The conception of the Spanish nation during the Enlightenment

Community, time, and the (im)political

Abstract

This article deals with the historical configuration of the Spanish nation from the perspective of the continuity in time the Ancien Régime attributed to political communities. Starting from the singular temporality of the Hispanic Monarchy as an empire, it offers an overview of the discourse developed to dispel the threat of decadence. This discourse, centred on the adoption of the language of commerce and the science of political economy, eventually made it possible to offer a diagnosis of the moral ills of the Spaniards that prevented the possibility of a denaturalisation without jeopardising the Catholic orthodoxy that legitimised the Hispanic monarchy and without empowering a subject with political capacity. The text thus allows to reflect on the time dimension inherent to any definition of community, as well as on the distinctive features of the Spanish nation built by the Enlightenment planners and reformers, marked by the weight of impolitic features.