THE IDENTIFICATION OF RECENTLY BORN IN THE SPANISH ROYAL HOUSE (1700 - 2000)
A. Garrido-Lestache y A.M. Moral Roncal
It publishes: A.G. Luis Pérez. Madrid, 2001
Comentarios de J. F. Forniers Casals, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares
The present book is to study on the identification of children in the Spanish Royal House, especially during the period of the Bourbon dynasty and to recovery on the right to the identification of those recently born in our current society, desire and many medical pediatricians' yearning and jurists during many years. Science and History mix study presently. Before the identification problems of recently born in the hospitals, the confusion created by exchange of identities by sanitary negligence, they have been numerous the studies and doctors' reports and pediatricians in favor of a document of infantile identity in the XX century.
After an initial chapter, where it is framed at world and national level the problem of the recognition (medical, social and juridical) of the children, they plows shown the origins of the problems of the heirs ' of the royal marriages identification in Castile and Aragon, during the Half Age. In order to avoiding the deslegitimación of the Trastamara, this dynasty was offered to ceremonial apparatus dedicated to the visual identification, with witness, of the childbirths of royal people. This tradition it would end up being effective until Isabel's cheats the Catholic, being varied with the arrival to the throne of the Habsburgo that leaned to increase the becomes intimate you spaces of the childbirths and public presentations of their offsprings, with clear exceptions.
The arrival to the throne of the Bourbons facilitated the trasvase of the label and palatine custom of the court from Versalles to Madrid, for that, again, it was tried to surround of to bigger importance the presentation and arrival the world of the princes and infants, chord with the necessity of legitimation of the new dynasty. The small regal offspring's presentation exercised to totally royal symbolic effectiveness ace long ace it transformed the grateful person truthfully: the first place, because it altered the image that had the other social agents of her and, mainly, the behaviors that adopted with regard to her. In second place, because it modified at the same cheats the image that the invested person had of itself and the behaviors that was forced to adopt to be justified to this image, that of to grateful member of the society and, at the same it cheats, integral of the royal family. To institute, to give to social definition, an identity, also implied to put limits, for that that the organizers and main characters of these ceremonies also hoped the baby, in the future, behaved like to personal real one. This way, to heir that was priced should behave ace such and it would be inherited by the inheritance, that is to say, invested by the things, adapted by the things that has had appropriated. Unless it happened an accident, clear, like in the marries of an unworthy or illegitimate heir. Of there -like it is appreciated by the reading of the book - the problems around the prince's presentation Alfonso, they are of Queen Isabel II, or the preparations that the court and the liberal government carried out for the arrival to the world of Alfonso's XII posthumous heir.
One of the privileges of the regal and social consecration -that remained in the court custom until the XX century - it resided in the fact that, when granting to those consecrated or grateful an unquestionable and indelible essence, this allowed transgressions that otherwise had been forbidden: that that was sure of their cultural identity could play with the rule of the cultural game, with certain limits, of course.
Ace the authors they demonstrate, the foundation of the regal presentations was physically in the belief of an entire group -present in the diverse cameras and halls - in the dispositions configured socially to know and to recognize the institutional conditions of to ritual valid. It implied it that the symbolic effectiveness of the baby's presentation varied -simultaneously or successively - according to the degree in that the addressees were or less prepared lives. With the result that the royal family always invited, ace witness of the fact to who considered the political and social elite of the Kingdom, the most important forces in the century of the Luzes and, during the following ones, to the born institutions of the liberal revolution that configured the essence of the political régime of the constitutional Monarchy. Also, from another point of view, we understand that the Carlist royal family -to which is devoted to chapter - wanted the presence remarkable of figures, bound to their monarchic conceptions that granted bigger genuineness ace real people to their recently born ones.
The political and court character of the ceremony was incompatible not, like it is demonstrated in this interesting volume, with the integration of the popular classes, when satisfying its longing of splendid shows that was the compensation of the passion for to strict hierarchy. The town waited with expectation the arrival to the world of an infant or prince, the gunshots were listened that settled the doubt on the sex, they broke in screams and celebrations when the fact supposed to bigger hope for the Kingdom and they went to observes the devotion of the kings, which went to the basilica of Atocha to thank, following the tradition.
The fall of the monarchy in 1931 supposed the beginning of to series of changes in the arrival to the world of the regal offsprings that ace much the exiles ace the evolution of the political custom transformed until the restoration of 1975. Not for it, the arrival to the world of the princes Juan Carlos and Felipe of Bourbon would stop to have to fundamental importance in it Lengthens it march toward the monarchy, in sentence of it López-rotated. Later on, the dignificación of the headquarters of the State in to democratic Spain didn't already demand to spectacular sumptuary and ritual solemnity, marked by to protocol characterized by the primacy of the hierarchy: it was enough with the moral respectability, the discreet elegance, the political wisdom and to measured patriotism that those responsible for the regal protocol have tried to impose in almost all the real ceremonies, like it has even been demonstrated in the arrival to the world of the grandsons of the current kings, to those that detailed allusion is also made.
To conclude, to only underline that the book gathers the virtues of utility, amenity, simplicity and accessibility, at the cheats that doesn't neglect its scientific and university quality, because not in vain he/she makes an appointment abundant an abundant bibliography and documentation of diverse sections of Real the Palace of Madrid´s file, Ministry of Justice and National Historical File.