He was born to an important family of artists, including his brother, architect Isidro González Velázquez; and his father, Antonio, who was Charles III’s court painter and director of the Academy of San Fernando. His artistic training, however, is linked to his brother-in-law, Mariano Salvador Maella. This context ensured contact with the most important official commissions from the very beginning of his career, including the royal family, for whom he painted numerous frescoes at the Casita del Labrador in Aranjuez. These works presented mythological and allegorical subjects in a style that combines late Baroque elements with Neoclassical characteristics. In 1802 he was appointed court painter, and during that period he combined his work for the monarchy with commissions from other institutions, many of which were religious. Following the Peninsular War, he continued decorating the royal palaces, especially El Pardo, now at the behest of King Ferdinand VII.

Besides his prolific frescoes, Zacarías González Velázquez holds a place in the history of Spanish painting for a notable series of portraits, several of which depict members of his family or professional circles. These works’ precise and careful technique reveal a very subtle and delicate handling of expressions and emotions, making them a splendid reflection of the appearance and expectations of Madrid’s bourgeois society in the years that span the reigns of Charles IV and Ferdinand VII.

Javier Portús

The ninth child of Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma. The premature deaths of his brothers, the twins Carlos and Felipe, put him in line to succeed his father on the throne. In 1789, he took the oath as Prince of Asturias at the church of San Jerónimo el Real. The prince’s education was far from excellent, but he was not ignorant or contemptuous of culture. In his youth, he took a liking to chemistry and the experimental sciences in the laboratory placed at his disposal, run by the scientist Gutiérrez Bueno. He took pains to increase the size of his library, and he knew enough French to be able to translate texts from that language. He was keen to see the economic state of his kingdom for himself, and wrote about it in his travel diaries. Moreover, he was interested in the arts, continuing his father’s tradition, and it was during his reign that the Prado Museum and the Conservatory of Music were founded in Madrid.

However, the image transmitted by his contemporaries is one of a vulgar man lacking in any kind of grandeur. Those who dealt with him described him as weak, easily influenced, hypocritical, mistrustful, timid, cowardly and incapable of feeling affection for others. He was extremely conscious of his elevated status and worried about his public image, as well as opinionated and authoritarian. Mesonero Romanos said of him that he was possessed of a selfish cunning that allowed him to make use of men of all kinds.

His role at court was insignificant until his marriage to Maria Antonia of Naples in 1802. Under the influence of his wife, he started to take an interest in politics. He did nothing without intrigue, aided by what we might call a ‘Fernandine faction’ formed by Canon Escóiquiz and a group of aristocrats. The main goals were to prevent Godoy from blocking his passage to the throne, put an end to the Enlightenment reformism of the last years of Charles IV’s reign, increase the weight of the aristocracy in the government, and satisfy the aspirations of the clergy.

Taking advantage of the serious economic difficulties Spain was experiencing in the early nineteenth century and the strong diplomatic pressure of Napoleon, who enforced the terms of the treaty of 1796 to commit Charles IV to the war against England, Ferdinand’s faction launched an offensive against Godoy. It was based on a propaganda campaign financed by Ferdinand himself which compromised the sovereigns, especially the queen, whose sexual depravity was held to be responsible for all the kingdom’s ills.

In 1807, the Fernandines advanced a step further in their plan to get rid of Godoy and at the same time win the support of Napoleon. Charles IV was alerted, and ordered the Prince of Asturias’s room to be searched. Papers were found that revealed the plot. The legal proceedings known as the ‘Trial of El Escorial’ commenced, the prince confessed, and the episode ended with Charles IV pardoning his son. The populace, misinformed about what had really happened, thought it unlikely the Prince of Asturias would take part in an operation against the king, and put it all down to a manoeuvre by Godoy to blacken the name of the “innocent prince”. The failure of the conspiracy thus turned immediately into success for the Prince of Asturias.

After the events of El Escorial, the Fernandines could not have been better regarded by public opinion. Seizing the opportunity offered by the attempt to transfer the Court to the south of the Iberian Peninsula, a precaution against unexpected actions by the French troops then entering Spain, they therefore organised the events known as the ‘Aranjuez Mutiny’. The mutiny deposed Godoy and ended with the abdication of Charles IV. Napoleon offered to arbitrate, though his real intention was to annex the realm. He made all the members of the royal family go to Bayonne, and there forced Ferdinand VII to return the crown to Charles IV, who was induced in turn to abdicate in his favour. It was with great ease that Napoleon won the Spanish crown.

