Intereses financieros y nacionalismo. La pugna entre mercaderes banqueros españoles y franceses en Madrid, 1766-1796

Abstract

The paper starts by referring the presence of three financial groups in Madrid in 18th century Vasque, Navarrese and French. By then, the town was the main financial market of the Spanish Monarchy. The Real Giro, the first Spanish public bank, was set up in 1748 mainly to keep under control the silver exports towards European countries. But it soon declined and, at the same time, the Madrid French tradesmen achieved an increasing activity. Both facts fed a struggle between two financial groups, the French and that of the Spanish naturals, for controlling the silver business. Later on Floridablanca fueled the creation of the Banco de San Carlos, which came to be controlled by French. In this situation, the Spanish tradesmen, who held on the Spanish financial group Cinco Gremios Mayores, faced off them by increasingly using nationalist arguments. The reaction to the political events of 1789 and the subsequent process of expulsion of the French from Spain blocked the ways to finance the State and its Enlightened policy. It also fuelded the Spanish Monarchy’s debt increase and paved the path to a first process of public auction of many Church estates in 1798.