The revolution of modesty: Scandals, gender and politics in the crisis of the liberal monarchy in Spain

Abstract

This article analyzes the performative nature of the great moral and political scandals built around the royal family, which affected the public image and the mechanisms of legitimation of the liberal monarchy in Spain during the reign of Isabel II (1833-1868). I approach the subject from the current perspective of reflection on the historical overlapping of the notions of political virtue and moral scandal that gave rise to the idea of “corruption” in the liberal universe. An idea that, as I have tried to demonstrate, had strong gender connotations, was linked to the nation-state building dynamics, forces a substantial extension of our notion of the political, suggests the historically creative nature of scandals, and demonstrates the heterodox, not necessarily public or conventionally “reasonable” forms, which shaped the very notion of modern public sphere.