Ferdinand VII remained in Valençay from May 1808 to March 1814, when the Peninsular War came to an end. Ferdinand’s conduct during this time was one of complete submission to Napoleon, and he made no attempt to contact the Spaniards who were fighting in his name. In 1813, however, there was an unexpected turn of events. Napoleon needed to end the war in Spain in order to have more troops at his disposal, so he negotiated a treaty with Ferdinand VII. To make sure he accepted it, he promised to allow his return to Spain as absolute monarch. The Treaty of Valençay was not ratified by the constitutional regency, the executive power legally established in Spain, but Ferdinand VII’s return was authorised as it signified victory over Napoleon. He returned greatly fortified, for he was the “legitimate” king by contrast with the “intruder” Joseph Bonaparte, and above all he was the “innocent prince”, free of responsibility for the nation’s evils, who had nevertheless sacrificed himself for it by enduring harsh captivity.

During the king’s absence, the Cortes (parliamentary assembly) of Cádiz had resolved the crisis of the traditional Spanish monarchy by transforming it into a constitutional monarchy through the Constitution of 1812. Ferdinand VII and his supporters would not accept this solution. The promise made to him by Napoleon and the manifest antipathy shown for the work of the Cádiz parliament by the Duke of Wellington, the man with the greatest military power in Spain at that point, smoothed the way for Ferdinand to repeal the Constitution, declare the decisions of the Cádiz parliament null and void, and restore the absolutist monarchy in 1814.

Ferdinand VII never accepted the Constitution of 1812 or any other representative system, whatever its nature. Nevertheless, the uprising of Riego forced him to endorse it, although he immediately fostered a number of operations aimed against it. The rest of his reign was characterised by personal insecurity mingled with a visceral hatred of the liberals and constitutionalism. He repealed the Constitution again in 1823, this time with the decisive military intervention of a foreign army, the ‘Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis’, agreed upon by the European powers at the Congress of Verona the previous year.

While it would be inexact to speak of a complete victory of the absolutists in 1814 and 1823, the general impression was that the traditional absolute monarchy was back, incarnated in a monarch who was endowed with full powers limited only by Catholic doctrine and the traditional laws guaranteeing the privileges of certain persons and territories. The political system created by Ferdinand VII was characterised by the personal assumption of royal power, a markedly counterrevolutionary spirit and the systematic implementation of harsh repression.

To save their lives or avoid going to prison, those liberals who could went into exile, mostly to France and England. This political exile, together with the failed attempts of the liberals to rouse the Spanish population against absolutism, constituted the defining features of this monarch’s reign. Other occurrences of paramount importance were the loss of America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and Spain’s regression on the international stage.

In 1826, in the face of dual opposition from the liberals and the ultra-royalists, Ferdinand was forced to agree to a policy of reforms aimed at modernising the administration. The executors were the so-called “moderate” or “pragmatic absolutists”, individuals with Enlightenment ideas who firmly supported the absolute monarchy, although their fidelity to the king would perhaps make it more appropriate to refer to them as “Fernandines”. Among them were Martín de Garay, García de León Pizarro, Cea Bermúdez, the Count of Ofalia, López Ballesteros and Javier de Burgos. Their measures, which included such appreciable reforms as the creation of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Public Works, the mining laws, the Code of Commerce and the foundation of the Madrid Stock Exchange, were aimed at guaranteeing the survival of the Fernandine regime. In 1827, prompted by discontent among peasants, artisans, clerics and local dignitaries, Ferdinand visited Catalonia after the revolt of the Agraviats (Aggrieved) or Malcontents, and then went on to Navarre and the Basque Country. The enthusiastic welcome of the population convinced him of their fidelity. By the time he returned to Madrid, he had regained much of his lost popularity. The more moderate royalists thought channels might now be opened for participation in power, but the master guidelines of royal policy did not move an inch.

One of the great problems of his reign was the succession. His first three wives left him no descent. By his fourth wife, his niece Maria Christina of Bourbon, whom he married in 1829, he had two daughters, Isabel and Luisa Fernanda, but no male heir. Months before the birth of the first, who was to reign with the name of Isabella II, he published a Pragmatic Sanction (March 1830) suppressing the Salic Law, in force in Spain since 1713, and reestablishing the Castilian law of succession, whereby if there was no direct male heir, the women of highest degree and lineage could reign without having to defer to males further from the direct line. This was opposed by the ultra-royalists, who were in favour of his brother, Carlos María Isidro, whereas the moderate absolutists and the liberals supported the Sanction. After 1830, Spanish politics entered a phase of turmoil between the so-called “Carlists” and the “Isabellines” or “Christines”.

The question of succession apart, the liberals also continued with their attempts to bring about political change, borne along by the atmosphere created in Europe by the revolutionary movements of 1830. Various actions were attempted, all failures, and many of those involved in them were executed. Especially notorious were the cases of Mariana Pineda and General Torrijos.

Ferdinand VII died on 29 September 1833. Queen Maria Christina assumed the regency until her daughter Isabella II came of age.

Paloma Gómez Pastor