This book presents several theoretical proposals about social and familial – but also

political and cultural – change in Spain in the transition from the Ancien Régime to

the modern age. The sociocultural reality of the Ancien Régime, based on inequality

and privilege, is redefined through kinship and, both horizontal and vertical, social

relations. In this way, the transition from the patriarchal to the conjugal family

explains continuity and change in the context of new social relations that value

individual merit, the accumulation of capital, and the decisive importance of feeling

and emotion.