The creation of the tradition of the political community of Spaniards as common destiny over other communities has been argued to trace back to the Cortes of Cádiz. From 1812 on, revisiting the previous history of Spain, Spanish liberalism tended to take for granted the national conscience and the Spanish nation.

A by-product of 19th-century Spanish nationalist thinking is the concept of Reconquista, which holds the power of propelling the weaponized notion of Spain being a nation shaped against Islam. The strong interface of nationalism with colonialism is another feature of 19th-century nation building in Spain, with the defence of slavery and colonialism in Cuba being often able to reconcile tensions between mainland elites of Catalonia and Madrid throughout the period.

During the first half of 20th century (notably during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the dictatorship of Franco), a new brand of Spanish nationalism with a marked military flavour and an authoritarian stance (as well as promoting policies favouring the Spanish language against the other languages in the country) as a means of modernizing the country was developed by Spanish conservatives, fusing regenerationist principles with traditional Spanish nationalism. The authoritarian national ideal resumed during the Francoist dictatorship, in the form of National-Catholicism, which was in turn complemented by the myth of Hispanidad. Identified with Francoism, positive affirmation of Spanish nationalism was delegitimised after the death of the dictator in 1975.

A distinct manifestation of Spanish nationalism in modern Spanish politics is the interchange of attacks with competing regional nationalisms. Initially present after the end of Francoism in a rather diffuse and reactive form, the Spanish nationalist discourse has been often self-branded as "constitutional patriotism" since the 1980s. Often ignored as in the case of other State nationalisms, its alleged "non-existence" has been a commonplace espoused by prominent figures in the public sphere as well as the mass-media in the country.

A central scholarly debate pertaining to the construction of the contemporary Spanish national identity revolves around the assessment of the effective reach of nationalising mechanisms, most specifically vis-à-vis the axiom of 19th-century weak nationalization, supported, for example, by José Álvarez Junco.

Spanish nationalism is a justification of the centralist Spanish state, according to Borja de Riquer. In this sense, it is the historical result of political-ideological-economic interests among Spanish elites, particularly the need to create a unifying national identity in the wake of the collapse of the Spanish imperial project following the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824.

Historically, Spanish nationalism specifically emerged with liberalism, during the Peninsular War against occupation by the Napoleonic France. As put by José Álvarez Junco, insofar we speak of nationalism in Spain since 1808, the Spanish nationalist enterprise was a work of liberals, who turned their victory "to a feverish identity of patriotism and the defense of liberty".

The Carlism, which was a defensive movement of the Old Regime, did not regard the adjective "national" with any esteem (national sovereignty, national militia, or national properties) and considered it a term used only by liberals (who were becoming more and more progresistas). Up until the 1860s, the Carlism movement tended to label its followers as "Catholics" rather than as "Spaniards".