ABSTRACT
This chapter describes causes of the development of that symbiotic relationship between intellectuals and the state during the eighteenth century. It suggests that the relation should be part of the explanation of the belated rise in Spain of the political public sphere and of "public opinion" as a legitimating construct. The chapter seeks to add some perspective with a few proddings into Spain's differential dynamics vis-a-vis eighteenth-century France. Political revolution in Spain, according to revisionist historiography, was "not the result of the ascent of a new social class but rather the product of the acceptance of modernization on the part of the old elite that co-opted some bourgeois elements". According to Giovanni Stiffoni, there was a clear sense at the end of the War of Succession that the Bourbon triumph represented a cultural break with the imperial Spain of the Austrian dynasty.
