Notability and Revolution

Social Origins of the Political Elite in Liberal Spain, 1800 to 1853

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2107963
AutoresJesus Cruz, Jesús Cruz Villalón (0000-0002-1275-5289, University of Delaware, autor de correspondencia)
Año1994
Volumen36
Número1
Páginas97-121
Fecha de publicación1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417500018909
OpenAlexW1993475413
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas18

Don Anselmo, the protagonist of a story by Mesonero Romanos, was a wealthy established gentleman in one of Andalusia's leading towns. Young, good-looking, affable, and generous, Anselmo held all the virtues and qualities that can make a man happy, except for one weakness: an overbearing ambition for becoming important. First, he did everything possible to attain a position of power in his town. Unsatisfied with merely local power, he decided to leave his house and possessions in the hands of an administrator and emigrate to Madrid, the only place in Spain where one could achieve a brilliant political career. Once in Madrid he spent his time and his money looking for protection and political connections, a process in which he experienced only personal humiliation and frustration. In the end, Don Anselmo, once a wealthy provincial gentleman, became a failed politician who abandoned both his family and his estate. Don Anselmo's sorry destiny illustrates, according to Mesonero, one of the worse diseases of Spanish society: the empleomania of its elites, a terrible misjudgment that provoked the abandon of productive activities and contributed to the country's backwardness

Backwardness · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Elite · Estate · Humiliation · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical and socio-economic studies of Spain and related regions · History · Law · Spanish History and Politics · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies