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Valencian Community PAU History of Spain study materials
Valencian Community PAU History of Spain study resources

Valencian Community PAU History of Spain: Early Modern Spain: Catholic Monarchs, Habsburgs, Golden Age, crisis and Bourbon reform

Valencian Community PAU History of Spain · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Early Modern Spain: Catholic Monarchs, Habsburgs, Golden Age, crisis and Bourbon reform

This domain tests the construction of the Spanish monarchy, the Habsburg imperial system, the cultural Golden Age, the seventeenth-century crisis and the Bourbon reforms. In the Valencian case, the Germanies, the expulsion of the Moriscos and the Nueva Planta are central.

Catholic Monarchs and Habsburgs

  • The dynastic union of Castile and Aragon (1469) did not create a unified state. The Catholic Monarchs took Granada in 1492, established the Inquisition (1478) and expelled the Jews (1492).
  • Charles V inherited a composite monarchy and an empire. The Comuneros (1520–1521) challenged royal taxation and foreign rule in Castile; the Germanies (1519–1523) were a Valencian social and political revolt of guilds against patrician and royal authority.
  • Philip II (1556–1598) centralised government, defended Catholicism and faced the Dutch revolt and the Armada of 1588. The Golden Age combined imperial politics with literature and art, including Valencian humanism.

Crisis and Bourbon reforms

  • The seventeenth century brought the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609), population loss, fiscal pressure, Catalan and Portuguese revolts in 1640 and the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659). In Valencia the expulsion weakened agriculture and seigneurial rents.
  • The War of the Spanish Succession ended with the Bourbon victory. The Nueva Planta decrees abolished the Furs of Valencia (1707) and imposed Castilian law and centralised institutions.
  • Charles III and his ministers promoted reform: free trade, infrastructure, the expulsion of the Jesuits (1767) and administrative rationalisation, without transforming the agrarian social order.

Worked example

A demographic table shows the Kingdom of Valencia losing a large share of its population around 1609, especially in seigneurial lands. Classify it as a demographic source. Explain the cause: the expulsion of the Moriscos, decreed by Philip III. Then assess consequences: labour shortage, abandoned irrigation lands and increased rents on Christian tenants. The reasoning should distinguish estimate from exact count and link the expulsion to the wider seventeenth-century crisis.

Traps that cost marks

  • Confusing the Germanies of Valencia with the Comuneros of Castile.
  • Treating the Catholic Monarchs’ union as a single centralised state.
  • Dating the expulsion of the Moriscos to 1492 instead of 1609.
  • Saying the Nueva Planta immediately abolished every foral institution in all territories; Valencia lost its Furs in 1707, Catalonia in 1716.
  • Presenting Bourbon reform as social revolution rather than administrative and fiscal change.