This book presents several theoretical proposals about social and familial – but also
political and cultural – change in Spain in the transition from the Ancien Régime to
the modern age. The sociocultural reality of the Ancien Régime, based on inequality
and privilege, is redefined through kinship and, both horizontal and vertical, social
relations. In this way, the transition from the patriarchal to the conjugal family
explains continuity and change in the context of new social relations that value
individual merit, the accumulation of capital, and the decisive importance of feeling
and emotion.