Philip V (reigned 1700-1746), first Spanish monarch of the extant Bourbon dynasty, holds a notable position in Catalan history, and not exactly in the gallery of illustrious figures. The political system he imported from Versailles caused a formidable clash with the institutions of Catalonia. Absolutism versus foralisme, limited autonomy. Or, if you want, despotism versus parliamentarianism. The economy, the mother of all wars, also had its share of prominence in that conflict. Bourbon interventionism versus Catalan mercantilism. The inevitable War of the Spanish Succession (1705-1715) involved some arguments which went far beyond the simple question of settling who should be sitting on the throne in Madrid. It was a war which involved a complete political, economic and social destruction of Catalonia. Once the war was over, however, Philip deployed an unprecedented repressive machinery with the aim of carbonising the burnt Catalan land. Why? Why did Philip V hate the Catalans?
Catalonia, rebel "province"
The apparatus of the Bourbon state had brought back and boosted the idea that Catalonia was a rebel "province", an idea which had been constructed half a century earlier by court oligarchs in Madrid during the revolutionary Reapers' conflict (1640-1652), which led to the proclamation of first Catalan Republic (1641). Philip V's ministers, both the French ones imposed by his grandfather and protector Louis XIV of France and the Castilians which he and his Versailles entourage promoted, only had to implement the advertising techniques which were triumphing in Versailles, in other words, adapt the stereotype of the rebellious, miserly and traitorous Catalan which had been constructed at the start of the previous century by Spanish ministers Lerma and Olivares to a new era. Louis XIV was a great publicist (probably the pioneer of modern marketing) and the champion of the absolutist political system. Revealingly he gave himself the sobriquet le Roi Soleil (Sun King).
Spanish punitive culture
This could lead us to think that Philip V limited himself to following a previously imposed script. Nothing could be further from the truth. Philip V took full part in the punitive culture which, since the previous century, had invaded all corners of the court in Madrid. Massacring Catalans was equivalent to, in practice, excising the cancer which threatened the Bourbon project of Spanish unity, which was then hovering over the figure of the monarch. A figure which had become, as in France, the personification of the state. A Parisian France and a Madrileño Spain. What happened is that Philip V lost control of the situation. So much so that Louis XIV (who in 1700 had proclaimed that the use of Catalan disgusted him and was unbecoming in the French nation) warned him that his role as king of Spain was not to massacre the Catalans, but to make them Spanish and turn them into faithful subjects. Even Berwick, the general who had led the siege and assault of Barcelona (1713-1714), thought that this wave of repression was "un-Christian".
The royal lottery
The question is: how was it possible that a prince raised and educated in the modern and glamorous court of Versailles fully embraced the atavistic punitive culture of the decrepit Madrid court? And not just that... How was it possible that he should become the champion of this punitive culture? We find the answer in his psychological profile, the great unknown for the public, which would explain the brutal repression he enacted during the war (1705-1714) and during the post-war period (1714-1716). It's a profile explained by his personal story, because the Spanish throne arrived unexpectedly to Philip of Anjou, grandson of the Sun King and third in the French line of succession and caught him in a situation which, colloquially, we could define as "with his trousers down". The first Spanish Bourbon had come into the world to fill the role of substitute if his father and elder brother shouldn't outlive the Sun King; in no case, however, had he received any training to act as a governor.
Bourbon mistrust
Months before the more than foretold death of Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg (1700), and with the premature (and suspicious) death of the infant Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, consensus candidate between Madrid's court parties (1699), the first Spanish Bourbon would go from being a duke in the French royal household, with all the honours entailed by being a privileged member of the richest and most opulent court in Europe, to the preferred candidate for, and later king of, a court disgraced by corruption and conspiracies and dominated by inquisitorial doctrine (and even by the practice of witchcraft). Philip of Anjou accepted the Spanish throne by order of Louis XIV and with it the governance of an empire which was politically decadent and economically failing. But the old Bourbon, on the other hand, bestowed him with a healthy representation of the Versailles bureaucracy. Bourbon mistrust of Spanish oligarchs would make Orry, Robinet and La Tremoille, to give just three examples from Versailles, into the new governors of the original "empire on which the sun never sets".
The "war" of Catalonia
The "triumphant" entrance of the new French ministers (1700) caused a war without quarter in the Spanish court, similar to the one two centuries earlier caused by the arrival of Flemish ministers with Charles I, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella (1516). There were some elements which, despite the distance in time, had many similarities, like the foreign monarch needing to assert his authority. And with an added aggravating factor: the Bourbon had been given the mission of implanting absolutism in the kingdoms of Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession (1705-1715) had many fronts. Including one within the Bourbon side. And the brutality used by Philip V's commanders in Catalonia (during and after the conflict) was nothing more than the manifestation of a runaway race to achieve military note. Philip wasn't on the battlefield himself, but his commanders (and here the possessive "his" becomes significant) would perpetrate episodes of terrifying brutality. Pópuli and Berwick to give two examples.
The Catalan challenge
The Catalans became the touchstone of the Bourbon's mistrust and insecurity. The first Spanish Bourbon especially hated them because politically, culturally and economically they were antithesis of the absolutist regime which was meant to anoint him as king of the Spanish kingdoms. And he hated them especially because, far from putting the Catalan institutional and productive apparatus at the service of the Bourbon cause (as they were meant to according to the royal despotic blueprint), they had dared to act like a sovereign republic, signing international treaties with the Paris's enemies (Treaty of Genoa, 1705), and had dared to show up his project (coronation of Charles of Habsburg, 1706). But the explanation of the brutal repression which followed the end of the war in 1714 (if what happened during the conflict has any justification) is also directly linked with the internal war taking place in court in Madrid during the process of consolidating the absolutist regime.
Court disappointment
Here arises, naturally, another question: Didn't the court oligarchs in Madrid foresee, when taking the side of the Bourbon candidacy (1699), that Philip V would import an absolutist political system which could put an end to their privileges? And the answer is yes. The Bourbon candidacy (the absolutist system) was the court's great hope. It wasn't the "new blood" Spanish historians talk up; it was the destruction of the semi-autonomous foral system. The definitive defeat of the lands of the Crown of Aragon in the fight to lead the Spanish project. The political victory of the agrarian Castilian oligarchs over the mercantile Catalan and Valencian classes. What they didn't foresee was that the Bourbon would arrive accompanied by a court of bureaucrats from Versailles which would cast them out of political power. Nor that the Bourbon, as the French fell victim to court hounding, would substitute them for a new class of courtiers from the second rank of the nobility: the hidalgos.
Philip V's melancholia
The hidalgos, eager for power and wealth, became the most radical of this new regime. In Catalonia, figures like Patiño and Macanaz would strengthen and prolong the atmosphere of terror, denunciations and executions which had dominated during the war. The confiscations, imprisonments, tortures and executions (always applied with arbitrary Bourbon justice) would also be kept as common elements of this world. The symptoms of mental illness Philip V had shown since infancy became ever clearer. His doctors called it melancholia. Sources reveal that, on the other hand, the king's office became a permanent kind of baroque house of horrors, where the "illustrious" sovereign alternated between episodes of profound depression and periods of uncontrolled anger. When Louis XIV or Berwick condemned his attitude they would be referring to that too.