ABSTRACT
In the event the establishment by the collapsing Junta Central of a regency of its own choice in Cadiz outmanoeuvred the conspirators, but the political programme that they espoused had by no means been dispelled. As exemplar of its many advocates, we have the figure of Juan Perez Villamil, a senior official of the admiralty. Though as much enamoured of popular heroism as any liberal - following the Dos de Mayo, for example, he had issued from the village of M6stoles a stirring call for a national uprising - for Perez Villamil the past was still valid, liberty (and, indeed, a constitution) lying in the existence of the fundamental laws inherited from the past. Far from being overthrown by the introduction of dangerous foreign innovations - it was a constant theme of traditionalists that the ideas of the liberals were drawn from the French Revolution - these should rather be reinforced. We thus return to the position adopted by Jovellanos, but, for all that, it would be a mistake to believe that Perez Villamil was in agreement with him. On the contrary, for Perez Villamil and his fellows, given the threat that it represented to corporate privilege, the royal reformism that the erstwhile minister represented was just as much a cancer as the ideas of the liberals, the solution being to turn back the clock: in 1810, for example, we find the future traditionalist deputy, Francisco Borrull, not only defending the rights of the nobility but also demanding the restitution of the Valencian lueros overthrown by Phillip V in 1707.
