The Napoleonic occupation of Spain marked the beginning of a critical division in Spanish political life that would last for more than a century. During the years 1801 to 1814, Spanish intellectuals, excited by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, tried to reorganize governmental institutions along liberal lines. In the southern seaport of Cadiz, where the Spanish government had taken refuge, they imposed the Constitution of 1812 on a small but vocal royalist minority and an underrepresented, generally conservative population. Although not breaking with the monarchy or the Catholic Church, the Constitution of Cadiz curtailed the power of each by depositing the sovereignty of the nation in a new type of parliament no longer based on estates and by abolishing most regional autonomy. And although it did not survive the war, the 1812 constitution was a precursor to future liberal constitutions and laws that would dispossess the church and municipalities, declare universal suffrage and personal liberties, and dethrone the Bourbon house.
One fruit of the clash between the new liberals and the defenders of church, throne, parliament (the Cortes), and decentralized government was the First Carlist War of 1833 to 1840, in which traditionalists gave their allegiance to the pretender Don Carlos. Distinguished by a primitive ideology that was little more than a collection of popular aspirations to defend what was Spanish against foreign encroachment, the Carlists were able to battle the army of Queen Regent Maria Cristina for seven years, using guerilla tactics and receiving critical civilian support.
Independent of the Carlist movement, Spanish intellectuals, belonging to that broad school known as nineteenth-century historical traditionalism, opposed French-style liberalism through their writings and speeches. Most prominent among these were the Catalan theologian Jaime Balmes and the moderate and supporter of the queen regent Jun Donoso Cortés. Both entered political life during the dynastic turmoil of the 1830s. Balmes reached his apex with his 1844 masterwork El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo, but Donoso did not reach intellectual renown until his conversion to Catholic traditionalism following the European revolutions of 1848. After the 1848 uprisings, confronted with the prospects of socialism and communism, Spanish conservative political thought flourished, due to a political radicalism considered more threatening then mere liberalism.
Balmes, foremost an apologist for his faith, believed Catholicism provided the proper balance between liberty and order, while Protestantism led more easily to authoritarian government and social upheaval. Balmes urged that the Spanish government be founded upon Catholicism, traditional flaws, and monarchy. Disturbed by the political unrest in Spain, he and his group of Catalan intellectuals tried to influence the governments of Baldomero Fernández Espartero and Ramón Maria Narvaez along reformist paths, but with few exceptions, their efforts were rebuffed.
Monarchy was preeminent in Balmes' political thought because he believed it suited the traditional Spanish character. He favored a strong but temperate monarchy, his greatest political objective being to reconcile Spain's feuding dynastic branches. He advocated the marriage of Isabella II to the son of Don Carlos, the count of Montemolín, and established the Madrid weekly El pensamiento de la nación to promote this end. Balmes convinced Don Carlos to abdicate in his son's favor and then
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