War of the Spanish Succession
The acceptance of the Spanish crown by Philip V in the face of counterclaims by Archduke Charles of Austria, who was supported by England and the Netherlands, was the proximate cause of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-14), the first "world war" fought by European powers. In 1705 an Anglo-Austrian force landed in Spain. A Franco-Castilian army halted its advance on Madrid, but the invaders occupied Catalonia. Castile enthusiastically received the Bourbon dynasty, but the Catalans opposed it, not so much out of loyalty to the Habsburgs as in defense of their fueros against the feared imposition of French-style centralization by a Castilian regime.
The War of the Spanish Succession was also a Spanish civil war. Britain agreed to a separate peace with France, and the allies withdrew from Catalonia, but the Catalans continued their resistance under the banner "Privilegis o Mort" (Liberty or Death). Catalonia was devastated, and Barcelona fell to Philip V after a prolonged siege (1713-14).
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) brought the war to a close and recognized the Bourbon succession in Spain on the condition that Spain and France would never be united under the same crown. The Spanish Netherlands (which become known as the Austrian Netherlands and later as Belgium) and Spain's Italian possessions, however, reverted to the Austrian Habsburgs. Britain retained Gibraltar and Minorca, seized during the war, and received trade concessions in Spanish America. Spain emerged from the war with its internal unity and colonial empire intact, but with its political position in Europe weakened.
Philip V undertook to modernize Spanish government through his French and Italian advisers. Centralized government was institutionalized, local fueros were abrogated, regional parliaments were abolished, and the aristocracy's independent influence on the councils of state was destroyed.

The Enlightenment
Charles III (r. 1759-88), Spain's enlightened despot par excellence, served his royal apprenticeship as king of Naples. He was one of Europe's most active patrons of the Enlightenment, a period during which attempts were made to reform society through the application of reason to political, social, and economic problems. Despite Charles's attempt to reform the economy, the impact of the Enlightenment was essentially negative. Anticlericalism was an integral part of Enlightenment ideology, but it was carried to greater lengths in Spain than elsewhere in Europe because of government sponsorship. Public charities financed by the church were considered antisocial because they were thought to discourage initiative, and they were therefore abolished. The state suppressed monasteries and confiscated their property. The Jesuits, outspoken opponents of regalism, were expelled. Their expulsion virtually crippled higher education in Spain. The state also banned the teachings of medieval philosophers and of the sixteenth-century Jesuit political theorists who had argued for the "divine right of the people" over their kings. The government employed the Inquisition to discipline antiregalist clerics.
Economic recovery was noticeable, and government efficiency was greatly improved at the higher levels during Charles III's reign. The Bourbon reforms, however, resulted in no basic changes in the pattern of property holding. Neither land reform nor increased land use occurred. The rudimentary nature of bourgeois class consciousness in Spain hindered the creation of a middleclass movement. Despite the development of a national bureaucracy in Madrid, government programs foundered because of the lethargy of administrators at lower levels and because of a background rural population. The reform movement could not be sustained without the patronage of Charles III, and it did not survive him.