The political constitution of the Iberian monarchies

The creation of what are known as the Iberian monarchies was the more or less unforeseeable outcome of a series of political and dynastic processes. Equally crucial for defining the constitutional profile of each of the Iberian kingdoms was the institutionalisation of their legal systems. This chapter analyses the political processes that affected the European territories of composite monarchies, the multiregional or composite nature of these monarchies was a central element in the forms of government and contemporary political discourses. A symbolic power which, expressed through images and political discourse, allowed for the creation of powerful bonds of loyalty with the monarch, and a surprisingly stable political system. In the Iberian monarchies, for a period at least until the mid-seventeenth century, there was profound reflection on political life and its main actors—in philosophical and legal treatises, mirrors of princes, treatises in defence of the cities, or in theatre plays, novels, and other literary genres.