The New Plant and the catalan petitions to the royalty after the Spanish Sucession War (1716-1766): public offices and territorial privileges

• Grant number: 20/05145-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): November 30, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Iris Kantor
• Grantee: Alberto Airton Amendola Gandolfo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research has the objective of studying the reforms of public administration in 18th-century Catalonia, which began in the reign of Philip V (1700-1746), especially its repercussions on the local political body, based on the documented manifestations of dissatisfaction at that time. Our main background is the centralization process that took place in Spain at that time, in particular regarding the post Spanish Succession War (1701-1714) situation and the establishment of the royal decrees of the Nueva Planta. About the consequences for the Catalans, the decree promulgated in 1716 extinguished the fueros, various political institutions and almost the entirety of the region's own legislation. Among them, we emphasize the end of the exclusive occupation of local public offices by Catalans, an action that allowed the entry of officials born in other Spanish domains to positions in the administrative, legislative and ecclesiastical institutions of the former Principality. The sources selected for this study will be two appeals to the monarchy, one to the British king George II in 1736 and one to the Spanish king Charles III in 1760, by groups dissatisfied with that situation. We will also work with a political pamphlet in opposition to the Bourbons disseminated in Barcelona around 1734 and with the decree of the Catalan Nueva Planta (1716). This documentation, supported by the bibliographic balance of the research, will allow us to explore the manifestations against the policy of the new Spanish dynasty in Catalonia, in a century traditionally portrayed in historiography as of little political activity in the region. Thus, our time frame begins with the promulgation of the decree in 1716 by Philip V, going until the municipal reforms of 1766, considered as a pivotal event for the crisis of the gremios in Barcelona (1773-1775) and the subsequent restoration of the Nueva Planta in 1775. (AU)