The French Emigrants and the Evolution of Frenchification in Spain

Abstract

With the Spanish Bourbons, there was a gradual introduction of Gallic cultural forms that gave rise to Frenchification, or cultural afrancesamiento, which was supported by most of the enlightened elite. The continual upheavals of the French Revolution and of the War of the Pyrenees were to change Spanish life in several of its facets, due in particular to the French emigrants. These exiles –above all, the clergymen– instilled in the popular classes a counterrevolutionary feeling that the Spanish clergy was to turn into a resentment of the French with religious and xenophobic overtones. Such latent prejudices were to reappear in 1808, in part helping to explain the forceful anti-Napoleonic reaction. The afrancesados supported the new Napoleonic Monarchy for political reasons with the purpose of regenerating the country. French residents in Spain from long before had to endure the anger of their Spanish neighbours at the beginning of the war as well as live under the cloak of suspicion.

Keywords

• ilustración
• guerra de la convención
• emigrados
• bonaparte
• guerra de la independencia
• afrancesados.