The Royal Family as a Symbolic FictionA Mixed Picture of New Forms of Legitimacy in Spain’s Liberal Monarchy (1843–1931)

Résumé

The social architecture of constitutional monarchies presents great complexity. It combines the foundations of traditional dynastic and historical legitimacy with new resources and strategies to increase royal families' capacity to connect with popular audiences. That was necessary in order to successfully face monarchies' survival in post-revolutionary society. Among these new resources for popularizing monarchies, the central place was occupied by the projection of the image of the ‘sentimental family’. This image was a fiction built around a close family that reproduced gender stereotypes allowing royals to mimic the middle classes' cultural and moral values. At the same time, however, the image was distant, because royal characters acted at majestic ceremonies according to a stereotyped set of traditional values and behaviours, and with self-consciousness about their own embodiment of the Crown's inalienable power. In this chapter, we analyse the construction and public projection of the Spanish monarchy's imaginary family ideal from the reign of Isabel II to that of Alfonso XIII. Queens and kings built a symbolic fiction on dynastic foundations but adapted to a discourse of proximity and modernization that sought to popularize the public image of the monarchical institution.