El liberalismo conservador español del siglo XIX: la forja de una identidad política, 1810-1840.

Abstract

This article covers the early years of Spanish conservative liberalism. It examines a period when post-revolutionary liberalism split in two and also when conservative liberalism formed its core distinguishing features. Its emergence as a political party and the formation of a distinctive ideology took place over the key stage from 1835 to 1840, against a background of conflict in which it adopted a doctrinal system and personality inspired by its aim to tackle a perceived threat of revolution that it deemed to have been triggered by governments attempting to implement a progressive, forward-looking liberalism. Thus, driven by an overwhelming concern for public order, it took on an authoritarian, fear-inspired concept of liberalism whose essence, although it was updated at later stages and made compatible with various different forms of understanding and practising conservatism, would endure until the final decades of the 19th century.