ABSTRACT

To understand the political and social processes that transformed relations between Portugal and Spain during the period of the Union of the Crowns, it is essential to turn our back upon the question of national identity and sovereignty. If we were from the outset to imagine this period as a kind of Babylonian captivity for the Portuguese soul, it would be no use pursuing historical research on the matter. Our interpretation would be simple: the union of 1581 was a political and institutional aberration and the separation of 1640 signalled the inevitable return to normality. Such a version of history mistakes the effects for the causes. In the teleological version that all nationalisms share, two distinct—if not incompatible—identities are bound to engender two different sovereignties. In such a scenario, the passing of time is divided into three stages. A period of socio-genesis for the two nationalities; then a union imposed unilaterally by one side to the detriment of the other; finally, a process of liberation giving way to the creation of a situation that fits the results of the aforementioned socio-genesis. As a working hypothesis, we can imagine another scenario, also in three stages. A period of institutional distinction and, simultaneously, intense social, cultural, spiritual, and even political interpenetration from the start of the sixteenth century; a Union of the Crowns resulting from the Aviz family’s dynastic exhaustion and Portugal’s profound weakening in the wake of the tragedy of Alcácer-Quibir (1578); a period of profound tearing of the secular links woven between the two societies due to the length and brutality of the so-called Restoration War (1640–1668), and to other conflicts of interest between the two monarchies, for instance regarding the demarcation of the two empires in southern Portuguese America.