Spanish Politics

Europe's political culture returned to Santa Fé with Diego de Vargas and the Reconquest. Society was still divided into two groups fighting for supremacy, the church and the throne. Within the bureaucratic state of viceroys and governors, the natural competition between predecessors and successors was manipulated into parties who supported the friars and those who asserted civil authority.

If anything, it had gotten worse since Charles II was named king of Spain in 1665. He was the biological consequence of generations of in-breeding. All eight of his grandparents were descended from Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her Hapsburg husband, Philip.

According to the Ariel and Will Durant, Charles didn’t speak until he was four. He didn’t walk until he was ten. It’s not clear if he was ever fully competent. Most who commented had a vested interest in portraying him as non compos mentis.

His father, Philip IV, died when he was three. His mother, Philip’s sister’s daughter, was named regent. Mariana of Austria had been educated by a Jesuit priest, Juan Everardo Nithard, who took power a year later, in 1666.

Nithard was overthrow in 1669. Mariana replaced him with Fernando de Valenzuela. They both were driven from Madrid in 1674 as Charles was approaching fourteen, the age of legal maturity for males. He was immediately married to Marie Louise, granddaughter of Louis XIII of France.

The man who acceded and engineered the wedding was Juan José, the natural son of Philip IV. He had been raised anonymously in León, then recognized officially by his father in 1642 when he was thirteen. After that he was trained to military command and diplomacy.

He died in 1679 under mysterious circumstances. Control went to Marie Louise. Soon after, in 1680, Spain saw the greatest auto de fé in its history. She died in 1689, again under circumstances people at the time deemed suspicious. Most think now the cause was appendicitis.

Charles was immediately married to a Hapsburg, Mariana of Neuburg. It was imperative for the perpetuation of the monarchy that he produce an heir. The regent mother, Mariana of Austria, died in May of 1696, and his wife dominated the court.

The regent was still alive in 1693 when de Vargas wrote as if Charles II were a normal monarch. He used phrases like "at your majesty’s royal feet," "having carried out your royal will," and "to give your majesty an account."

The wife of Charles II was dominant when de Vargas notified the viceroy he was establishing the Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz del Rey Nuestro Señor Carlos II de Españoles Mexicanos in 1695. He said it was in "proper compliance to the royal will, which the most excellent lord viceroy has so often repeatedly charged me with."

The regent had recently died when de Vargas was applying for reappointment in 1696. The health of both Charles and his wife was precarious. The court in Madrid and those of France, Austria, England, and the Netherlands were preoccupied with who would succeed if died childless. Someone else got appointed governor of New Mexico.

Notes:
Durant, Ariel and Durant, Will. The Age of Louis XIV, 1963.

Vargas, Diego de. Letter to Charles II, 16 May 1693, published in To The Royal Crown Restored, 1995, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.

_____. Order, 15 March 1695, published in Blood on the Boulders, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.