ABSTRACT
Between the end of the eighteenth century and the Revolution of 1868, the Spanish monarchy survived without discontinuity (excepting the brief parenthesis of the Napoleonic occupation) in Europe marked by revolutionary storms that had destabilised many European dynasties, to the point of suppressing some of them.
However, beyond this continuity, the Spanish monarchy had to adapt to profound political and social changes inherited from the monarchical struggles of the second half of the eighteenth century, from the European revolutions and from liberalism. This chapter describes the monarchy's various mutations and experiences in Spain during this century-long period. The monarchy survived but in the end experienced increasing discredit because the monarchs did not want to adopt and personify the new European national imaginary and the monarchy never really became constitutional. Adaptation was always insufficient to configure a monarchical model endowed with a certain stability and social consensus.
