The Liberals of the Trienio constitucional (1820-1823) in search of their origins: an iconography and its European ancestry in the service of a political mythology
Abstract
The Trienio was a milestone in Spanish history: for three years, the monarchy went from being absolutist to liberal, and the ideas of the Cadiz of 1812 could finally be put into practice. But having seized power did not mean having conquered mentalities: among the many challenges faced by the new leaders was that of establishing themselves in the political landscape of their time. This article sets out to explore one of the legitimisation strategies employed by the liberals to achieve this – the staging of their ideology’s genesis – by studying the iconographic repertoire to which they resorted. Through different types of prints, we will see how the origins of the Trienio were highlighted. And we will see how the visual rhetoric deployed is part of a broadly European tradition.
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