Monarquia moderada i llibertat de la pàtria. Notes sobre el pensament polític de l’austriacisme castellà a l’exili

Abstract

The analysis of a political work published in exile in Milan by 1716 permits some observations on the political thought of Castilian Austracism, a little known (and misrepresented) aspect of the War of the Spanish Succesion. Its main features were: the defence of monarchical rule as moderated by laws, institutions and estates (in contrast to the tyrannical power embodied by the Bourbons); the intervention of communities, convened in assemblies, in proclaiming the new king in cases of an uncertain succession; the view of Philip V’s accesssion as the culminating moment of Spanish decline; and a justification of opposition to the new dynasty as a defense of the freedom of the fatherland. These principles, that can be seen in the editorial output during the war, bear a significant resemblance to the discourse generated in France, a few decades earlier, by the opposition to Richelieu and Mazarin, that some historians have qualified as a first or embryonic form of political liberalism.