Afrancesado

Subsequently, it became popular as a pejorative reference to those members of the Spanish nobility and bureaucracy who swore allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte, installed as King of Spain by his brother, Napoleon.

The term extended to cover a predominantly middle class intellectual, merchant, or manufacturer who saw the French as agents of change in the rigid structure of Spanish society, and who reacted against the perceived corruption and incompetence of Charles IV and the House of Bourbon in general (including Joseph's competitor Ferdinand VII).

He relied on the afrancesados to enforce a project that would gradually replace tradition and absolutism with a system Leandro Fernández de Moratín defined as based on razón, la justicia y el poder (reason, justice, and power).

After the Duke of Wellington's 1813 campaign and the Battle of Vitoria, all of Joseph's court and his collaborators (nobles, soldiers, jurists, writers, journalists, and Roman Catholic clergy alike) took refuge to France with Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's forces.

Demanding the rule of law as opposed to William Carr Beresford's arbitrary regime, they called for the return of King John VI - who had preferred to remain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he had transferred the Portuguese court during the French invasion.