Desdichada España. Despotismo y crisis política en el «Memorial historial» de fray Benito de la Soledad

Abstract

Historiographers interested in Spanish political culture in the transition between the 17th and 18th centuries have traditionally assigned a marginal role to the Memorial historial by Fray Benito de la Soledad. References to the text focus mainly on its dedication to Leopoldo I and his fixation on the threat of external despotism that Louis XIV represented. However, they omit any reference to the monarchy’s program of reform that his main discourse deployed with a language of uniformity, and from a point of view of identification of a domestic despotism, and whose manuscript version had already been presented to Charles II of Spain and Louis XIV. It is often forgotten that his work was anchored to the process of political introspection formulated in the heart of the monarchy before the War of the Spanish Succession, and we have lost sight of the possibility of recognizing that political languages were included in its context whose complexity can hardly account for the mere and exclusive reference to the dynastic involvement of its authors.