Something new under the sun. Politics and politicization at the dawn of contemporaneity (Galicia, 1766-1823). A panoramic view

Abstract

The aim of this work is to establish the origins and first developments in Galicia of the process of political socialization in the framework of the crisis of the Old Regime. The research uses varied sources (press, sermons, pastorals, official documentation) with special attention to those generated in the local power spaces (town halls), and then fix the dynamics and responses that actors adopt before decisions and resolutions that come from outside their reference communities. The conclusion is that a “modern” policy, increasingly loaded with ideological components and partially renewed forms and protagonists, now takes its first steps, within a complex and dynamic political context in which visible continuities do not fail, however, to hide the presence and impact of change processes. A new liberal political culture begins its development, in dialectical relation to a realistic political culture based on tradition also forced to restructure and adapt to the demands that derive from 1789.