Barral Martínez, Margarita2025-11-282025-11-282020Barral-Martínez, Margarita (2021). "Royal travels The modern staging and legitimation of the Spanish monarchy, 1858–19311", Monarchy and Liberalism in Spain: The Building of the Nation-State, 1780–1931: David San Narciso, Margarita Barral-Martínez and Carolina Armenteros, eds. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2021. 202-220 pp.9780367810375https://hdl.handle.net/10347/44076Spain's contemporary kings transformed the Crown decidedly for the purposes of nationalization, in order to adapt the institution to liberal reality and mass society. The aim was to offer a more popular and modern image of monarchy, using means of propaganda like royal trips and visits. This essay analyses the symbiosis between monarchy and nation through the celebrations and ceremonies that accompanied royal visits from Isabel II to Alfonso XIII. Focusing on monarchs' public dimension, the chapter studies the traditional link between Crown, Church and army on the one hand, and a European-style monarchism on the other that presented the monarchy as a benefactor of the people. The monarchs' discourses in their visits to regions, provinces and cities, however, reinforced a unitary identity, conservative and Castilian, without considering emerging sub-state identities. The monarchy became a symbolic reference for the nation but, by not making tradition and modernity cohere, it did not become a truly popular institution.eng©2020, The Author/s. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 InternationalAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Spanish monarchiesIsabel IIAlfonso XIIILibrelism in Spain55 Historiabook part10.4324/9780367810375open access