| Summary: | The Napoleonic invasions and the loss of their American colonies sparked an intense debate on national decadence among the political and cultural elites of Portugal and Spain. These narratives of decadence followed two non-exclusive models. On the one hand, the nation-building project of the liberal state looked to ethnic characterizations and explanations for the decadence of their countries. On the other hand, there were formulations of overseas power that took Iberian, Mediterranean, European or Hispano-American spaces as the geographical framework for national renewal. This article emphasizes the importance of these expectations in defining the national cultural frameworks of Spain and Portugal in the 19th Century. It also questions the historiography that explains the America’s place in Spanish political thought as arising from the colonial “disasters.” These projects, far from originating in the crises of 1890 and 1898, have a long history in the discourse of the 19th Century.
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