ABSTRACT
The history of modern Spain was not associated with the notion of “weakness”. Historians have traditionally considered Spain as one of the oldest and most powerful nation states in Europe. Spain was an old European nation state with fixed and unchallenged external borders but also with a precarious and fragile national identity. Behind the image of a Spanish state and all its attributes as a product of successful early formation, compact, solid in terms of national identity and a privileged part of the European power center, a different and complex reality was concealed. The political influence of Madrid reached far beyond those 6 kilometers because, to a great extent, politics both in the state and in its regions were centralized and determined in the capital. The image of Spain as a backward state, under the control of the powerful Catholic Church since the Inquisition, had been quite common for the enlightened sectors of European public opinion since the 18th century.
