| Sumario: | The collapse of the Spanish institutional mesh in 1808 left way to a new power arrangement. Contemporary thinkers immediately described it as “revolution”, for they considered the government system to have changed its foundations. During the past fifty years, historians have offered a real arsenal of arguments regarding the revolutionary nature of the processes beginning in 1808 in Spain and Spanish America, or regarding their characterization due to the persistence of traditional cultural references, legal norms, discourses, and concepts of representation. In a debating mood, this paper reviews some of the main lines of interpretation on the origins and first moments of the Spanish crisis, both imperial and Spanish American, and reflects on their consequences on the historical analysis of the methodological options chosen by scholars.
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