Enlightenment in Spain Enlightenment in Spain The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment (in Spanish, "Ilustración") came to Spain in the eighteenth century with the new Bourbon dynasty, following the death of the last , Charles II, in 1700. "Like the Spanish Enlightenment, the Spanish Bourbon monarchs were imbued with Spain's Catholic identity." The period of reform and 'enlightened despotism' under the Bourbons focused on centralizing and modernizing the Spanish government, and improvement of infrastructure, beginning with the rule of King Charles III and the work of his minister, José Moñino, count of Floridablanca. In the political and economic sphere, the crown implemented
House of Bourbon nobles under the Direct Capetian and Valois kings. In 1589, at the death of Henry III of France, the House of Valois became extinct in the male line. Under the Salic law, the Head of the House of Bourbon, as the senior representative of the senior-surviving branch of the Capetian dynasty, became King of France as Henry IV. Bourbon monarchs then united to France the small kingdom of Navarre, which Henry's father had acquired by marriage in 1555, ruling both until the 1792 overthrow of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Restored briefly in 1814 and definitively in 1815 after