The return of absolute power
On the same day in 1814, exactly 210 years ago, Ferdinand VII, known as the ‘criminal king’, decreed the reinstatement of the dreaded Inquisition in Spain. This act marked the return of absolute control of the sixth Bourbon monarch over Madrid and the entire Spanish kingdom.
Betrayals and political games
In 1808, Ferdinand VII had ceded the Spanish throne to Napoleon Bonaparte through the Treaty of Bayonne, allowing the French emperor to install his brother Joseph Bonaparte as the new king of Madrid. One of the first actions of Joseph I was to introduce the Constitution of Bayonne, which would abolish the Inquisition in Spanish lands.
Impact in Catalonia
Simultaneously, in Catalonia, integration into the French Empire during the period 1808-1814 meant the automatic elimination of the Inquisition, aligning the region with the French reforms.
An institution of terror
Established by the Catholic Kings in 1478, the Inquisition functioned as a kind of political police, silencing any form of dissent against the Spanish monarchical-religious regime. It was the first entity that covered all the domains of the monarchy in the peninsula and tried to unify them under a single power. Until its abolition in 1808, it had exercised iron control and spread an atmosphere of fear and death. According to modern historiography, the Inquisition may have been responsible for the deaths of nearly 50,000 people.
The fall of Napoleon and the return of Ferdinand VII
With the defeat of the Napoleonic forces in Europe and the disintegration of the regimes that Napoleon had established between 1804 and 1814, the victorious powers ordered Ferdinand VII to return to Madrid. Crossing the Pyrenees on March 22, 1814, the monarch arrived in Valencia on May 4, encouraged by the most reactionary sectors of the time. This group, known as the signatories of the ‘Carta de los Persas’, had supported it during the coup of 19 March 1808.
On July 21, 1814, finally in Madrid, Ferdinand VII signed the decree that restored the Inquisition, reaffirming its absolute power and restarting a stage of repression and control over Spanish society.