Monarchy of Spain

The monarchy of Spain or Spanish monarchy (Spanish: Monarquía Española) is the constitutional form of government of Spain. It consists of a hereditary monarch who reigns as the head of state, being the highest office of the country.

The Spanish monarchy is constitutionally referred to as The Crown (Spanish: La Corona), and it comprises the reigning monarch, currently King Felipe VI, their family, and the Royal Household, which supports and facilitates the sovereign in the exercise of his duties and prerogatives.

The royal family is currently represented by King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, their daughters Leonor, Princess of Asturias, and Infanta Sofía, and the king's parents, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía.

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 re-established a constitutional monarchy as the form of government for Spain after the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy in 1977. The 1978 constitution affirmed the role of the King of Spain as the living personification and embodiment of the Spanish nation and a symbol of Spain's enduring unity and permanence and is also invested as the "arbitrator and the moderator" of Spanish institutions. Constitutionally, the sovereign is the head of state and commander-in-chief of the Spanish Armed Forces. The constitution codifies the use of royal styles and titulary, royal prerogatives, hereditary succession to the crown, compensation, and a regency-guardianship contingency in cases of the monarch's minority or incapacitation. According to the Constitution, the monarch is also instrumental in promoting relations with the "nations of its historical community". The monarch serves as honorary president of the Organization of Ibero-American States, representing over 700,000,000 people in twenty-four member nations worldwide.

The monarchy in Spain has its roots in the Visigothic Kingdom and its Christian successor states of Navarre, Asturias (later Leon and Castile) and Aragon, which fought the Reconquista or Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula following the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century. One of the earliest influential dynasties was the House of Jiménez which united much of Christian Iberia under its leadership in the 11th century. From Sancho III of Navarre (r. 1000–1035) until Urraca of León and Castile (r. 1106–1125), members of the Jiménez family claimed the historic Visigothic title Imperator totius Hispaniae or Emperor of All Spain. The Jiménez rulers sought to bring their kingdoms into the European mainstream and often engaged in cross-Pyrenees alliances and marriages, and became patrons to Cluniac Reforms (c. 950–c. 1130). Urraca's son and heir Alfonso VII of León and Castile, the first of the Spanish branch of the Burgundy Family, was the last to claim the imperial title of Spain, but divided his empire among his sons. The Castilian Civil War (1366 to 1369) ended with the death of King Peter (r. 1334–1369) at the hands of his illegitimate half-brother Henry, 1st Count of Trastámara who ruled as Henry II (r. 1369–1379). Henry II became the first of the House of Trastámara to rule over a Spanish kingdom. King Peter's heiress, his granddaughter Catherine of Lancaster, married Henry III, reuniting the dynasties in the person of their son, King John II.

In the 15th century, the marriage between Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, both members of the House of Trastámara, known as the Catholic Monarchs, united two important kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. Each kingdom retained its basic structure. The last pretender of the crown of the Byzantine Empire, Andreas Palaiologos, who styled himself as "Emperor of Constantinople", bestowed his imperial title to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in his last testament, dated 7 April 1502, although the Spanish monarchs have never used the title. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs conquered the Kingdom of Granada in southern Spain, the last Muslim territory in the Iberian peninsula. The unification of Spain is marked from this date, though the Spanish kingdoms continued past that date.

The territories of the Spanish Empire overseas were dependencies of the Crown of Castile, and Castile had an outsized influence there. Following the Spanish explorations and settlement in the Caribbean, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the crown established high courts ("Audiencias") and viceroyalties in important regions (Mexico, 1535; Panama, 1538, which was later replaced by Lima, 1542). The viceroy (vice-king) and the Audiencias were the effective administrators of royal policy.

In 1505, the Spanish monarchy passed to the House of Habsburg in the person of King Charles I (also Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V), son of Queen Joanna and King Philip I of Castile (usually Philip the Handsome in English). With the death of Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1516 the Aragonese lands were added to Charles and Joanna's territories. With his mother and co-monarch Joanna confined in Tordesillas, claimed to be mad, Charles I was the sole ruler, but the legal situation remained slightly ambiguous until her death in 1555 left Charles the undoubted sole monarch, though as Holy Roman Emperor it was not his principal title. Only in the reign of his son Philip II of Spain from 1556 did "King of Spain" become the usual way to refer to the monarch, in Spain and the rest of Europe.