José de la Cerda was an important figure of the early 19th century, which witnessed the development of Spanish parliamentarianism in the unstable era of transition between the Ancién Regime and Liberalism.
His early childhood was characterised by a severe blow to the prestige of his family when, after 1796, the Royal Audience of Aragon (high court of Aragon) ruled that the County of Bureta was passed to the House of Marín de Resende, instead of passing on to the House of Parcent, after a lawsuit which had begun almost ten years earlier in 1785.
During the War, in 1812, the Cortes had come together in Cádiz and issued the 1st Spanish Constitution ("La Pepa") which installed a Liberal political system in Spain which the king had to accept upon his return.
Nevertheless, the grand aristocracy, the Parcents among them, directed the king to Valencia upon his return from exile, where the issued the Manifest of Persians, a document in which they stated that absolute rule was required in order to conjure the anarchy which had emerged from war and the liberal doctrines brought by the French Revolution.
His uncle was forced into exile but would return to Spain in 1817, after Ferdinand VII pardoned him and allowed him to live in Málaga, always under severe vigilance.
In the meantime, whilst his family was torn apart by political ideology, José married in 1814 Marie Gand-Villain et de la Rochefoucauld, a Franco-Spanish aristocrat.
Given that Ferdinand VII only had daughters, the most reactionary sectors of court supported his brother which was partisan of installing traditional absolutism, a formula which could only lead to a new liberal revolution such as that of 1820.
His time as prócer was complicated for he had to defend the regent's unstable governments throughout the crises of the Carlist war, the uprisings in Barcelona and the attacks of the Luddites.
Furthermore, even though the Statute was promulgated, it cost De la Rosa's premiership and hence Parcent had to defend an institution which no longer counted with its creator.
[5] In 1843, when the leader of the Moderates, the Duke of Valencia, took power, Parcent was elected deputy in the Congress until 1849, when for his services to the Crown he was made a life senator, granted the Collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.