracle that Spain remained on top of the foodchain for so long, but when they crushed they crushed hard

Spaniards were the best at stabbing other soldiers with pikes, but when war changed they stopped being the best.

also, in the 1600s, they were constantly in war, often against many other great powers simultaneously, 10% of the population were virgins who didnt work (monks and nuns), + a lot of nobles who didnt work, they lost population due to emmigration to the americas and expulsing all the moors, and had a retarded king for decades. And they had the equivalent of a world war fought in their territory both during the Spanish succession war and during the Napoleonic occupation.
They didnt recover from Napoleon to Franco post 1950s.

Channel 4.

Well fuck, i guess the BBC one wont be trash.

>sorry, but Veeky Forums doesnt like to talk about anything that is outside the world wars, hitler and their favourite youtube channel.

Well i figured that much.

>also, in the 1600s, they were constantly in war, often against many other great powers simultaneously, 10% of the population were virgins who didnt work (monks and nuns), + a lot of nobles who didnt work, they lost population due to emmigration to the americas and expulsing all the moors, and had a retarded king for decades. And they had the equivalent of a world war fought in their territory both during the Spanish succession war and during the Napoleonic occupation.
They didnt recover from Napoleon to Franco post 1950s.

Thanks for the answer, seems stupid having that many monks and nuns.

Got lots of gold, didn't bother innovating.

also, Spain overachieved. They always had less than half the population of France, and couldnt even use all of their population because the subdits of the crown of Aragon wouldnt/couldnt be used for fighting.
Everything Spain did was in fact done by Castille, which ruined itself to exhaustion.

It is similar to how the effort of conquering the Persian empire ruined Macedonia. It was a case of biting off more than you can choose.
It is very impressive they pretty much never lost a land battle for over a century.

Having a global empire with 7 million people and wood ships with sails was a far larger effort than having a global empire with 40 million people and steam ships (and later Panama and Suez channels) like France and England in the XIX and XXth centuries.

Thanks for the great answer, probably my favorite itt. Makes a lot of sense. I always wondered how they never got back on track, but i guess with France and England dominating the world that was impossible.

>I always wondered how they never got back on track,
They remained a middle power (and in the top3 in naval strenght) and were probably the strongest of these middle powers (sweden, sardinia-piedmont, Ottoman Turkey) as well; it was just not enough to become a Great Power again.
Then the Peninsular completely fucked them up for good

Fernando VII was a total retard. He lost the empire because he was so worried about having power in Madrid, that he didn't realize he had a huge empire full of ultra catholic people who would make holy war and go full on america for him.
He stayed in spain until it was too late, and didn't think about leaving for mexico city like he was supposed to. He would have been crowned emperor in the mexico city cathedral, new spain was not yet poor because of independence shit so between havana and veracruz he could have rebuilt a fucking huge navy. havana shipmakers were pretty good, and new spain had a pretty competent army.
could have sailed back with a shit ton of silver, ships, and novohispanic men and south american volunteers.
instead he was busy personally arresting people he thought were plotting against him in madrid.

Fernando VII was without doubt the worst king in the spanish's history

I'm not a Spaniard, but I've heard that it really sort of depends on who you ask about the monarchy. There's some die hard traditionalists that love them despite admitting their flaws, and there's also modernists that hate them for what they represent (A ruling class that was born into power). I was told not to bring it up at all when I go to visit because it's likely to rile up both sides of the fence who will take it out on any foreigner nearby.

I watched the whole of this a while back. I think it's very well done, I did sort of chuckle during part two where the mention of the murders of the priests and nuns gets a small footnote while over half of the segment is pointing out the atrocities of the nationalists against the common man. I can accept that's it's pretty difficult to not be upset regardless of what side you're on though, and even subconsciously you're probably going to gravitate to the one you believe in.

Some gross proportion of the silver the empire extracted also never went into the empire-proper, but rather flowed from Spain into the rest of Europe. The wealth never stayed in Spanish coffers for very long, certainly not long enough to get much done with it, and so even though Spain had this massive economic role and presence, the empire itself was never really able to solidify itself. It existed only so far as the flow of precious metals remained relatively constant, and declined as soon as those reserves began to dry up.

And that is one of my points. because fernando vii never went to the new spain the flow of silver pretty much stopped. There was no government proper, so all these traditional legislatures started re-emerging in spain, the viceroys and American courts had no fucking clue who to send money to, and with civil unrest came the end of mining for 10 years almost.
People were warring because he made laws to make himsilf such a powerful king that no one really thought legitimate the court of cadiz or burgos. When people in America were beginning to get respect some rule of law with the cadiz constitution, he came back and took away all the rights and privileges that the kingdoms and subjects were given.
Masons and the traders took power from the church and nobility, armies were fighting rebels one day and the other day they would all go home. Fuck him and his daughter. I hope they never rest peacefully

To understand Spain you have to understand what formed Spain so lets start with that. Spain was formed by the union of 2 kingdoms.
>Castile
Castile is usually a weird kingdom itself. The nobiliary titles were earned by conquest and not by royal appointment. Peasants in Castile own a horse and weapons and usually were land overs. This lead to a society in which everyone was a soldier and in which entrepenuership was the rule. Even the Castillian coastal cities formed a kind of Hanseatic league. The economy of Castile was quite advanced for its time. It was the biggest ship producer in Europe,one of the biggest arm producer (inventing things like naval gunpowder artillery and archebuses) and a textile industry that had a steady growth. The Castillian nobility was urban. They lived in cities,went to university,held positions of power in the cities and had their own little courts in which they financed their own artist and musicians. This would result in a nobility easy to tame after Isabel's reforms were implemented. And the most important factor. 10-15% of all the population had some nobiliary title which would be very important later on.

