ABSTRACT
Decades in the making, the transition out of feudalism in Spain had its decisive political breakthrough in the mid-1830s. The upheavals of these critical years saw the consolidation of a juridico-political regime based on a new set of social-property relations. In the coming decades, feudalism’s complex patchwork of collective rights and privileges was recast to reflect the formal legal equality between individual citizens. The fragmented legalities of the absolutist order were consolidated into a unitary constitutional monarchy, headed by a parliamentary elite. In spite of its parliamentary form, the new institutional order had little to do with democracy. Liberal elites remained profoundly suspicious of mass participation and did everything in their power to insulate themselves from democratic accountability. The liberal equalisation of rights had far less to do with popular self-government than with ensuring a level playing field in the access to property. One of the central transformations of this period, if not the most significant, was the generalisation of individual (or ‘private’) forms of property at the expense of the shared, feudal, and communal forms of ownership that were previously commonplace. For Juan Álvarez Mendizábal, chief architect of the generalisation of private property, this process carried a dual political-economic objective. On the one hand, it sought to stimulate capital accumulation and generate tax revenue at a time of financial ruin. On the other hand, it also carried a hegemonic purpose: to expand the constituency of property owners and turn it into a social bulwark of the new liberal state. The objective was, in his words, ‘to create a copious family of property owners, whose existence and enjoyment will depend on the complete triumph of our high institutions’ (Gazeta, 1836).
