The political control of public opinion in the Spain of the Austria

Abstract

In the framework of the censorship legislation of imperial Spanish we pretend to analyze, on the one hand, the cultural and doctrinal origin of sociological concept of public opinion in our country, which has its roots in counter-reformist absolutism and was adopting a recognizable physiognomy within the spanish society of the Golden Age thanks to the contribution of our baroque writers; and, on the other, the political and indoctrinating dimension of the New Comedy and religious preaching, since they constituted the most effective propaganda springs of mass manipulation driven by the Power in order to achieve emotional accession and, therefore, irrational from the spanish people to the Hispanic monarchy.