It is also important to understand what happened to Castille before Isabel. After king Alfonso the wise died the kingdom spent two centuries fighting succession wars and regicide wars. This conflicts killed more than 50% of the high nobility in Castile. This void of power was filled by what is called gran hombres (the elite amongst the nobility) and the church. This is extremelly important as the lands of the church weren't taxed so
archbishops held more power than any noble. After the Castillian civil war of 1475 Isabel gets crowned queen and she pursues a lot of reforms. This reforms caused a huge centralization of the kingdom creating an standing army amongst other things which allowed the kingdom to push way above its weight in terms of resources and population.

>Aragon
Aragon was a decadent kingdom. Each king was weaker than the previous one while the nobility gained more and more power. This went to ridiculous extends. For example the king of Aragon lacked the strenght to stomp a peasant revolt in Catalonia as the nobility didn't want to send troops and they had to ask France for help in exchange of el Rosellon. The bubonic plague had aniquilated the population of Catalonia,Aragon and Mallorca while Valencia and Sicily kept a steady growth which made them too powerful inside the kingdom. The crown was a confederation of kingdoms. Aragon,Valencia,Mallorca and Sicily and a principality Catalonia. Each one had their own laws and courts. The economy of Aragon was basically death. The Catalan guilds went entirely bankrupt and produced very little while in the past they were very productive. They had an average navy despite having domains all over the mediterranean and France was preying on those territories and vassals. Specially Naples. After getting demolished by France in the first war for the Rosellon king Peter sought an alliance with Castille to stop France.

This is were Isabel comes into play. In theory she was the heir of Henry as he stated in the treaties of Guisando but his daughter had won a lot of support from the higher nobility,the clergy and Portugal. Isabel to not get totally isolated forged an alliance with Aragon martying with its heir Fernando and managed to rally the cities under her banner. As the castillian nobility was mostly urban,lots if members of their family were captured which forced them to change sides in the comflict. After the battle of Toro Isabel and Fernando became de facto kings of Castile. And 7 years later Fernando would be crown king of Aragon

The union was just dinastic. Each jealousy inside all the crown of Aragon. The lack of involvement of Aragon in the empire created a lot of hate in Castile.

Now the figure of the hidalgo will kick in. 10% of the population of Castile were nobles but most of them were hidalgos. Hidalgos had very poor land and no wealth but as they were noble they couldn't get involved in guilds or trade as was unhonorable. With the discovery of America,the war in Flandes and the Italian wars the hidalgos got a golden ticket to move in the social ladder and they took it

Cortés,Pizarro,Cervantes,Gonzalez de Córdoba or Nebrija were all members of these lower nobility. But as inflation kicked in and the number of merchants,artisians and burocrats wasn't increasing the economy of Castile started to collapse. Debt was growing, production decreased and the only thing that kept the empire afloat were the constant victories in the field of battle. This situation eas unsustainable and here is were the first reformist in the empire appears. El Conde Duque de Olivares.

Olivares was a very arrogant but capable man and he understood what was going on in the empire. And so he told the king. His plans were to centralize all the kingdoms gradually an integrate them in the crown of Castile. Hia first step was to pass a reform called the union de armas that would make each kingdom take their share of responsability in terms of taxes and soldiers. This reforms didn't pass in any court of the kingdom of Aragon which pissed him off and without the consent of the king he passed forcefully the reform to all the kingdoms without their consent. This created a lot of resent inside the crown of Aragon but it was helping the empire as a whole until France enters the war. When France enters in the 30 years war the Spanish army succesfully defeats them for the first part of the comflict, but catalan rebels in the day of the corpus cristi rebell against the crown and offer Louis XIV the title of count of Barcelona which he accepts. This opened a new front for the empire and generates other revolts in Portugal and Andalucia. Which leads to the collapse of the empire as no resources could be sent to Flanders. This crisis would affect Spain for the second half of the second century and only under Charles the II the economy starts to recover.

After the Borbouns rise to power in Spain they centralized it again. The XVIII century was pretty good for Spain overall but after the Napoleonic invasion the empire collapsed due independentism and constant civil wars and coups

Behead them (loli princesses included) and stablish a republic

>Republicucks on my board

>I did sort of chuckle during part two where the mention of the murders of the priests and nuns gets a small footnote while over half of the segment is pointing out the atrocities of the nationalists against the common man

Well fuck this is what i was afraid of, but i guess i can't expect more from the BBC, hopefully the rest of it was ok.

Get out you fucking republicuck nobody wants you here.

I would like to thank everyone for their contribution, i have read every post and i have nothing really to add so i just wanted to thank you, i thought this thread was gonna die but i got a lot of great information, sources and basically a starting point from where to go.

Who was the best?

I cant tell who was the best.
The classic answer is Charles V because he inherited half of europe and the pinacle of the "siglo de oro" but the true is he wasnt the skillest monarch of europe or something, just a lucky guy by the simple fact of being born in the right moment.

>inb4 Felipe II The first global empire!

Five state bankruptcies.
Netherlands independence
Destroy the armada invencible

>Who was the best?
1.Isabel+ Fernando
2. Ferdinand the VI
3. Charles the III
4. Phillip the V
5. Charles the II (not memeing at all)

Afonso Henriques

>Ferdinand VII wants to be an absolutist, undoing centuries of pactismo which had defined the way in which the Spanish had governed itself since the middle ages
>This kills the empire.jpg
It was already in decline since the French Intervention in the early 1800s but I think the Carlist Wars helped closed the door on Spain being relevant in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The old poet Francisco Quevedo wrote a poem called Poderoso Caballero es Don Dinero in which he stated that Spanish gold is born in the Indies, but dies in Genoa.