The Modern Liberal Concept of Spain was created during the Peninsular War of 1808-1814

So says Quiroga and Balfour

• “The invasion of Napoleonic troops mobilized an important sector of the population in the struggle against the French and triggered the liberal revolution. In 1810 the National Assembly convened in Cádiz and assumed national sovereignty in defence of a modern canon of Spain as a political community of citizens endowed with equal rights. In March 1812 the National Assembly approved a constitution that established the Spanish nation as sovereign and recognized Spain as a national, constitutional, parliamentarian and Catholic body. To justify abandoning the absolutist regime, Spanish liberalism sought to position itself within popular traditions. Liberals defined the national community in terms of a common history and culture rooted in the Middle Ages. Thus Aragon’s medieval parliaments and the Castilian Comuneros’ opposition to the rule of the Habsburgs were mobilized as historical landmarks for Spanish liberalism’s claim that it had ‘traditional’ origins. In turn, this contention of a popular and democratic past was meant to legitimize liberalism and the creation of new parcipatory institutions within a modern state. In other words, from its conception the liberal idea of Spain incorporated an important ‘organicist’ perception of the nation as a community shaped by history and culture, an idea that would eventually underlie the 1978 Constitution.”