The body of the nation: political allegories and symbols in liberal Spain (1808-1874)

Starting from a survey of the metaphor of the political body, this article offers an approach of the allegorical and symbolic embodiment of the nation as the character in charge of power in the liberal period. The War of Independence imposes the female allegory, emancipated from the monarchy as it is, to embody the nation as the actor on the political stage. Whereas it is the actual body of Isabel II, both a little girl and a queen, which symbolizes the subsequent consolidation of liberalism in Spain. Finally, together with politics becoming democratic, which paradoxically establishes the unequal status of woman by making her a political outcast, the female figure plays an essential part in political imagery, halfway between allegory and reality, to the extent of being identified with the new power on the way: the power of the people.