Read by Carlos de España, as envoy of the Urgel Regency, the letter requested the allied sovereigns' aid "to restore the King to his throne and to reestablish all things as they had been before March 9, 1820".
On his return to Spain, at the end of the Peninsular War (1814), Fernando VII, despite having sworn to uphold the Constitution of Cádiz, behaved as a tyrant and despot, imposing the absolutism of the Antiguo Régimen.
Before him, several notable public figures, such as Espoz y Mina, Richard, Renovales, Díaz Porlier (1815), Brigadier-general Lacy (1816) or Vidal (1819), had all failed, most of them at the cost of their lives.
[5] Benito Pérez Galdós refers to "the three regents" in his 1877 novel Los Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis (Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis), part of his Episodios Nacionales.
The following is an example: These were the Baron de Eroles and don Jaime Creux, Archbishop of Tarragona, both of them, just like Mataflorida, from the humblest of classes, brought out of obscurity by these revolutionary times, which wasn't really a very strong argument in favour of absolutism.
This fact, which had been observed since the previous century, was expressed by Louis XV, when he said that the nobility needed to be covered in manure in order to be made fertile.Of these three regents, the most likeable was Mataflorida, who was also the most learned; the most tolerant was Eroles, and the most evil and unpleasant, Don Jaime Creux.