Pedro

Rodríguez
Campomanes

Óscar García Marcos 4ºE G2

Index
1. Biography.
2. Work.
3. Campomanes nowadays.
4.Bibliography.

Commemorative stamps because of the bicentennial of Campomanes death.

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1. Biography
Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes y Pérez de Sorriba was a politician, economist,writer and Spanish
historian. He was one of the most important intellectuals of the Enlightenment in Spain during the second half
of the 18th century.

He was born in Santa Eulalia de Sorriba, Tineo, Asturias on July 1, 1723. His parents, Pedro and María
were nobles, but they had no wealth.

He had a brother, Francisco, and a sister called Josefa. When his father died in 1724, his mother
entrusted to his uncle, Pedro Pérez de Sorriba, who was the Canon of the Collegiate Church of Santillana del
Mar, in Santander. There he studied philosophy, Greek and Arabic. When he was ten years old, he could
translate Arabic book fragments.

He freely taught Humanities in Cangas de Tineo, Asturias. Then began his law degree in Oviedo which
he continued and ended in Seville.

Later he moved to Madrid. Campomanes wrote that he was in Madrid as early as 1741, at the age of
18. He worked for four years as an intern in two law firms. Finally, he became a Bachelor of Civil and Canonical
Law and received that of Bachelor In 1745 at the age of 22. He opened a law firm and proved that he was so
competent that the nobles continually called him.

When Charles III ascended the throne, he noticed him and Campomanes was appointed member of
the Board of Finance and Castilla in 1745 and, from that, he turned his life entirely to politics. He devoted
himself to reforms in three sectors: legal, economic and political under the sign of Enlightenment.

Portrait of Campomanes

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 Married Manuela de las Amarillas Sotomayor and Amaya and had four children.

He entered the Royal Academy of History in 1748. In 1753 he was appointed Censor of the Royal
Academy of History and in 1755 he obtained the position of General Director of Post.

Charles III appointed him Finance Minister in 1760. As Minister of Finance, he will manage the economy
of Spain and try to introduce his ideas of modernising the country into practise. His major act was the drafting
of the fiscal response about abolishing the rate and establishing trade in grains.

In 1763 he became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy and in 1764 he obtained the presidency
of it, a position that he held until 1791. Later in his last days he would return to its original position.

In 1764 He published his treatise of the Regalia of depreciations which led to stop the ecclesiastical
power.

In 1765 Campomanes was appointed president of the Council of the Mesta and in 1766 he proceeded
to reform the municipal administration. In 1771, he proposed a radical reform of the University of Salamanca.

In 1780 he received the title of Count of Campomanes, according to a law that allowed influential
people to enter the nobility, although without heraldic tradition.Campomanes widowed in 1784.

In 1786 he was appointed president of the Council of Castile.

In 1788 Charles IV came to the throne after the death of Charles III. He will degrade Campomanes, who
lost his influence in the powers of the State due to his proximity to the French Revolution and his
enlightenment ideas.

In 1789 he was designated as President of the Cortes and Governor of the Council of Castilla. He will
remain until his death on February 3, 1802.

Posthumous portrait

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2. Work
Campomanes was one of the highest representatives of Enlightened despotism in Spain . Economically,
he opposed the union and Mesta monopoly. He also promoted trade, industry and agrarian reforms and
favored the expulsion of the Jesuitas and the confiscation of their assets. He was an enlightened man in the
full meaning of the word, and therefore a scholar. He was an insatiable reader, especially in historical,
economic and philosophical matters. He always took great care to provide himself with a well-documented
personal library. After his death his personal library was valued and sold in 1842 for more than fourteen
thousand reales. It contains five thousand books and only forty percent were written in Spanish.

Amongst the most important works of Campomanes, we can mention:

In 1747 he published as a writer Disertaciones históricas del orden y caballería de los Templarios. It
was his first work, dedicated to the king and where his regalist ideas appeared.

Around 1750, He wrote some works of legal, political and economic content that, although they
remained unpublished until the end of the 20th century, contained the embryo of his reforming ideology,
which he would develop and apply as far as possible in the following years.

In 1765 it was published El tratado de la Regalía de Amortización. This treaty led to a series of
measures with the intention of limiting the power of the Church and the concentration of assets. It is the work
of greatest political significance by Campomanes and the theoretical basis of the power of the monarchy in
the context of Enlightened despotism.

In 1767 he wrote the” Instrucción para las nuevas poblaciones de Sierra Morena y fuero de sus
pobladores .

1768- Memorial ajustado sobre los

abastos de Madrid

1771- Respuesta fiscal en el expediente

consultivo sobre los privilegios del
Consejo de la Mesta.

1774- Discurso sobre el fomento de la

industria popular

In 1775 he published the Discurso sobre la educación popular de los artesanos y su fomento. In it,
Campomanes again influences his diagnosis of the causes of Spanish decline which, as a good illustrated man,
he will try to correct with the diffusion of lights and with government measures supporting the extension of
popular education.

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3. Campomanes now at days
Campomanes is one of the Spanish' leading 18th century figures, and one of the essential figures to
understand the meaning of what happened in that historical period.

Campomanes was Asturian, he was born in Sorriba, Tineo, but the connection between Campomanes
and the people of Asturias was very low maybe because at the age of seven, he left Sorriba to go to
Santillana del Mar and because he lived in Madrid during most of his life. This circumstance, together with
the fact that there are no remains of his birthplace, caused this detachment towards his figure and work.

Campomanes is not a well-known figure in Asturias, like Jovellanos or Feijoo. Campomanes is not a
prophet in his own land.

In Sorriba there is an exhibition

space.

Sculpture of Campomanes in Tineo, a work of Vicente

Santarrúa that was inaugurated in 1991.

In Oviedo there is a street with his name. At the

beginning of the street is the Monument to
Campomanes. It was inaugurated in 2003 because of
the bicentennial of his death.

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4. Bibliography
The main sources that I have used to make this essay are:

http://www.fuentepalmera.org/cast/campomanes.htm

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Rodr%C3%ADguez_de_Campomanes

https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Pedro_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Campomanes_(Retrato)

https://www.antoniopulido.es/campomanes-un-ilustrado-reformador-economico-del-xviii/

http://historyofmediterranean.blogspot.com/2013/04/campomanes-y-la-ilustracion-espanola.html

http://www.fuenterrebollo.com/FernandoVII/campomanes.html

https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/c/campomanes.htm

https://thebiography.us/en/rodriguez-de-campomanes-y-perez-pedro

https://thebiography.us/en/rodriguez-de-campomanes-y-perez-pedro

http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/4699/pedro-rodriguez-campomanes-y-perez-de-sorriba

https://www.nubeluz.es/personajes/politicos/campomanes.html

https://www.lne.es/occidente/2016/09/16/conde-campomanes-duerme-olvido-popular-19489979.html

https://www.tineo.es/museos-y-salas-de-exposicion/-/asset_publisher/b7c18c81e7d2/content/turismo-
museos-aula-conde-de-campomanes

https://www.apartamentoselardinal.com/que-hacer-asturias/i/36590894/escultura-monumento-
campomanes

https://www.correos.es/ss/Satellite/site/coleccion-1364391478264-galeria_sellos_filatelia/detalle_emision-
sidioma=es_ES

https://jeandegoudin.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/retratos-de-espanoles-ilistres-el-conde-de-campomanes/

https://elblogdeacebedo.blogspot.com/2018/10/pedro-rodriguez-campomanes-perez.html