Olivares and Godoy: two favorites, one same exhausted empire

Olivares wasn't useless: he clashed with an unpayable empire

Was the Count-Duke of Olivares the favorite who set half the empire ablaze or the last statesman who saw the problem before it exploded? This question is circulating through historical circles these days, prompted by an uncomfortable comparison: was Felipe IV's all-powerful minister as useless as Manuel Godoy, the man from Extremadura who saw Napoleon coming when he was already sitting in his living room? The answer, as almost always, depends on who is blamed for a bled-dry Castile.

What is on the table, however, is the diagnosis. The Union of Arms, approved in 1626, aimed precisely at distributing the cost of the empire among all kingdoms, not just the Castilian taxpayer. Catalonia refused in the Courts of Barcelona and didn't contribute a penny. Valencia and Aragon ceded something, with resistance. The one who paid the bill while the others stood aside was always the same.

Why did the Union of Arms fail?

Because Olivares' reformism wasn't just a couple of administrative decrees. It touched the pockets and the power of the Castilian nobility, who were unwilling to give up either. He himself summarized it in a phrase often quoted: there are not enough heads. The complex, overlapping, outdated, and very expensive council system of the Habsburgs had only worked because Philip II was a born worker, not because the system itself was particularly effective.

And therein lies the crux: he wanted to implement reform at gunpoint. He turned a problem of burden-sharing into a power struggle, and the kingdoms that were already paying reluctantly found the French war the perfect excuse to resist.

Was Olivares a visionary or a public menace?

It depends on who you ask. Some argue he was one of the few statesmen this country has produced, capable of seeing forty years before anyone else that Castile could no longer sustain hegemony alone in a Europe where Holland was a power and France had rebuilt itself. Others emphasize that his reforms were 50 or 60 years ahead of their time: agrarian reform, fiscal reform, cuts to feudal privileges, and less corruption in the court.

On the other side weighs a more uncomfortable argument: that he used war to bypass laws and let the king bleed even more those who could afford it, turning Catalonia into a battlefield. The full accounting, cross-referencing what each kingdom contributed, provides a revealing picture.

Godoy, the Pantaletanzas, and the empire that might have been

Godoy's case is judged with the same double standard. A thief and womanizer in the black legend, but he was the only one who saw the Napoleonic disaster coming and planned to take the royal family across the ocean. And here appears the precedent that almost no one considers: the Portuguese court fled to Brazil in November 1807, arrived in Rio in March 1808, and the Luso-American empire remained united. Independence came in 1822, yes, but as the Empire of Brazil with Pedro I, the king's son. Nothing like the Hispanic American dismemberment.

The debasement of the vellón: the unacknowledged enemy

Against the grand national narratives, there is a less epic and more devastating factor: plagues, stagnant demographics in Castile, and erratic monetary policy. Debasing the vellón was a terrible mistake. Not correcting it in time was the final blow. It's hardly useful to discuss if the pilot was good when the ship was leaking from every plank.

Two centuries later, we are still discussing whether the problem was Olivares or the empire. Relax: it was the empire.